Comparing Cable to Clearwire and Clearwire to Sprint EVDO

By Geek News Central | January 16, 2007

Earlier in the month I talked with a Clearwire representative about getting one of there modems to see if the signal reached my home. As you all know I have been plagued with intermittent upload speed issues where I live.

The cable provider here in Hawaii is Time Warner serviced through Oceanic Cable, while I live on Oahu my home is on Historic Ford Island, with my home less then 200 feet from the Utah Memorial.

Having received the demo unit I decided tonight to do a comparison of 3 services. The real kicker is this though the Clearwire representative could not guarantee service in my current location as I was supposedly out of range. I think you will be surprised at how well Clearwire stacked up against my cable provider.

I knew my Spring EVDO would not really have a chance, but because I rely on it so heavily during the day, and considering that the Sprint service is only 3G here in Hawaii I think they did pretty good in this comparison. I think the Sprint folks will be pretty happy with the results.

All three test were done on the same machine with all programs accessing the net turned off. The test site was www.speakeasy.net/speedtest

First up Oceanic Cable Broadband Service by Time Warner Price $44.95

Second Clearwire in an area where service is not guaranteed Price $36.99

Third Sprint EVDO on a 3G Network with Full Bar Signal Strength Price $79.99

In my humble opinion if services like clearwire work on increasing their speed they have a chance of putting a real hurt on the local cable company. I will be signing up for the service just to have some more flexibility.

What would really be awesome is if I could buy push speeds that equaled download speeds.

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