While there's certainly plenty to love about HTC's
EVO 4G, that 4G in the title is certainly one of the major draws. We're guessing it'll be a little easier to sell the things if customers can experience the wonders of WiMAX for themselves, so that's probably why RadioShack is (according to our tipster) installing these Clearwire WiMAX repeaters in at least some of its stores ahead of the
May 30 June 4 launch of the phone there. This will effectively turn The Shack into 4G hotspots and, while we're not sure of the range of these bad boys, this is a good thing even if it extends the reach of WiMAX just a few feet further into our lives. Another picture after the break.
Update: Oops, the phone is of course
launching on June 4. It's 4G that's going live in this tipster's home city on May 30.
[Thanks, Markus]
posted May 22nd 2010 8:14AM
This would be especially useful in cities where there is NO WIMAX! Like Boston and Ny(where i frequent).....speaking of NY...... ENGADGET SHOW TODAY!
@ComboBreaker Would a repeater do anything if there is no WiMAX to begin with? Honest question.
Also, while I'm sure you are thinking beyond Radio Shack doing this in the cities you mention, I'd venture a guess that if Radio Shack had 100 repeaters(random number) to go around they wouldn't be showcasing them (much?) in cities without WiMAX.
I guess a used the Caps Lock and "!" When i should have just used the well know "/sarcasm".... was more of a Wimax less rant from my city
@ComboBreaker
Both Boston and New York are sure to get 4G this year. For less a lot of other places, mainly the middle states, they could indeed make some use for this.Way to go RadioShack.
@juanvaldez
a repeater only repeats the signal if theres a signal to begin with.
this looks like an in-building repeater. therefore, don't expect it to work like a starbucks's wifi hotspot. this radioshack wimax installation will only amplify the signal while you are inside. as soon as you walk outside, you will loose signal and then you get coverage from the wimax outside.
@MegaJapan Why? So the system can be stressed to the brink? Sprint has shown no desire to put 4G into the largest cities yet.
Seems to me they want to test the system in mid to semi large cities so when they do install in cities like NYC and LA they don't get the type of problems that AT&T already has with 3G in those mega cities.
@PhaseDMA
Well, I live in NYC, and all I can say is that I'm happy that this huge city is confirmed to get 4G sometime this year. Therefore, WiMax on the EVO 4G is actually an important sell point for me.
@PhaseDMA It is in Chicago....that is the third largest city in the country...
@BobStewart oh, and it extends basically all the way out into the suburbs (for the most part).
@BobStewart You can't really compare NYC to Chicago. Chicago has a lot more land mass then most cities while NYC has a lot less land mass then most cities. Their also no where near the the same size.
To put this into perspective if you took the population of NYC and divided it by the population of LA +1 LA would become the 4th largest city. Chicago of course would become the 5th.
Beyond that if you crammed the same ratio of people in NYC's land area into Chicago's you would have enough "room" for 20 more cities the size of NYC.
Bottom line is that since everyone is spread out in Chicago they would be causing less stress on the system.
@ComboBreaker
yea according to the clearwire site the only 4g out west is in Vegas. WTF!
These Repeaters extend Base Station footprints, as well as bypass Line-Of-Sight obstacles. They provide better in-building coverage as well. Wimax Repeaters will be installed in many-many buildings.
@PhaseDMA
Chicago is the 3rd largest city in the U.S. and wimax is up and running there.
@P00kienrayray Way to not read anything he wrote and merely parrot BobStewart.
@ComboBreaker Its not the box that counts but what's on the inside. June 4 is not that long, I say patience. Super comparison. http://j.mp/4g-by-evo-amazing-matchup
@ComboBreaker
Actually, I find this move deceptive considering how few cities have 4G. People are going to love it in the store and hate it when they get "into the wild".
@PhaseDMA
Umm... no desire to place 4G in large cities? 4G is already in places Chicago (3rd largest city in the US) and Houston (4th largest city in the US) and a host of other places.
Perhaps you meant to say Sprint has no desire to place 4G in ?
I'll trade you my airave for one of these
@yankees368
I guess they put the RADIO back into Radio Shack.
Where does that leave The Shack? The WiMax Shack -- I don't think so. Fun though.
How much for one of these repeaters??
I'm afraid to ask...
@dark star Great idea! Makes a nice gift. :)
This is convenient if you don't live in an awesome city like Chicago.
I wish the UK had 4G goodness.
@weeman same. then we'd get some EVO love :(
3g EVO-like phone please HTC :)
@weeman We do...in Milton Keynes, Lincolnshire and near Crawley. Yeah, real big population centres there >_>
I think we're eventually going to skip Wimax and go straight for LTE in this country anyway - Sweden's TeliaSonera has LTE in Stockholm at the moment.
@r3loaded
Yeah, LTE is the way, no doubt about it.
More awesome news for 4G. This is nice cause I have a Shack down the block. :)
@zeroinfinity2 I'm in Orlando, FL so I'm not real sure about when we'll get 4g. However, I'm getting one of these regardless. A tech guy for Sprint at the Magic game said they'll be flippin' the switch soon. We'll see. This is a great way for Radio Shack to get people in their stores. Oh and the Magic need a win!
wierd that the US is so many years behind, we have had wimax for many years here in Denmark, it was introduced around the same time as 3G
@Techtrino
land mass my friend
@Techtrino
120 million people by years end. Not a bad roll out in 2 yrs. Everyone is saying the US is behind in tech...
What's the population or sq miles of denmark again?
@Sonic Death Monkey
Sure that is true, but we are only 5mill Danes, do you have Wimax in all larger US cities, did you even have 3G like 5 years ago?
All I am saying is that the US is like a developing country with regards to telecommunication, just look at the Iphone ;) Also in regards to social security, education and security etc, but thats for another discussion hehe
@HD2 I'm very sick of the landmass argument that completely ignores more relevant facts as to how things become economically feasible.
More important in this context is the very low population density of the U.S. (about 1/4 that of Denmark, which itself isn't very densely populated) and the lack of maturity in the U.S. mobile market.
@juanvaldez
How is a 3.5 million+ sq. mile land mass irrelevant when compared to Denmark's whopping 16k sq. miles? Well gosh - there must be at least 16 whole towers there! /s
That's not even Maine!
@juanvaldez
people always say that the US is behind countries like Japan in cellular technology, but they completely fail to take into account the factors involved. The US has just over twice the population (308 million vs. 127 million) but it is spread out over an area many times the size (3.7 million sq miles vs. 145k sq miles). The population in the US is spread out over the majority of the entire area with the exception of some mountain areas, while the population in Japan is the most densely concentrated in the world with 90% of the population living in less than 20% of that already small geographical area.
Denmark has a population of 5 million with a area of 16k sq miles. In comparison around 40 of the 50 states in the United States are at least double that size. California alone is 10 times the size of Denmark with a population of nearly 40 million.
The cellular carriers in the US would probably love to have the same number of subscribers and the same revenue they have now but only have to build networks that cover an area the size of Southern California. If you were to collect up all the cellular towers from the rest of the US and put them all in that small area you would probably have a personal cell tower in every yard.
The two things are not even close to being the same. The other countries that are anywhere near the size area wise as the US or larger have populations that are far more concentrated in select areas and have huge regions that have almost no population at all, or even large areas of the population living in non-developed regions that lack modern technologies like cellular
@Sonic Death Monkey
"How is a 3.5 million+ sq. mile land mass irrelevant when compared to Denmark's whopping 16k sq. miles?"
The land mass number is mostly irrelevant because the VAST majority of people in the US do in fact live near each other. The idea that we are spread out evenly across the nation is nonsense. It's an excuse to explain-away our god awful cellphone services here which are both behind the times, but also insanely expensive.
To blanket most Americans with great coverage you only would need to cover an area comparable to most any other industrialized nations. Go look at a population density map... heck, here is one right:
http://www.learnnc.org/lp/media/uploads/2010/02/usa-2000-population-density.gif
The population density of places like LA, NYC and Chicago is actually greater than in most other countries. The top 10 metro areas in the US represent almost 75% of the total countries population.
@Hazdaz
Even looking at your map and saying that shades of blue are areas as densely populated as Denmark, you are still going to be covering an area 100+ times the size of Denmark. The largest city in Denmark is 500k people. There are over 100 cities in the US with over 500k people. The 2nd largest city in Denmark is just over 200k people. The US has over 200 cities with 200k+ populations.
Lets see, what is the cost of providing two cites with 200k+ populations vs. providing service to 200+ cities with populations going all the way up to 20 million people like NYC which is four times the total population of Denmark entire nation all on it's own.
The US is NOT centered in NYC, Los Angeles and Chicago like you make it out to be. It is in Atlanta, Seattle, Jacksonville, Knoxville, Dallas, Cleveland, Philadelphia, etc..
@dennisheadley
I live in Aalborg, Denmarks fourth largest city, its around 350k people. Copenhagen (capital) is around 1mil.
Get your facts straight ;) But as you are properly American I am properly judging you to hard hehe
A fact is also that the US is not in any way as mature as e.g. Scandinavia. Not because its a larger country, because most of the population in the US is confined to mayor cities, but because of the communications cartels in the US and their political power. But then thats the US in a nutshell, just look at the attack in Iraq, all because large compaines have huge political power.
@Techtrino You know what's weirder? How Denmark is WAAAYYY behind in the cellular innovation department. When was the last time a major cellular innovation, as far as physical phones are concerned, came out of Denmark?...
Most of the innovation being done in the smartphone space today is coming out of California and Washington (whose combined populations are like 10 times that of Denmark's) IN THE GOOD OLD US OF A, with the a majority of the rest of the innovation coming out of South Korea... What a great time to be a cellphone enthusiast in the US! It seemed like just a few short years ago we here in the states were stuck waiting forever for the latest and greatest phones from Europe and Japan, only to get their sloppy seconds. My how our fortunes have changed, because for once we're the first to get all of the newest greatest smart phones, with the rest of the world (like Denmark) waiting for our sloppy seconds! Have fun waiting for your EVO like device. Turnabout is fair play!
@Techtrino
I'm sorry, my apologies. I was just using the population figures for Denmark, provided on the web. The official website for your city lists its own population at around 150k estimated 2010 population.
I'm not saying that we aren't behind technology wise to other places, I am just saying that the cellular providers have to invest 100's if not 1000's of dollars for every dollar invested in some of these other locations to bring the network up to comparable levels.
They can't just do NYC to the latest technologies and leave the rest of New York state untouched as people seem imply. Most metro areas in the US have a large portion of their working population commuting up to an hour out from the city to live.
Plus if you look at a Verizon coverage map, the US providers actually try to cover as much of the total land area as they can and are filling in the rest as time goes by. Because we as a country overall, are not concerned with 4G speeds as we are with never loosing a signal on our coast to coast vacation drive with stops at the Grand Canyon and Mount Rushmore.
People on these tech sites like to think that everyone has a 3G+ smartphone, but the truth is that the large majority of people in the US are carrying feature phones and cheap pre-paid handsets. Even with the fantastic growth of smartphone sales in the past year or two, I'd be willing to bet more pre-paid phones were sold through the Network providers and Walmart than the combined US smartphone sales last year.
@mikeriosisawhoredotcom
? what innovations have come from the US
The iphone is a copy/paste of different tech mostly from sweden and Finland, e.g. 3G and 4 ;) Multitouch was pioneered by a swedish company producing cellphones some 15 years ago. I believe you confuse plagiarism with originality, the only thing apple has is their design, which is gay hehe
I now I know that americans like their iphones, but in my part of the world they are considerd to be crap ;)
@dennisheadley
We also have a population that is almost 60X what the population of Denmark is... which means 60X the possible number of customers and 60X the amount of revenue and 60X the possible profit. Which could mean 60X the amount of money that could be spent on keeping the network up to date.
You get where this is going?
It is ALL about scale.
If a City has 2M people instead of 2K, you have 10X the number of customers which might mean you need 10X the number of cell towers. But truthfully you might only need 7X the number of cell towers to cover all those customers because a 2M city doesn't necessarily take up 10X the landmass area that a 2K does... it's just more densely populated. Economies of scale are in your favor with a large population, they don't work against you.
To put this in perspective, the largest metropolitan area in Denmark is around the city of Copenhagen - 3M people on 8,000 sq km of land. Then look at Metro Philly (which covers the Delaware Valley area) - 6M people over an area of only 13,000 sq km. So Metro Philly has 2X the number of customers (and thus revenue), but would only need about 1.6X the number of cell towers to service it. Dallas/Fort Worth Metro area has about 6.5M people over 24,000 sq ft. which means 2.2X the people on 3X the area. Less dense than Metro Copenhagen, no doubt, but not ridiculously so. Not enough to explain the discrepancy of service between the US and other countries. You have to look at Metro areas when talking about the US population, and like I mentioned above, you cover the top 10 and you cover 75% of the US population and those areas are about as dense as most other places in the world.
You are focusing on the sheer size of the US market as if it was a stumbling block, when the reality is that it is BENEFICIAL. You have that many more customers to pay for improvements to your network... instead these lazy phone carriers do the very least possible amount - which is why we are behind the times is cell technology (amongst other things).
@Hazdaz
AT&T has what 80+ million subscribers? But they provide coverage for enough area that has 250+ million population wise. Verizon provides coverage to enough area for almost 300 million population wise for a subscriber base of around 80+ million also.
When I listen to your explanation of the 75% of the population in 10 cities you are missing the point that 75% of the subscribers of each of these networks are NOT in those 10 metro areas. They are everywhere , coast to coast. There revenue comes from the 25k subscribers they have in a small Ohio town of 65k population. And the next 40k population city 15 miles up the road from that city, and the 55k city 20 miles up the interstate from that one.
You act like NYC population 20 million, gives these companies 20 million of their combined 160 million user base. When in fact they likely get a few million each at most and they compete with numerous other providers.
I'm asking because I do not know, but using Aalborg Denmark as our example, how many service providers are there offering 4G service in the city? Maybe it is my misinformed opinion derived from reading these tech sites but I get the impression that a lot of other countries have a one or two providers total for the whole country. If you have little or even no competition you don't have to spend huge amounts of money on advertising to try to get people to switch to your network.
Also you are pointing to urban areas as the main cost of the network, when I would think that the cell towers in low population areas and blanketing the extensive highway systems that are outside normal power grids and communication lines would be many times the expense and investment.
@Techtrino
Yeah, sorry not to bristle, but I think that if you look at the smart phone landscape you'll notice a paradigm shift. About five years ago most if not all of the innovation in the cellphone world was coming out of Espoo with Nokia and all of the phone companies making phones in Japan. With in the last 5 years we've seen it shift to the America's with companies like Apple, Google, Palm, Microsoft and as I mentioned above Samsung (a South Korean Company). Just a few short years ago phone specs mattered the most. The focus now has since changed since then, with mobile applications and the user experience as provided by the OS taking center stage. Innovating in UI with a new OS is INNOVATION, and this is where American companies have changed the way people the world over think of traditional cell phones, killing it along the way. Like it or not, a majority of all smart phones sold in the world moving forward will be rocking a OS innovated and developed in the US irregardless of what you or people think of "our" phones now or use them. The times are a changing... ;)
BTW, I'm not much of an Apple iPhone fan myself either...
@dennisheadley
You are making it sound like there is only ONE cell carrier in Denmark that gets ALL the business (and I realize that we are just using Denmark as an example, but it could be any similar country).
That is not the case.
They have 3 major carriers and a few much lower-end ones that split the market... doesn't that sound familiar to what it is here in the US? AT&T with Verizon dominate with second tier companies like Sprint and T-Mo.
And about the 10 major metro areas... Sure Verizon might be a little bigger in X market while AT&T might be bigger in Y market, but on average were 75% of the people live is in fact where about 75% of these cell customers are. Most of their customers aren't in the middle of nowhere.
Are there going to be rural people out in the backwoods of Montana or deserts of Nevada? Yeah, sure and it definitely will cost more to service those folks, but the entire state of Montana represents less than 0.3% of the total population of the US. It's not like these companies are blanketing the Death Valley or the Mojave desert or Yellowstone. They'll only put towers where there are people and people tend to congregate around other people just like they do everywhere else in the world.
The excuse that America is such a VAST country is BS when it comes to cell coverage because I don't expect to get coverage in some farm in Iowa, but I do expect (but sometimes don't get) coverage in an urban area - and even when I get coverage it's more expensive and slower service than in most other industrialized nations.
@Techtrino i
@ComboBreaker
4G is live and active in Boston... It's not official, but it is live...
lte wimax and i don't even get 3g at home or in my whole hometown.
that wimax in shops is certanly nice for a demonstration but information(date) when and if u can have wimax at ur hometown would be really great
What happened to the name change to 'The Shack'? I liked it.
There aren't a hell lot of Shack stores around my area, but just as said, it's good even if it can extend the coverage just a feet further =).