My city and many others around the country still have spotty 3G mobile broadband access. Despite that, mobile service providers are looking ahead to 4G service already. There are two competing 4G service offerings under development right now — LTE and WiMAX. Sprint is the only U.S. carrier backing WiMAX right now along with Clearwire.

Clearwire announced a new battery powered router today that allows users that happen to be inside one the of the very few WiMAX cities in the country the ability to share a WiMAX connection with eight other computers.

The router is called the CLEAR Spot Personal Hotspot. The device connects to a USB WiMAX modem and turns the single WiMAX device into a hotspot that any Wi-Fi device can connect to. Up to eight different cell phones, notebooks, or game consoles can connect to the WiMAX network at once. Clearwire says that the router will be available in early-April for $139 in WiMAX markets.

Clearwire