WiMax San Antonio TX

WiMaxSATX Booth & Radio Talk In

We love working local trade shows or community events, just to help out, and of course to get the added exposure (the good kind) with potential customers.  This event was no different.  We set up one of our smaller green CLEAR pop-up tents, a wind banner using the stand that didn’t need a hole in the ground, one of our SOHO outdoor modems (with a CLEAR Wi-Fi Home modem active), and a selection of CLEAR modems, brochures, etc.

This was the third year in a row we’ve worked this particular annual event, the San Antonio Radio Fiesta, which is for a gathering of Amateur (Ham) Radio Operators out in Schertz, Texas, at the Schertz City Civic Center on Saturday, January 14, 2012. 

In addition to the inside vendor area (sometimes called the flea market), there were activities happening in two other buildings on the complex as well.  Seminars and meetings on various topics were on going from early morning until mid afternoon, and a test session was held in the morning for potential new ham radio operators or for operators who wanted to upgrade the class of their license (technician, general, extra class).

We set up our booth in the back corner of the vendor area, so that we could run a coax cable out under the back door, across the hallway (taped down), and out the door into the parking lot where our van was parked.  Since I’m  a licensed ham radio operator (N5NTG), and member of the sponsoring ham club for the event, I’ve handled the radio talk-in station for more than 17 years now.  My son, David (KD5MTJ) was there helping me as well.  It sure is easier to work a long event like this if you have someone else present to watch the booth while you “run errands”, mingle with the crowd, or need someone else to take care of minor items. Â
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One of our newest clients is the general contractor for the (still under construction) $48m headquarters, to become the new City of San Antonio Public Safety Building in downtown San Antonio. Seven (7) stories tall, it poised a unique challenge for normal CLEAR 4G Wimax modem installation. The contractor is currently using CLEAR from it’s construction trailers down on the ground, but plans to move into the partially completed building later this month. When you figure on all that concrete & rebar in the walls, it’s a good bet that your reception for CLEAR’s wireless signal will be zilch!

So we got a call, asking if Clearly WiMax Solutions was up to the challenge.

We met with the client on site, studied the situation and learned the restrictions we would be operating under. We put our thinking caps together, figured out a way to bypass the restriction of “don’t drill any holes in our new roof to mount your antennas”, get power up to the roof 8 stories above the ground (normal POE won’t do it), and get the data connections run thru their established & approved electrical conduits down to the ground level and over to their temp construction offices inside the building. Oh, did we mention needing to meet all of their construction site safety standards, electrical codes, and not drilling any new holes?

 We constructed a portable, moveable platform with a tripod mount bolted to a wooden pallet, added weight in the form of concrete blocks, strapped it all together to make it sturdy enough to withstand the lifting by the construction crane and the wind load while sitting on the metal roof.

The construction crane lifted the secured platform off the back of our pickup truck down on ground level, and sat it on top of the roof as shown. Our engineer then completed the connections to the wiring that had been pre-installed by us a few days before.

We used our PRO Enclosures with a pair of new CLEAR 4G WiMax modems (specs called for 2 modems). We ran the cabling down thru the designated conduits, floor, by floor, by floor, down to the ground level electrical room, then horizontally across to the soon to be new construction offices.
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Our readers are used to hearing about our Apollo Antenna Kits, but now we also have the actual Apollo Clearspots in stock as well.  We only have limited quantities on hand, but our CLEAR distributor has promised to keep feeding us with inventory.

WiMaxSATX is now authorized to sell / activate CLEAR modems / services in every CLEAR market inside the USA, so if you have been looking for these somewhat hard to find items, please contact us via email.  Due to the small quantities in inventory, we’re not putting up a “buy now” button for the actual Clearspot. 

Our price is $115, with FREE USPS Priority Mail shipping included. Texas residents will be charged sales tax. Activation not included, since that’s being charged thru CLEAR’s system.

We can handle the Activation as well, and since these are hard to get, and profit margins so slim, we’re only willing to sell those units that we get to activate as well. CLEAR’s Plans are $49.99/month.

Call  210-771-7075 (7 days/week, 9am-9pm CT) or email us to find out our current inventory status before you send us any money.  We will send you a PayPal invoice for the correct amount and ship same or next day upon receiving payment, depending upon the USPS pickup schedules.

Just learned today, that CLEAR has made some “adjustments” to their pricing plan, which had last been changed effective November 1, 2011.  

Starting Friday, January 6, 2012, the “cheap & slow” access plan is back, at $34.99/month service fee, capped speeds of 1.5mbps download and 0.5mbps upload, about what you might get on the standard / cheaper DSL plans, or Road Runner’s Lite plan.  Usage is still unlimited, but speeds are capped down to “tortoise speeds”.  (Our characterization, not CLEAR’s.)

And the $50 plan gets a price reduction as well.   It’s now only $49.99, saving you 1 cent per month, compared to those who signed up since November 1st.  What will you do with that extra $0.12/year of savings?  Hmm, possibilities are endless, err limited….
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For those of us looking forward to the possibility of a 4G LTE HTC EVO, our dream just got a little closer.

Sprint just announced via Twitter the first four markets that will be getting LTE: Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio.

Note: Got this story today from my favorite website covering the HTC EVO line of products, www.goodandevo.net.  I just wanted to share the news, but the credit & copyright for this article goes to them!  Author was John Freml.  Thanks for sharing, John!

Additionally, these are the first four markets that will be getting complete 3G network upgrades: Presumably, Sprint means that these are the first four markets that will be completely converted to those multi-modal base stations that Sprint mentioned back in October. If you recall, these stations will broadcast CDMA over both 1900 and 800Mhz frequencies, and will also include LTE antennas, all at the same station.

This announcement also comes just days after Sprint announced that it had successfully completed LTE testing in Kankakee, Illinois, in addition to a slew of network capacity upgrades across the nation.

So what do you make of this latest announcement?  Visit   John’s article here to post your comments, or to read comments posted by other readers of G&E’s website.

Another happy email from our inbox, this time from San Francisco, California!  We’re supplying you with a copy of his “after action report” and his initial inquiry, just to show the challenges he faced in getting a good CLEAR signal at his location.

One recent change, since his needs were addressed, has been CLEAR now allows us to activate new CLEAR modems anywhere CLEAR has service!  Yay, CLEAR! 

This has shortened the time spent on activation by new customers down to about 15 minutes…  No more waiting on hold…

Here is his “after action report”….

From:  Alex Milowski
Sent: Saturday, December 17, 2011
To: Ron Clearly
Subject: Outdoor Antenna!

I just wanted to let you know that the outdoor router/antenna for Clear arrived and I had it up and running in a handful of hours (most of it waiting for it to be activated).  It is now mounted on my roof and I’m getting a great signal.  My download speed ranges from 9-12Mbps here in San Francisco.

If you have a site on which you’d like a review of your services, please let me know.  …it will be glowing!

Thanks!
–Alex Milowski

and here is his intial inquiry…
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We love to get letters from customers like this one..

This particular client is north of New Braunfels, Texas, really close to our base of operations in Texas.  They design and manufacture billboard signs.  That means they needed to transfer very large images from customers, and do webinar training or conferences.   They were too far out for the local cable or DSL service, and had been using a well known Satellite ISP just to get by.

So when the client contacted us back in November for a solution, we handled it all in person, installation as well, instead of just shipping them a modem and letting them do their own installation.  Turns out, their building was behind a ridge line that blocked direct line of sight back to the nearest CLEAR tower, but they could get a bounced MIMO signal with about 5mbps download speeds at their building using our outdoor modem solution.  But when Ron, our RF engineer who is the genius behind our designs, went up there in person, he discovered that the ridgline was owned by the same propery owner as where the client’s building was.  So he drove up to the top of the ridge, ran a test using the external modem attached to the toolbox on his truck, and pulled a sweet 12mbps down!

So the solution became, install the CLEAR modem in our external enclosure up on the ridgeline where power was able to be run, then use an encrypted RF point to point 5.8ghz link back down the hill 600′ to the customer’s building!   Not as cheap our our standard solution of just “sticking it in the air”, but it sure beat the socks off that initial 5mbps speed…

Here is what the client said to us….
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We’ve been selling the Apollo Antenna Kit out the door about as fast as you can click the button on the right to order one. Depending upon the time of day we see your order, we either ship same or next business day, so keep those orders flowing!  Just shipped one to Virginia, getting ready to deliver a couple of local orders between now and the weekend.

Either click the “buy now” button shown under the photo in the top right corner of this website, or contact us via email and we can send you a PayPal invoice to complete your order!

Thanks for a great 2011 year, and for starting our 2012 year off with such a great start!  

Lee Besing
WiMaxSATX.com
210-771-7075 (cell – voice/text)

We’ve been informed by a couple of new clients who purchased out Outdoor Modem solution for their construction sites (one in Texas, one in Illinois), that CLEAR is no longer offering their Motorola Outdoor Modem solution that they had previously been selling for around $500 plus installation, etc., only to business accounts.  

Apparently when CLEAR dropped the distinction between Consumer Accounts and Business Accounts, they also made some changes to simplify what equipment / services were being offered for sale.  

External CLEAR modem mounted on a pole, for temp / portable use

We already had reported on this around the end of October, that there were no more static IP addresses available, no more voice over IP (VOIP) telephone services being offered, no more 4G/3G devices /services are being sold, no more email addresses at @clear.net available, and no more electronic FAX service. 

Existing business clients are grandfathered in their plans, but can’t add on any new services at their old rates.   If a client has 2 modems in service at a combo price, and wants to add a third modem, well that third modem wil be $50/month.  The old plan remains the same.   If they have a static IP, they can update their device to a newer one, or replace a device if it failed, but not change their plan.

So if you find yourself in a situation where an outdoor modem to get a useable signal strength is required, please contact us to discuss your situation.  We think outside the box, and we’re used to RF problems / challenges because the guy who designed our products is a licensed RF engineer with 40+ years of microwave & LMG (land mobile) radio experience, including working on CLEAR’s networks back in 2010 as a contract engineer.

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Due to higher than expected demand for this product, we were temporarilly out of stock until we had received new shipments of  components to assemble.  Those arrived just after Thanksgiving, so we’ve finished a production run and now have antennas ready to ship out on a first come, first serve basis.   We’ve also ramped up our inventory orders to try and prevent this occurance from happening again.  We apologize for the inconvenience that a few of you had to endure, waiting until after Thanksgiving to get your orders shipped, but that problem has been resolved.

If you were waiting to order because of our delay, please feel free to contact us via email at lee@wimaxsatx.com with your order.  We do use PayPal’s invoicing system, so we need to know what email address to use for invoicing, and what your shipping address info will be.