WiMAX hasn’t hit the market as fast as Sprint and Clearwire may have hoped. The service is available in only a few major metropolitan areas and with LTE coming next year the benefit of first to market is slowly dying for WiMAX.

Clearwire announced in March that it would be rolling its Clear WiMAX service out to more major cities in 2009, one of the cities on the list was Las Vegas. Clearwire announced today that its Clear WiMAX service is now available in Las Vegas and serves about 1.7 million residents across 638 square miles.

Clearwire's Jeremy Abler said, "While it's true that what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, now, thanks to CLEAR, that doesn't mean it has to stay in one place. CLEAR will bring to Las Vegas residents the super-fast mobile internet experience they're used to having at home or the office, anywhere around town or on the go. We're providing a valuable, new category of internet service designed to make people's lives more enjoyable and more productive, wherever they happen to be in our coverage area."

Along with the Clear 4G service, Clearwire also announced that on August 1 it would be rolling out the Clear 4G+ mobile USB modem that will access both 4G and 3G service for users who travel. Owners of Mac computers will be able to connect to the Clear WiMAX network using a USB modem starting on August 17 when the Clear Connection Manager for Mac computers debuts. Clearwire promises download speeds of between 3 and 6Mbps with bursts of over 10Mbps.

The Clear 4G service coming live in Las Vegas is good timing for Samsung who has announced its WiMAX Mondi MID is launching in the U.S. for use on the Clear service. The device is black, has a sliding horizontal QWERTY keypad, and allows access to email, Internet, video content, and business apps. The device is also equipped for GPS navigation with Route 66 turn-by-turn directions.

The device has a 4.3-inch screen and is powered by Opera 9.5. Widgets are used to customize the Mondi that can be dragged and dropped anywhere on the display screen for easy viewing and use. The device will be available at Clearwire retail outlets starting on August 1 and at select Best Buy stores in Atlanta, Las Vegas, and Portland. Pricing for the device is unavailable.