A quick comple questions:

What is the "standard" wireless speed?
What is the best possible speed anywhere?
What is your speed if you have wireless?

Wireless as in WISP, WiMAX, or Mobile (HSPA, LTE, CDMA, etc)?

There's no "standard" speed, because what constitutes wireless Internet varies greatly. Things like weather interfere with it (cloudy, humidity, rain/snow, dust, wind, etc), building materials, distance from nearest tower, what the nearest tower's theoretical maximum output is, MIMO support, number of clients connected to that tower, load-balancing, and, as noted above, the technology being used to provide the wireless Internet.

I am wired, but my mother's computer has wireless and I have seen it @ 60 (mbps?) but that is one of the cheap options our provider has.

Hypothetical perfect conditions. By standard, think most common or baseline.

It depends on the infrastructure in the area as well as the technology used still. Even when dealing with hypotheticals. Even in the same technology, it varies wildly. WiMAX has a new standard that can deliver up to 100 mbps, but a 25 mbps is much more widespread, and under no conditions in the real world would either of those speeds be seen even a block away from the tower.

Some WISP companies are just an 802.11 mesh network, for example, others use the 900 mhz band, and still others use FCC-licensed bands.


You're talking about a technology that is completely unpredictable and cannot be defined until you start talking about a very specific aspect of it.

When looking into a wireless provider, all this hypothetical talk means absolutely nothing. You need to look for information related to the individual companies and the performance of their service in your local area (the more local, the better)

I am thankful for wireless (in a computer sorta way. Don't even get me started on wireless vocal mics...) I am sitting out in the college parking lot close to the dorms and getting internet since the router is inside. It amazes me that I am even getting anything even though it is slow. Can't wait to se what other technology the future holds.

In my eyes, it's a horrible mess, especially the 900mhz/2.4ghz/5ghz frequencies (which would be... pretty much everything you use). Nasty, unclean, full of packet loss, bleeding, disgusting pigsty.

Real wireless technologies (WiMAX, LTE) are pretty cool, though.

Yea WISP (900MHz/2.4GHz) is pretty bad when comparing WiMAX and LTE technologies, but for many people it simply is the best way to get Internet. Although the WISP QoS really depends on locations and the underlying network. I have 900MHz WISP which is believe is backed by a T1. It is fine for Internet browsing and some online gaming (1-2 computers).

We have our internet connected via a phone line jack and the modem and router are fused together because of our optik TV. When im wirelessly connected to laptop and log in the internet, my downloads are 1 Megabite/s.

When hardwired, it's double that. We pay like 80 a month for the optik tv and internet

Internet availabilty was a huge deciding factor when i wanted to move

I have an ATT 4g card that I use for my Xbox and WiFi for my phone to stream Netflix here and there (it has a 5gb monthly limit but I've never gone over) and it's not bad. Not incredibly fast, but it works for what I need it for. It wouldn't be good for massive downloads obviously.

I also use CLEAR on my laptop (I was already in my ATT 2 year contract, and CLEAR didn't entirely cover my last base so that's why I got ATT. I got CLEAR here because it has no monthly limit). It can be fast when it wants to but they throttle me heavily. I downloaded around 40gb last month and since then it's been slower. Download speeds are 60 kb/s if I'm lucky during the day (over night it picks up a bit, anywhere from 120 kb/s to close to 300 I believe).