The New Clearwire Taking Orders in Portland, Ore.

It’s no secret that Portland had WiMax service: It’s just that you couldn’t buy it. Intel has been WiMax with Clearwire for many months—it may be nearly 18 months now, if I recall correctly. Intel employees have been walking around the city and their campus in Beaverton with WiMax cards in their laptops, and not allowed to talk about it.

Thus, it’s no surprise that the first market for Clear, the new brand for the combined Clearwire/Sprint Xohm operations, is Portland. I just qualified an address there of a friend, and find that the service can be ordered for the home with prices from $20/mo for 768 Kbps/128 Kbps to $40/mo for 6 Mbps/512 Kbps. Mobile prices are all rated for 4 Mbps/384 Kbps with monthly data limits: $30/mo for 200 MB, $40/mo for 2 GB, $50/mo for unlimited.

There’s also a $35 activation fee, and a modem fee: $175 or $5 per month. This is far higher than Sprint’s subsidized $50 modem deal with Xohm. Expect that to be harmonized.

Note that Clearwire suggests you read their Terms of Service for more details. As far as I can tell, unlimited isn’t footnoted with a 5 GB or other limit. They will still obviously check for abuse, and the low upstream rates make it both difficult to run services and painfully clear if you are.

The upstream speeds are still far too slow. WiMax can be configured to allow relatively symmetric upstream rates, and I expect we’ll see more of that as an option as Clearwire learns usage patterns.

The ordering process doesn’t suggest that you have to wait, while Clearwire was saying yesterday that Portland service would be available in 2009. This might be noted when you consummate the order.

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