Commentary

J. Nicholas Hoover
Senior Editor, InformationWeek  

Help Me Decide: WiMax Or Comcast?

When I signed up for Sprint's new Xohm WiMax service two weeks ago, I thought it might just end up being a short-term test. Now, however, I'm debating dropping Comcast as my ISP, and I want your help.

When I signed up for Sprint's new Xohm WiMax service two weeks ago, I thought it might just end up being a short-term test. Now, however, I'm debating dropping Comcast as my ISP, and I want your help.I'll list out the pros and cons of each service.

Comcast Pros 1. Speed. Comcast is blazing fast. Speed tests show throughput higher than I'm even willing to believe, at 31.1 Mbps download and 2.6 Mbps upload. Downloads are burstable, so that might be the reason I'm getting such fast speeds. 2. Combined billing. Since I also subscribe to Comcast cable television, I get both my cable and Internet bills on one page. Likewise, that combo gives me a $14.95 monthly credit on my overall service. Cons 1. Reliability. I don't know why, but Comcast has been incredibly unreliable recently. In the past month, I called tech support nearly a dozen times and had to have technicians come to my house four times. The connection has been erratic at best, both for television and Internet. 2. Lack of mobility. Comcast is, of course, a strictly fixed Internet connection. I have a wireless router, but, of course, that only works within a certain radius. Frankly, Wi-Fi doesn't work well even in my living room, several rooms and a floor away from my office, which houses the router and my work computer.


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Sprint Xohm Pros 1. Speed. At an average of 3.4 Mbps download and 1.2 Mbps upload with the fixed modem in my house and somewhere around that with the ExpressCard, I can't complain. Video, VoIP, downloads and normal Web browsing all work well. 2. Mobility. It used to be that I could only go to a few coffee shops and Dunkin Donuts to work if I wanted to be out of my house. Now, if I were to choose to do so, I could work or otherwise browse the Web anywhere in the city, and when my wife and I have kids, we could stream movies to the backseat of the car. 3. Support. When I call tech support (I've done it several times to try and measure response), I get a human being on the line, and about half the time someone who actually seems to know something about wireless networks. Color me impressed, but the true measure of this might come as more cities get service and more subscribers sign up. Con 1. Mobile coverage and mobile reliability. Driving around the city, my connection dropped repeatedly and had trouble locking back onto a signal. Baltimore is the only city in the country with WiMax as of now. Though an employee manning a local mall kiosk said D.C. would come online by early November and though several other cities should be up and running soon, I'll likely have to wait a while before Xohm works everywhere I travel.

One thing I don't have listed above is price. That's because it's a mixed bag for both services. Comcast costs me $52.95 monthly for Internet service and another $3 for modem rental, plus about a dollar in related taxes and fees, minus a temporary $5 promo discount (the discount is a total of $15, but I calculate the rest goes to cable) since I have both cable and Internet service. So that's about $52 in recurring costs and something like $50 up front for installation.

With Xohm, I pay a total of $50 for life with no other fees for service through both my modem and ExpressCard, and there are few if any restrictions on mobile access. That's ridiculously cheap if you compare it to Verizon, which charges $59.99 monthly for slower EV-DO service and institutes a 5-Gbyte cap. However, I had to buy the WiMax hardware, which set me back $146.28, and if I want to upgrade to multimodal service (3G and 4G in one) later, I'll have to buy additional hardware and will likely incur additional monthly costs.

So, what do you think I should do?


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