Best Buy to offer Mobile Broadband Internet Service around Washington, D.C.
July 30, 2010 1 Comment
Best Buy has gone after the mobile, the app space, devices and music, and now 4G wireless broadband services.
The company has agreed to resell Clearwire’s 4G WiMAX wireless broadband service. The retailer will offer Clearwire’s 4G network services through its Best Buy Connect LLC subsidiary starting in 2011 in dozens of cities.
To date, Clearwire’s service — which launched in parts of DC last month, has been sold via its group of deep-pocketed investors. That group includes Sprint Nextel, Comcast, Time Warner, Google, Intel, and Bright House Networks.
Clearwire has said it will cover at least 120 million people in the United States by then.
I wonder Best Buy heard the News last month when Sprint announced the change in their strategy to consider LTE over WiMAX. Does anyone knows how that will fit into the equation? Does it matter?
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About Elias Shams
Elias Shams
Kamran Abdi
Tatiana Sorabi
It’s honestly not that bad of a service if you need a basic connection and you’re looking at this for your resident service or you are on the road locally. But just like any tool you have to know when to use something like this; and more imoprtantly when not to.
It’s WiMAX service and not satellite so you’ew not getting the issues associated with satellite service (line of sight, bad weather, etc…) but yoou get the mobility. That’s about where the positives end with their service.
Issue 1. Keep in mind that this is a “best effort” product like cable/DSL or even FiOS. So you’re not getting the guarantees of uptime or bandwidth delivery like you get with T1 and EFM service.
Issue 2. You have to buy the equipment which isn’t all that cheap. With Cable/DSL/FiOS, the carriers normally throw that in for free or at most charge you a minimal fee. Even some national provider of WiMAX service will give away their “Air Cards” as a promo.
Issue 3. If you’re in a building you’ll have less to no bandwidth at all. Plus this service is only regionally available; does not have full national coverage yet (Central PA just got turned up this month). So if you’re loooking to have a WiMAX service because you’re on the road from city to city and even going from state to state, keep in mind that you may end up in a place that doesn’t have it.
Overall, this tool has a very fine niche that it fits. If you need low cost bandwidth w/o the guarantees of uptime or delivery to your office…you’re better off looking at DSL, cable, or FiOS. If dialup and satellite are you only optons then I would say to try it out.
Now if you need the mobility aspect of this service, especially when traveling regionally or even nationally, check out one of the big three in wireless for their “air card” service because carriers like Verizon Wireless, AT&T and Sprint provide the same service ona broader range of coverage…and the cost is comparative on the service and hardware.
Where I see this service fitting is areas where DSL/Cable/FiOS isn’t available or in a local campus envirronment (say college markets) in areas that are covered.