Open Roads Radio forum for Ham, Amateur Radio and RV camping - View Single Post

electricflyer · 09-15-2014, 09:06 PM

Clear is WIMAX. It is or rather was in the major market areas, they were partnered with Motorola and another major cellular manufacturer (can't remember who it was). My son was corporate training manager and site development manager for them. Clear was started by the guy up in Washington state that developed cellular systems as we know them and sold it to AT&T for about 5 billion. Initially you could buy a plug & play device at Best Buy for $35 and be on the air. Clear has since been sold to Sprint so it can be gotten from them. Initially they were $35/month but I think they are in the $50-$60 range now depending on the bandwidth. Clear stopped using their own tech service so my son bailed out of Clear and is now corporate training manager for Erickson who maintains nearly all of the non AT&T cell sites, that includes most of Verizon, T-Mobile. Sprint, Clear and others. He is by the way a ham, Advanced license. About the only decent internet is via smartphone which can be good or bad depending where you are located. Another choice is Verison Air, there are other cellular based internet vendors available also. Dish has satellite internet available but as I understand it can not be used mobile. My daughter and her husband used Verizon Air for a while because there was no cable where they lived in Tennessee. I think it was about $60 a month at that time and I have read about RVrs using it. I have thought about getting a wifi signal booster to give the laptop a little more range. The camp sites don't seem to want to pay for more bandwidth. They could make it better if they positioned wifi repeaters in the area but those cost a little money.
I am starting to play with Broadband-hamnet, which can not provide internet as we know it because it is Part 97 (restricted noncommerical internet), although it can be connected to the internet via the network. Anyway, I have a couple antennas I purchased on Ebay that have good gain and with the proper connection could possibly be used to increase the range. I have a 2.5ghz 20dbi gain omni antenna and a 2.5ghz 20dbi yagi antenna. They will have to be close coupled to be effective. I haven't been anywhere to give it a try to see if it will work yet.
A little off topic but check out www.Broadband-Hamnet.org It uses a Linksys router (certain models) and is flashed with ham band specific firmware. Short range because it is line of site 2.5ghz but because it is then Part 97 it could possibly go as far as 1500w power, would make no sense to do that though (if you can't hear them you can't work them). The neat thing about it is that it is a self seeking, self-healing network. It seems to be developing in the heavy concentrated ham areas. It is best used for emergency backup when everything else will fail. Because is has very low power consumption it could operate of of a UPS battery for several days. Works best in areas of flat terrain, Florida, Arizona, New Mexico, South Texas and such. Florida would be ideal for coverage, in fact cellular towers are detuned because of overlap problems.

09-15-2014, 09:06 PM	#3
electricflyer Senior Member Join Date: Jul 2013 Location: Douglasville, GA Posts: 417	Clear is WIMAX. It is or rather was in the major market areas, they were partnered with Motorola and another major cellular manufacturer (can't remember who it was). My son was corporate training manager and site development manager for them. Clear was started by the guy up in Washington state that developed cellular systems as we know them and sold it to AT&T for about 5 billion. Initially you could buy a plug & play device at Best Buy for $35 and be on the air. Clear has since been sold to Sprint so it can be gotten from them. Initially they were $35/month but I think they are in the $50-$60 range now depending on the bandwidth. Clear stopped using their own tech service so my son bailed out of Clear and is now corporate training manager for Erickson who maintains nearly all of the non AT&T cell sites, that includes most of Verizon, T-Mobile. Sprint, Clear and others. He is by the way a ham, Advanced license. About the only decent internet is via smartphone which can be good or bad depending where you are located. Another choice is Verison Air, there are other cellular based internet vendors available also. Dish has satellite internet available but as I understand it can not be used mobile. My daughter and her husband used Verizon Air for a while because there was no cable where they lived in Tennessee. I think it was about $60 a month at that time and I have read about RVrs using it. I have thought about getting a wifi signal booster to give the laptop a little more range. The camp sites don't seem to want to pay for more bandwidth. They could make it better if they positioned wifi repeaters in the area but those cost a little money. I am starting to play with Broadband-hamnet, which can not provide internet as we know it because it is Part 97 (restricted noncommerical internet), although it can be connected to the internet via the network. Anyway, I have a couple antennas I purchased on Ebay that have good gain and with the proper connection could possibly be used to increase the range. I have a 2.5ghz 20dbi gain omni antenna and a 2.5ghz 20dbi yagi antenna. They will have to be close coupled to be effective. I haven't been anywhere to give it a try to see if it will work yet. A little off topic but check out www.Broadband-Hamnet.org It uses a Linksys router (certain models) and is flashed with ham band specific firmware. Short range because it is line of site 2.5ghz but because it is then Part 97 it could possibly go as far as 1500w power, would make no sense to do that though (if you can't hear them you can't work them). The neat thing about it is that it is a self seeking, self-healing network. It seems to be developing in the heavy concentrated ham areas. It is best used for emergency backup when everything else will fail. Because is has very low power consumption it could operate of of a UPS battery for several days. Works best in areas of flat terrain, Florida, Arizona, New Mexico, South Texas and such. Florida would be ideal for coverage, in fact cellular towers are detuned because of overlap problems.