The hype around mobile WiMax has been deafening for years, but the technology will at long last hit the U.S. marketplace later this year, with service starting up from Clearwire and Sprint Nextel, and major metropolitan markets rolling out through 2008 and 2009. I had a chance to test Clearwire’s first portable product for its pre-WiMax flavor of network–a PC Card that works with Windows–and was impressed seeing speeds from wireless broadband I’d never encountered outside of fixed Wi-Fi hotspots. But a little background first.

Mobile WiMax will be relatively cheap for the two carriers to deploy, or so they say, and with huge swaths of licensed spectrum they mostly bought inexpensively in the 2.5 gigahertz band, they can offer service that might peak at 8 to 15 Mbps in fixed (static locations), nomadic (not-in-motion locations that can vary over time), and truly mobile access (at car/rail speeds). Mobile WiMax can reach dozens of miles with lower speeds and cover huge areas with its highest speeds.

Compared to Wi-Fi, WiMax is often described as “covering more area,” but what’s really meant is that fewer base stations are required to provide rated speeds. Wi-Fi might be able to deliver 50 to 100 Mbps with the new 802.11n flavor, and even 802.11g can push out 20 to 25 Mbps. But it can only do so over small areas. You can cover large areas with Wi-Fi, but that requires either lots of access points or high-power nodes broadcasting the legal maximums or both.

And Wi-Fi networks that operate as at a point, across an area, or across a city typically deliver whatever the limited Internet backhaul is that they’re hooked to, or a smaller number for larger networks. A well-run hotspot might offer 1.5 Mbps downstream shared among all users, while a WiMax coverage area might be able to deliver several Mbps in each set of available frequencies across all users.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Until WiMax appears outside of testing areas around the Beaverton, Ore., headquarters of major backer Intel, we have Clearwire’s Expedience service, a pre-WiMax offering developed by a former division of the company. (That division was spun out to Motorola as part of a massive Intel/Motorola investment in Clearwire.) Expedience has some elements in common with mobile WiMax; Expedience can’t deliver all the parameters of range, speed, and robustness.

Clearwire has offered AC-tethered customer premises equipment (CPE) devices which work like wired broadband modems since they commenced service in 2004, but they haven’t had any truly mobile offering until this last month. Sure, you could use an inverter or a DC adapter and use the Clearwire modem on the road, but that’s hardly the same thing. In October, the firm unveiled a PC Card that works with Windows XP and Vista, and that promises rates as high as 1.5 Mbps downstream and 256 Kbps upstream. (Their home offering is either 1.5 Mbps or 2 Mbps with 256 Kbps upstream in both cases.)

Clearwire also has limited coverage areas. While they claim now to own spectrum licenses that would allow them to cover 450 million people, they currently cover 15 million in pockets around the world; they don’t break out U.S. coverage separately from their international deployments in Ireland, Spain, and elsewhere. My home in Seattle is in the middle of one of their largest contiguous deployments in the world, however.

I tested the PC Card around Seattle by itself and with an optional booster antenna that’s easy to attach and detach. With the booster attached, I saw speeds using typical online speed tests of 1.6 Mbps to 1.7 Mbps, even while in motion at speeds of 20 to 30 mph. Both the speed and the mobility exceed Clearwire’s promise for the service. Without the external antenna–which is included at no extra cost–rates dropped below 1.5 Mbps.

I’ve tested cellular data services around Seattle over the last few years, and never seen rates this high–even peak rates during sustained transfers tend to be more at 1 Mbps than above 1.5 Mbps. (I haven’t tested the newer EVDO Rev. A offering from Sprint and Verizon which promises 2 Mbps and higher peak rates, but averages below 1 Mbps.)

I was surprised to see the signal maintained while driving. Clearwire doesn’t advertise this as mobile, and experts I know call this a nomadic offering. But the connection appeared to be maintained and operating even at arterial driving speeds.

I suppose the only real flaw with the simply named Clearwire PC Card–no highfaluting 10-word product names for them, thank you–is the cost. While prices vary among areas served by Clearwire, in Seattle they charge based on commitment, like cell companies.

• With no commitment, you must purchase the card ($230), pay a $100 activation fee, and pay $80 per month for service.
• With a 1-year commitment, you can purchase ($230) or lease ($7 per month) the card, pay a $50 activation fee, and get a $75 Visa gift card; service is $60 per month.
• With a 2-year commitment, you can purchase or lease the card, but there’s no activation fee, and you get the $75 gift card; service is $60 per month.

(If you’re looking for home and roaming coverage, Clearwire is bundling their 2 Mbps premium home service with the PC Card service. The rate is normally $45 per month for the home service and $60 for the PC Card service; combined, you pay $95 per month with a total of $45 off the monthly fee across the first three months.)

These prices are inline with the much slower but much more ubiquitous third-generation (3G) networks offered by AT&T, Sprint Nextel, and Verizon. (T-Mobile is only up to 2.5G with EDGE nationwide.) The dirty little secret of the three 3G providers is that they don’t offer universal 3G coverage, even in cities they cover. They try, but they have 2G and 2.5G speeds as a fallback. AT&T hasn’t yet fully built out major cities with its fastest 3G offering, either.

Clearwire by contrast offers its fast rates in many parts of the U.S. and internationally where there’s little or no 3G, where broadband is scarce, and dial-up can sometimes not even hit its maximum rate. Even in Seattle, we have large pockets and regions where you can’t get decent wired coverage, and cell carriers have chosen not to focus or improve service because they’re not interested in indoor, residential users, as Clearwire is.

Anyone considering the PC Card offering has to check whether they can get coverage where they need it, and whether using Wi-Fi as a backup when traveling outside of covered areas can work for them. For many business travellers who spend most of their time as “windshield warriors,” this should work just fine. Wi-Fi in airports, coffeeshops, and hotels can fill in gaps. (Clearwire had a deal in the works with Sprint Nextel that would have allowed the two networks to not just build out complementary areas with WiMax, but also allow Clearwire to resell 3G access to Sprint’s network using a hybrid 3G/WiMax adapter. That deal is now dead, but could be revived later.)

On the broader front, Clearwire makes three promises for this card: easy installation, high speeds, and low latency. Let’s take those one at a time.

• Easy installation. By gum, they’re right. This was the easier process to install a PC Card under Windows I’ve ever seen. I didn’t even have to reboot the computer. A System Tray and monitoring program both provide clear indicators for signal strength. To attach the external antenna, I simply needed to disable the service, attach the antenna, and re-enable. The monitoring software even changed its picture to show the antenna attached.
• High speeds. In my testing, this turned out to be true–and I saw rates many times that exceeded the maximum rate they list for the service.
• Low latency. Bandwidth is a measure of how big the pipe is; latency is the measure of how long it takes when you turn on the tap for water to start coming out. Latency is the enemy of two-way real-time communications over voice and video; and it makes the Internet seem sluggish even when there’s a lot of bandwidth available. Count one, two, three before clicking a link on a Web page, and pretend that’s high latency: makes the world feel a big bigger and slower, doesn’t it? In my testing, I didn’t spot any obvious poor or superb latency; it’s easy to see when using VoIP.

Now clearly, the Clearwire PC Card lives up to its fairly modest promises. It would be nice if there were a financial incentive, but Clearwire doesn’t need to price itself low yet. As WiMax rolls out, and Intel starts putting WiMax chips into laptops, obviating the cost of the card, it’ll be interesting to see whether prices drop and speeds climb up. If so, WiMax might be a hit.

For now, pre-WiMax is all we have, and it turns out to be plenty good enough for the right kind of user: someone who needs high speeds predictably–not just where Wi-Fi hotspots with good backhaul exist–across a region that’s covered.