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IPad owners living in a Clearwire 4G wireless zone and considering purchasing one of the company’s new iSpot base stations to enhance the device’s connectivity may want to hold off. Because according to a new report from BTIG Research analyst Walter Piecyk, the iPad doesn’t perform as well on Clearwire’s 4G iSpots as it does on typical Wi-Fi access points. In fact, in Piecyk’s tests, the iPad’s average download speed using an iSpot was 2.5 Mbps–about half the download speed he experienced using a Windows laptop.
“[The] iPad consistently produced lower download speeds than Windows based laptops,” Piecyk wrote today. “This appears to be an issue with the iPad and hot spots and not Wi-Fi in general since our iPad speeds on our home Wi-Fi were equivalent to other devices. When we tested the iPad on our FiOS powered Wi-Fi connection, we received the full 25 Mbps of available download speed on every test.”
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Odd, particularly since iSpot was specifically engineered to work with Apple devices.
“There appears to be something going on in how Apple’s Wi-Fi implementation is working with wireless hotspots,” Piecyk concludes. “Once again, all we can refer to is a company’s relative expertise in RF engineering. Our home Wi-Fi router does not have to deal with incoming 4G signal or a need to preserve battery life like a hotspot does. We suspect we will be getting a lot of feedback on this topic in the coming weeks as we dive deeper into the issue.”