Clearwire's Clear Spot portable WiMAX / WiFi router now official, coming early April

Good news for those who happened to live in Portland -- and elsewhere in the years to come. Clearwire's announced that the CradlePoint-manufactured portable WiMAX-equipped WiFi router we saw back in January will be hitting stores in early April as the Clear Spot Personal Hotspot. Up to eight 802.11 b/g-compatible devices will be able to share the 4Mbps bandwidth. Price is $139 for the unit, but of course you'll have to pay The Man beyond that to actually use the service. The company promises more devices like this in the coming months.

[L4M3 @ Mar 31st 2009 8:36PM]

so this opens up the possibility of a wimax ipod touch/iphone since it converts wimax signal into wi-fi...how interesting

[Jon Nelson @ Mar 31st 2009 8:40PM]

I think I'd be much more apt to buy this instead of a wireless dongle or a PCMCIA card or anything like that.

[a ham sandwich @ Mar 31st 2009 8:46PM]

yeah its weird. its sort of like a wireless "converter". one frequency to another. kinda. eh. maybe not.

still, it could be cool as long as they dont charge through the roof for it. which they will...

[KHMI @ Mar 31st 2009 9:45PM]

Sprint should also get devices like this in the near future. WiMAX is going to smash LTE in the ground with a pink napkin.

[MCM5555 @ Apr 3rd 2009 9:22AM]

I agree, I'm very excited for this but have read a lot about how LTE is going to dominate Wimax. So just curious, why do you think wimax will crush LTE? I assume LTE will have similar products eventually?

[Shank @ Mar 31st 2009 10:54PM]

This $139,. iPhone as low as $99.hmmmh what to buy.,.,,?

[kuade @ Mar 31st 2009 11:01PM]

your a looser, what made you bring up an iPhone?

[CT A @ Mar 31st 2009 10:59PM]

Like I wrote, What's your point? Both products are not even in the same market you troll.

[Shank @ Mar 31st 2009 10:24PM]

Cost more than iPhone ,.!!!!

[CT A @ Mar 31st 2009 10:43PM]

What's your point?

[kuade @ Mar 31st 2009 11:01PM]

my clearwire cost $29.99/month. what does your cell service cost? Don't answer, because it is more.... get a life, go tell your mom how cool you are because you have an iPhone.

[Shank @ Mar 31st 2009 10:32PM]

I got a serious question. Is anyone able to post engadget comments thru 3g only , say from a cell,.???

[Lazarpandar @ Mar 31st 2009 10:54PM]

Are you sure that was serious?

[danimaldan @ Apr 1st 2009 12:08AM]

lol, wow this is getting annoying. For some reason an iphone gets in every conversation and another comment that gets in a lot of conversations is "will it play crysis?" It was funny the first few times but now it is stupid.

[Cash @ Apr 1st 2009 12:26AM]

What is all this "Portland" talk? We've had Clearwire service in Alaska for close to 5 years now, and AT&T just launched their competing WiMax service 6 months ago. Are you saying that something that is old hat here in the frozen north is a big deal down in the lower 48?

Scary.

[skottles @ Apr 1st 2009 1:50AM]

clearwire and clear are 2 separate things. Portland (and baltimore) is the test city for Clear's wimax. Check out clear.com for more info.

[Greg @ Apr 1st 2009 1:57AM]

If only... if only it was a service offered in a major market that could actually allow them to grow... maybe this news would be worth something.

[Nerd Ferguson @ Apr 1st 2009 7:47AM]

I'd love to have this.

[Hackettman @ Apr 1st 2009 11:02AM]

So it converts Clearwires WiMax signal to a local wifi signal for 8 local devices?

[mere @ Apr 1st 2009 11:33AM]

April fools?

[Justin @ Apr 1st 2009 6:28PM]

Nice this is awesome!

[FILA @ Apr 1st 2009 7:34PM]

500kbps, wowwwww

[Jason Goldberg @ Apr 6th 2009 8:00PM]

I picked one up last last week, and while it works exactly as promised, it's kinda lame that it uses a proprietary power connector, and they they intentionally disabled the Clear version from working with non-clear modems. See my review here: http://retailgeek.com/2009/04/06/clear-spot-from-clear-not-so-great/