Politics Are What Held Up WiMax In San Francisco

San Franciscans are among the likely folks in America to take to WiMax 4G. So why'd they have to wait so long to get it, despite indications that it was pretty much ready to launch months ago? Hooray, bureaucracy!
Apparently the people who push pencils in the San Francisco government have among the strictest cell antenna approval processes in the country, which caused a whopping eight months of red tape delays. As though that weren't bad enough, when Sprint and WiMax finally did get approval, they were hit with an appeal over earthquake preparedness.
Fortunately, it looks as though that's all old news at this point, as 4G has kicked in for the Bay area. Somewhere, some HTC Evo owner finally got all the phone he paid for. [SF Weekly via Engadget]

Sci-Fi Author's Son Creates Wireless ISP To Give You 20Mbps Downloads For $40/Month

Sci-Fi author Rudy Rucker's son's one of the folks behind the cleverest wireless ISP serving San Francisco. He and his team have set up a system to provide customers with reliable 10-30Mbps download speeds for a mere $40 per month.
Sure, you could get theoretical speeds of about "20 Mbps down and 4 Mbps up from Comcast for $55 per month," but the service provided by Rucker's company, MonkeyBrains, is providing reliable and consistent speeds:

MonkeyBrains guarantees at least 10 Mbps symmetrical and most customers see 15-20 Mbps. Some customers see 25-30 Mbps with a good connection. According to [a company employee], this depends on the company's backhaul connection, which is in the process of being upgraded. Once that happens, he expects 30 Mbps+ connections will be common.

There are initial startup costs associated with the service—it costs about $250 to install the required antenna—but MonkeyBrains appears to be offering customers several free months of service to compensate for that cost.
The company is still small: It has "about 100 antennas, each of which may serve one or many customers—an average of 5-10 per antenna"—but it certainly appears to be off to a good start. Of course, the downside of a company like MonkeyBrains is that it provides such great—and cheap—service because it's sticking to a small area and focusing on those customers. This means that those of us who live outside of San Francisco are left hoping that someone will think to run a small WISP with a silly name in our areas too. [Information Week]

Signs of WiMAX Showing Up On Evos in New York, San Francisco, and LA

Evo owners in New York, San Francisco, and LA are reportedly starting to see some 4G action on their devices. It's just a trickle for now, but hopefully it means Sprint's preparing to turn on the WiMax faucet soon. [Engadget]