Since XOHM made its debut back in September, many early-adopting techies have experienced WiMAX in several cities. Baltimore was XOHM's sole officially covered WiMAX area, although users have been able to semi-stealthily access the network in other areas, including Chicago and Dallas, and now Portland has become the first network to be "Clear".

Clearwire launched their WiMAX network under the brand "Clear" this week in Portland. The network had been active in the area for a month or so, but this week Clearwire finally made things official and began a marketing campaign to get the word out about Clear and what it can do. Since the network has actually been live for several weeks, this official launch didn't bring any changes in and of itself, but it sets the stage for future launches.

Currently, Clearwire is officially operating WiMAX networks in just 2 cities: Portland and the XOHM-covered Baltimore (the name "XOHM" will be phased out and replaced with "Clear" within the next few months), but they also have "pre-WiMAX" networks operating in about 40 markets in North America. These lucky cities will likely be some of the first to get the upgrade to Clear since some of the infrastructure is already in place. Which other cities are on the list to get equipped with Clear is not, well, clear - no places in particular have been named by the company just yet.

While there aren't any details on Clearwire's roll-out plans, their chief strategy officer Scott Richardson made some interesting announcements in the wake of the launch. For one, he said that the plans and pricing for Clear service - which are pretty flexible and affordable as is - will be adjusted after hearing feedback from users in Portland and Baltimore (click here to read more about Clearwire's pricing and plans). Richardson also spoke about a product they'll soon be offering called the "Clear Voice Adapter", which will hook your landline (who still has one?) to the Clear home modem and allow users to make unlimited calls within the US via VOIP for just $25/month.

Finally, the fact that Clearwire is moving forward with marketing and promoting Clear also means that Sprint 4G should be following suit. Remember, Sprint - who owns 49% of Clearwire - will be offering WiMAX service along with EVDO at some point in the near future with the Franklin u300 dual-mode modem.

It takes a long time (and a lot of money) to deploy a brand new network like this, so patience is obviously going to be important for those of us not living in Portland or Baltimore. However, it looks like Clearwire is either unaffected by or just ignoring the economic troubles plaguing most of us and seem to be moving quickly!

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