Will an amplifier help this situation?

I purchased the 18db panel antenna and went from no signal in the house to an RSSI of -62 and CINR of 29. Obviously the antenna is quite effective, and I'm very pleased.

My problem is that I rarely get download speeds higher than .5 Mbps. Now and then I'll spike at 1Mbps, but it's rare. Upload speeds range from .5Mbps to 1Mbps.

Given my signal numbers, is it realistic for me to expect better performance at the edge of CLEAR's service area? Would an amplifier of some kind potentially help our performance?

thanks.

You're suspicions are right. You have something else going that is affecting your throughput. What's Clear's take on this? -69dBm RSSI, and 29dB CINR is pretty good. You might improve this somewhat with a second antenna if you don't already have it. Unfortunately, there are currently no WiMax repeaters for the consumer market.

Clear says it's due to tower congestion. I wonder if everyone else in the area is having this problem? There's only one tower I can point toward. I wish there were some way to find out their plans for addressing the congestion around here.

Sounds more like tower capacity than congestion (subtle difference ) - would expect to see worse CINR for huge numbers of users. What is your zipcode or what is the location of the tower?

The tower is in Waco, TX. It's the only tower anywhere near me.