So, I’m looking at my bill from Suddenlink, and see that I’m paying about $57.00 a month after fees and taxes for my 8 Mbs x 512 Mbs internet service. I’ve had Suddenlink (previously Cox) since the service was offered here in Pflugerville. The service has been pretty reliable, but it does tend to get slow in the evenings. I recently changed my DNS servers to openDNS, as lately, I could not get the Suddenlink  servers to get me to where I wanted to go. This was happening every single night around 7 or 8 pm.

My options here are Suddenlink or AT&T DSL service. Since pricing is about the same for comparable speeds, I’ve stuck with Suddenlink, since it’s never really given me any major problems. Now comes WiMAX from CLEAR as a third option. I can honestly say, that if I can get the advertised speeds in this location, and it is fairly stable, I might think about ditching Suddenlink. When I say, “might”, I mean I must have a stable connection that has decent speeds, but also has low latency and jitter to go along with that. That’s because my phones are VoIP, running off an in house Asterisk server. With Suddenlink, I have not had any phone issues that could be blamed on my internet service.

So here’s the economic side to this story. I can get CLEAR WiMAX for my home, AND get mobile service for my laptop for only $55 per month for life. That’s home internet service, and the ability to connect to the internet anywhere within the Austin Metro area from my laptop. Now that’s a bargain.

I don’t currently have an air card or USB modem for my laptop, as those plans typically run about 60 bucks a month from Sprint, Verizon, and AT&T. If I had a serious need, (and believe me, I’ve thought about it) I would be paying around $115.00 per month to get home and mobile service with what’s currently available. On top of that, the data plans from the cellular carriers are usually capped at about 5 GB of data per month. Now, I probably wouldn’t go over that limit, but consider, one good high quality video from Netflix could eat up 2-8 GB depending on whether it was standard or high definition. Rule number 1…don’t use 3G service to download videos.

For those of you that already have a 3G data plan, my advice would be to “ditch it”, and go with the CLEAR WiMAX, Pick 2 plan if you generally use your laptop within the CLEAR coverage area. Yes, you’ll probably pay an early termination fee to your 3G provider, but you will quickly recover that by lowering your monthly bill by $60/mth. At that rate, you should break even in three months or less. For those of you that have ever considered a mobile data service, there’s no longer any excuse. You can now get home and mobile service for less than the price of most 3G data plans alone.