Clearwire, the wireless internet broadband company founded and ran by cellular pioneer Craig McCaw, has joined AOL to provide an AOL-branded high-speed internet service (powered by Clearwire). As many of us know, a problem that AOL has had has been the inability to have high-speed internet available as its dial-up customer base fades away. While many other companies started providing high-speed internet years ago, AOL sort of missed that boat and they are now trying to make up for it.The good news is that Clearwire is a perfect partner for them. The technology is wireless (read: faster deployment and lower costs), the cost is excellent ($25.90 per month) and the speeds, while not disclosed in this story, range from 768kbps to 1.5mbps.
1. The interesting question is how this might hurt Clearwire. As a long time internet uesr, I want my internet unfettered. I want my internet provider to provide me with a bare pipe, and ideally provide me with a list of name servers, but very little else. I definitely do not want TCP Port filtering going on, as I want to be able to run whatever protocol I'm working on in a development stage, and not worry about them blocking it.
AOL's perception for me is that they are the kid friendly ISP, that does the parenting for lazy parents. The way they do that may be by limiting access to networks or protocols.
I've got a tech savy friend who's been on clear wire for a while now, and he likes it. If he was told he'd be going through AOL, I'm sure he'd have spent more time figuring out if it was right for him.
Posted at 4:26PM on May 10th 2006 by Wim Bonner