San Francisco Citizen

After dealing with San Francisco’s “nightmarish” process to get some antennas up in the Bernal area, it looks as if our corporate overlords are ready to get crowing about 4G in in the 415.

Of course, some San Francisco residents recently lost against some NIMBYs, but what about the Richmond District? Look at all them operational antennas:

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Now, I guess the light green areas aren’t guaranteed to have good service but this is a start, non?

Does this mean you can get a free USB antenna dongle and $20 a month for 4G to use around the city on your laptop, netbook, iPad, whatever? I think so.

Anyway, CLEAR wants you to know all the deets:

“World Series Rings and a 4G Network

Well San Francisco, first you win the World Series, then a few months later your city is lit up with a 4G network. Not a bad way to ring in the New Year! As 2010 winds down, CLEAR is pleased to formally add San Francisco to its list of cities now covered by the CLEAR 4G network.

New customers can take advantage of CLEAR’s online-only mobile internet promotion to receive a 50% discount on their service plan for the first two months, with overnight shipping included and no activation fee. This promotion is available at www.clear.com/san-francisco for a limited time, so check it out today!

San Francisco was not our first rodeo, but building out this network to cover 4 million new people was no easy task. In recent weeks, our tower technicians have been working day and night to ensure coverage throughout the city. That is a lot of work, but one of our technicians in San Francisco told us that “a tremendous amount of caffeine, cookies and kabobs were consumed to keep team members happy and awake, so we could get the sites on air.”

There are now hundreds of sites in our San Francisco coverage area and we’ll continue to add sites over time to ensure we are delivering the best customer experience possible. There is a good chance you may actually have seen several of our antennas already but not noticed them, as we do our best to keep them camouflaged within the area’s surroundings. Next time you see a cross on a church or an odd-looking palm tree, it just might be one of our 4G cell sites!

One question we often hear is, “Why would CLEAR launch a major city like San Francisco months after other smaller cities?” There are a number of factors; one obvious one being the difficulty of building the kind of state-of-the-art network required to cover a city as large, populated, and topographically unique as San Francisco.  It takes a significant amount of planning, mapping, and specialized engineering to place cell sites in specific locations to provide for optimal performance of a 4G wireless network, so we can satisfy the demands of customers whether they’re using the network at a park, on BART or in a high-rise office or apartment building. Still, we’re happy to do it if it means bringing the people of San Francisco awesome 4G speeds at a reasonable price. You can visit www.clear.com/san-francisco to take advantage of our promotion for new San Francisco customers, and start the year off right!”