San Francisco, San Jose, Fremont and a whole slew of other cities can now get Sprint Fixed Wireless Broadband. They used to sell this, then changed their mind, and now have changed their mind again. Other cities include Chicago, Phoenix, Houston, Oklahoma City, Salt Lake City, Denver and Detroit. I am surprised they re-introduced this service, given the problems many of their users had back in the day. I hope it is an easier install process.
They say, you need to have access to roof in order to install the gear. I wonder if the balcony is good enough? Get 512-to-1.5 mbps for $49.95 a month. Too expensive, ain’t it? I am not sure if it is worth the price to switch from cable broadband which is now hitting the 6 megabits per second consistently. The business service is $199 a month. Still how can you resist a sales pitch that says: “Dedicated USA Based Customer Service & Technical Support.” I wonder when the good folks at TowerStream will unwire me with their fixed wireless….
Amazing! I was the first network engineer hired into that project back in late 1999. It was a great product, when it worked, but we had trucks out there putting 30′ masts on the sides of people’s houses. Wow.
Still, downstreams were up to 6Mbps at the time, which was pretty good compared to dial-up and DSL. The real killer was round-trip time, though. They’re using a different architecture, so I suspect that problem is solved; the lower throughput is due to the fact that they had to solve that 30′ mast problem.
Anyway, the product had died out, all the engineers left (me) or were laid off (most of my friends), and the thing went into hibernation. Good to see it back; it fills a really interesting niche in some markets.
Then again, if you spent $1B on spectrum, you’d probably find a way to make it work too.
Some of my neighbors used this in the bay area and had regular QOS problems. The connections would frequently drop out entirely, killing any real-time apps, such as streaming, online gaming, etc. The service seemed to be really flaky back then (~2000/2001), with nowhere near 6mbps downstream.
Closed Networks is currently offering fixed wireless broadband in Philadelphia for $20/month. “Up to 7mbps”, but they predict typical speeds more like 1.5-2. But bandwidth is split between upload & download, meaning you can actually upload faster than with most broadband carriers who cap upload speeds. They’re doing a site survey for me next week and i am considering switching from my fast but expensive comcast cable broadband.
We have used Sprint Broadband for approx. five years in Tucson with absolutely no problems. Then a couple of months ago it all went to pieces. We can’t even open a simple website like USATODAY.COM without our browser timing out.
Sprint Customer service today acknowledged a problem with their transceiver in Tucson. They have been working on it since “before July”, with no estimated time to completely fix problem.
There software team is working on it. I have received a credit for this months charges and now starting to look at another ISP.
Buyer beware!
OMG! I am ready to scream. Sprint has been on the blink since mid-July. I’ve called customer service and all they can tell me is that 1.) they’re working on the problem and 2.) they have no idea when it will be fixed.
I asked for and got one month’s credit but will call tomorrow and request another month’s credit because of so much down time.
I’m unable to log into any of my email accounts and trying to get anywhere online is a real pain. Last night I tried for 4 hours to log onto a site with no luck. I tried again this morning and still no luck.
I’m calling other service providers tomorrow and will drop Sprint as soon as I find one that suits my needs.
I’ll echo what Mark said: Buyer Beware!!!!