WiMax San Antonio TX

Clearwire Corporation today unveiled Rover(TM): the nation’s first pay-as-you-go 4G mobile broadband service for tech-savvy Gen Y customers. The Rover brand is designed for digitally addicted youth who refuse to settle for long-term contracts, overpriced internet service, or speeds slower than what they’ve become accustomed to at home.

Visit www.ROVER.com for coverage area map and more details about this product. Initial sales will be limited to on-line and at select retail stores in Houston Texas and St. Louis Missouri,  such as the Best Buy and CLEAR corporate stores.

CLEAR has some new commercials that will be showing on the Internet soon. CLEAR has repackaged their 4G hotspot in a new shape designed to attract this age group, and their 4G modem as well. The hotspot is a disc shaped device.

Pricing will be for Unlimited Usage for Just $5/day, $20/week, $50/month

Rover’s flagship device is the Rover Puck: an ergonomically designed portable Wi-Fi hotspot that lets you share broadband access, or “Puck”, with up to eight devices at home, out on the town or nearly anywhere the feeling strikes you. The Rover Puck can easily slip into a purse or backpack and serve as an on-the-go broadband access point for devices such as laptops, netbooks, the iPad(TM), the iPod touch(R), smartphones, PSP(R) systems, game consoles, and Wi-Fi enabled digital cameras, among others. Users have the option to connect up to eight Wi-Fi enabled devices simultaneously.

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Beginning in next month in  September, CLEAR will be pre-launching and launching many new markets. Join us in welcoming the newest cities to join the CLEAR team this month:

Commercial Launch Grand Rapids Michigan Daytona Beach Florida Jacksonville Florida Stockton California Modesto California Wilmington Maryland

Pre-Launch Nashville Tennessee Orlando Florida Boston Massachusetts Providence Rhode Island

Note for those who didn’t know the terms: 

 “Pre-Launch” is when CLEAR starts selling locally, but their network isn’t 100% completed.  If you sign up during this phase, you are the beta testers so to speak, but CLEAR now has their methods perfected from repetition, so don’t worry too much.  You’ll experience a few more holes in covered areas, but those will quickly get filled in over the next month or two.  

 “Commercial Launch” is where the big public push starts, with advertising on bill boards, special events, news coverage, etc.   San Antonio pre-launched last November 1st, and went commercial launch on December 8th with a big hoopla in front of the Alamo downtown.

San Antonio is now considered a “Mature Market”, having survived childbirth and grown into a stable, but still expanding, market.

Contact us at WiMax San Antonio / Austin for all your CLEAR questions or needs.  We’ll be here to help you, 7 days a week (cause we take off on the 8th day each week).   Call us at 210-771-7075 or email us at lee@wimaxsatx.com.   Feel free to post comments to any of our articles that we’ve shared with you here.  We do moderate all comments to help keep out the spam and unrelated postings.

Have you ever noticed around Christmas time especially, or in the grocery store when it’s the night before a holiday, that the item you really wanted, wasn’t on the shelf at the store?  Too much demand for the current supply chain.

Well, with the big push this month in August for the “Back to School” special deals on all CLEAR 4G+ modems and hotspots, the demand has out stripped the available supply of 4G+ Hotspot modems. 

At only $50/month for service, plus $5.99/month for equipment, this item has proven to be extremely popular with the customers, breaking sales goals set by corporate, just like the San Antonio market has exceeded its sales goals for 2010 SIX MONTHS EARLY.

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This past Friday, August 20th, the local CLEAR Staff & Dealers got the “bad” news that the guy who helped launch the San Antonio CLEAR Market last year, Samuel “Sam” Rosario, was being stolen by by New York City’s CLEAR Market.

Yep, stolen from San Antonio, from under our noses.

All the hours of hard work Sam put in, all that over time on evenings and weekends, to the point that even his skin was turning the same shade of green as the official logo, has resulted in a serious promotion for Sam, and he deserves it!  Hmm, wonder if all that green Koolaid he was drinking and lack of exposure to sunlight had anything to do with that skin color changing.  Just kidding!

Sam had been the Indirect Sales Manager for San Antonio since before it launched on November 1st, 2009.  He started by working out of his garage until CLEAR rented office space to be official.  He recruited & hired the Indirect Account Reps, training them and sending them out to make cold calls upon prospective dealers who had never even heard of CLEAR. 

He conducted info and training meetings for the dealers, and helped convince us that we ought to jump on his coat tails and become CLEAR Dealers.  Many of us local dealers, became dealers because either Sam, or his handful of Account Reps, personally convinced us this was a viable risk to take at the time.

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Starting this month (August), CLEAR has apparently started to restrict the sale of fixed location Home Modems (4G only) and even some 4G USB or Personal Hotspots, depending upon your service address.  The following is just an opinion / conjecture on our part, based partially on factual statements made by CLEAR to us dealers,  conversation with other CLEAR Account Reps and Dealers in both San Antonio and Austin markets, and our actual hands on experiences this past week while trying to sell CLEAR in these two markets.

Sometimes growth causes growing pains.  Remember when Cell Phones first came to town?  Some areas were better covered than others, some areas you got “network busy” messages on frequent basis.  Over time, the cell phone companies expanded their systems, to the extent that now we have two of the major carriers (AT&T and Verizon) poking fingers at each other, claiming to have the best 3G Coverage.   Well, CLEAR has the best 4G coverage, in fact the only 4G coverage, and they are spending literally billions of dollars to expand and promote their network. In fact, in a recent release statement, parent company Clearwire execs reported they have reached 1.7 million actual subscribers already in the USA, and their expansion plans call to double the number of markets (cities) by the end of 2010.

First of all, we think part of the “problem” as we  perceive it, is that CLEAR has been such an over whelming success, that they’ve simply over sold in some areas of their market.  Too many  CLEAR customers on too few towers.  You might remember that I mentioned a while back, that CLEAR in San Antonio alone, had reached their 2010 December sales goal by the end of May 2010.   They started a major expansion effort in San Antonio, building new towers where they couldn’t find an existing tower to piggy back, and adding more receivers to existing towers where they need to support more clients.   All in all, we were told to expect about 120 new towers or enhanced tower sites around San Antonio using construction funds reserved for the last 6 months of 2010.   

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Those of you who have been regular subscribers to our website, were already aware that we’ve been working with a Texas based radio engineering firm to develop a “solution” regarding current CLEAR home modems that can’t accept a connection to an external antenna.

That status just changed for the better.  We’ve moved from theory, to proof of concept, to actual units in the field for testing, as of Sunday, July 11th.

We now have a solution for an external antenna / modem arrangement that is undergoing limited beta testing in San Antonio at select CLEAR customer sites, where their signal is less than to be desired, due to terrain and distance from the nearest CLEAR tower site.  We can’t create a signal out of thin air where there isn’t one, but we can enhance the receive signal where the signal is weak, in many cases, with our better antenna design and ability to mount it where can get a better signal.   If you are already getting 4 or 5 bars, or even just 3, on your home CLEAR 4G modem, you probably won’t be interested in what we’ve done.

Our solution won’t be the perfect one for everybody, but we think most of those who cough up the money for the conversion will be happy with the results. 

Our solution uses the same MAC address registered with CLEAR, and remains within the specs of the original FCC Type Acception.  We did not alter the existing specs regarding effective power output or range of temperature operation.  We’ve tested it up to 56 degrees Celsius (about133 degrees Fahrenheit), which is hotter than the original specs, and the modem kept on working, within FCC & manufacturer specs. 

We use some very expensive, sophisticated electronics radio gear to measure, test and adjust the built-in radio that is the modem, just to keep in specs and enhance performance. Every  conversion is tested by a certified radio engineer, prior to shipping or delivery back to the paying customer.  We only use, or convert, authorized CLEAR issued Motorola 4G WiMax modems, not a third party solution.  We provide before & after printed reports FROM THE M OTOROLA MODEM ITSELF, to let you compare the improvement in reception abilities after we have done our part.

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We just returned from a CLEAR Wimax Dealer’s briefing on the new 4G+ USB modem (4G/3G combo) that will be available in the San Antonio, Austin and nationwide markets effective July 1st.  We learned about the new modem that is Mac Compatible!  Yay!  My wife will be very happy as soon as she gets one of these, cause, as our readers are aware, my wife is a Mac Consultant  (www.MacAnswers.com).

This disc shaped USB modem can swivel 180 degrees, making it easier to fit more computer’s USB port configurations.   The swivel is metal, not plastic, which should help in both durablity and heat disipation.  But see that little cover on the right edge of this photo?  That’s for an external antenna connection. 

Yep, you can connect an external antenna for about $20 (according to Sierra Wireless Rep)  to increase your signal by about 50%.  

The Sierra Wireless Rep showed how she  velcroed her external antenna to the upper lid of her laptop, so when it was opened, the antenna would be sticking up in the air more.  One might even assume that you could connect to a really external antenna, stuck up higher in the air, over in a nearby window, or some other place where you can pull down a better / stronger signal.  At this time, we don’t know if the CLEAR dealers can sell those antennas with the modem, or if you will need to visit www.SierraWireless.com to purchase direct from them.

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CLEAR has announced they have  dropped the dreaded early termination fees (ETF) on some contracts, effective June 1, 2010.  If you subscribe to CLEAR under a new 2 year contract, and lease the equipment from them, there will not be an ETF applied to the account.  Rather, you will be charged a $40 per device “Restocking Fee” if you cancel before your contract expires.  Of course those who chose to buy equipment and go without a contract don’t have to worry about ETF at all.

Folks who buy Wimax Embedded Devices (i.e. laptops with built in wimax) will still face an ETF fee, as will anyone who buys the CLEAR equipment outright and still enters into a 2 year contract with CLEAR for service.

They have also modified the criteria for opting out of a contract, such as moving out of a coverage area, or being deployed in the military, so if you find yourself in such a pickle, please contact CLEAR’s Customer Care department direct to discuss your case with them.

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Nothing ever stays the same in the tech world, especially pricing.  But it was announced by CLEAR earlier this month that  CLEAR customers wanting to buy their own equipment from CLEAR, rather than leasing it under a 2 year contract, can now expect to pay higher prices.   CLEAR has reduced the subsidy amount they had been applying in the form of discounts at the time of purchase.  Of course if you go on contract, the up front cost is much much less.

Home modems are now running $84.95, while USB modems (depending on model) are running $59.99 – $69.99 each. 4G  Combo modems (i.e. 4G/3G USB modems) are running $224.99 (same price), but the new Mac compatible 4G+ modem is only $112.99 (available starting July 1st).

CLEAR slashed the price of their current CLEARSpot router (aka Cradlepoint’s PHS300 router) from $139.99 to only $49.99 (no lease or contract required), but you still need a CLEAR USB modem of  some sort to make it work on the 4G or 3G network.  We’ve used ours (paid a lot more for it) with both the 4G and 4G+ modem in the past few months.

CLEAR has announced some other changes also, so watch for more postings by us on this topic also.

We are now selling CLEAR services in the San Antonio and Austin Texas markets, including New Braunfels and San Marcos along the IH-35 corridor between the two cities.  Contact us if you are interested in getting CLEAR and we’ll bring it to your door!  Call us at 210-771-7075 or email us at lee@wimaxsatx.com with any questions.

Since the expansion of our marketing territory to include the Austin Metro area, plus San Marcos, New Braunfels and the San Antonio metro area, we find ourselves looking for outside sales reps to help us sell the services we represent in those areas.  

We only offer 100% commission based positions, with 1099 forms issued at the end of the year.  We pay monthly as CLEAR pays us, but we have some other options available as well that can offer faster payouts.  Reps are independent contractors who pay their own taxes, and set their own hours and working conditions.

Because we believe in feeding the golden goose, so to speak, we offer higher commissions than most of our competitors  to the sales force, keeping only a small fraction of the total payout by CLEAR.  For exact figures involved, you’ll need to contact us in person of course.

There is a movement recently within both CLEAR markets (San Antonio and Austin) to reduce the number of smaller volume dealers and concentrate on a fewer number of larger volume dealers instead.  It only makes good business sense for them to do this.   Therefore it is our goal to be one of those surviving higher volume dealers in both markets, and we recognize that we need more help to achieve that goal.

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