Since we moved three years ago I have had the broadband blues. First Bellsouth told me that they couldn’t provide me with broadband even though the fiber post is in my yard. So I went with the local cable company who provides a very fast although unreliable, and very expensive solution. By the time I finally convinced Bellsouth that, yes broadband was available to me, I had started streaming lots of music and video, and the 1.5 Mbps provided by IFITL wasn’t an acceptable solution.

Then two or three weeks ago I was listening to Rough and Blue on Pandora and trying to look busy so that boss lady, not The Boss Lady, doesn’t put me to work, when an add for Clear in Atlanta comes on and I think to myself “I gotta get me some of that”. Well I am lazy and I procrastinate, so I looked at the site, but I didn’t follow through. Then Saturday I try to watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer on Hulu and my connection starts to drop every couple of minutes. This pisses me off, because I need my Allyson Hannigan – Joss Whedon fix. So I call the aforementioned cable provider and the tech looks at my modem and “Yup, you’re modem’s dropping off intermittently. We can have a tech out on Thursday.” Thursday? Well that was actually better than the last time this happened, but it doesn’t matter now, because I have Clear.

So here’s the break down. I replaced my cable m0dem with a WiMax router. I have great signal strength. I’m getting a hair under 6Mbps down and 500Kbps up. All this for 20 bucks less a month. I have seen complaints online from clear users in other cities, but alot of those complaints were people trying to get out of contracts. I did not sign a contract, I’ve been down that road and it rarely ends well regardless of the company.

If this continues to work well, I will sign up for the laptop connection. So we can take Machine Politick on the road. We’ll have a mobile factory. We can pitch tents and have revivals. Signs and wonders. Stump speeches. Snake oil. Snake handling. Hallelujah.

If you are moved to remove yourself from the grid use referal code b42ef9. Help a brutha out.