I’m in Las Vegas at CES, and I rented a WiMax modem from a company called Cheetah Wireless. Last year it was a decent solution – not as fast as I was hoping for, but pretty good. This year, it’s a disaster. Check out this pathetic bandwidth:
That’s so slow it feels like I’m using a 56K modem. It’s ugly. Cheetah Wireless is saying it might be a defective modem, but it feels like the real problem is that the WiMax signal is pathetically weak from my hotel room. It’s really hard to do much of anything with Internet this slow… 🙁
UPDATE: I wanted to add that although I was completely disappointed with the performance of my WiMax modem, Cheetah Wireless did everything they could to help. They offered to swap out the modem for me, but we were never able to connect. I used it at the airport for a bit, and the speeds were just as bad there, before I realized that the package to mail the modem back was inside my checked back. So I took the WiMax modem home with me to Canada, then mailed it back to Las Vegas – and the guy at Cheetah Wireless that I was dealing with was very understanding when I explained my error. I probably won’t go this WiMax route again – I’m going to pick up one of these…