US WiMAX provider Clearwire has added a new pay-as-you-go service to its offerings. The new Rover service offers unlimited 4G WiMAX service. You can pay $5 per day, $20 for a week, or $50 per month, without signing up for a long term contract.
At launch there are two WiMAX modems, a $99.99 Rover Stick, and a $149.99 Rover Puck which you can use to share your WiMAX connection with up to 8 devices over WiFi.
The Rover Puck and Stick should work anywhere that CLEAR service is available, but they don’t support 3G, so they probably won’t be much good outside of the metro areas covered by Clear. If you are int he coverage area, you should see download speeds of between 3Mbps and 6Mbps with the new Rover modems.
When I canceled my CLEAR service earlier this year, the company told me I could continue to use the modem any time I liked by signing up for a day pass or a monthly pass, which is similar to what you get from the new Rover service. The difference is a one day pass with my CLEAR modem runs $10 instead of $5. On the other hand, a monthly plan runs just $40/month.