Syl and I took a look a few different internet options aside from the usual: cable, DSL, or FIOS. The requirements were that the service would need to be a) temporary, b) able to be shared, c) free of obtrusive installations, and d) convenient – no long-term contract requirements. Two options immediately sprang to mind – EVDO access using a Sprint data card + Kyocera KR1 router or Clearwire.
Due to the fact that Sprint would require an actual long-term contract, we decided to check out Clearwire which offers month-to-month service. Clearwire launched with the intent of providing nationwide Wi-Max broadband access to the masses. Since 2004, Clearwire has added a handful of major metropolitan cities to its service coverage map.
The convenience of online shopping, right?
In todays internet age, I find it more convenient and efficient to utilize online resources to make purchases. Purchasing service through http://clearwire.com should be no different from completing an order through http://sprint.com, http://cingular.com, or http://comcast.com. Unfortunately, a recent scenario proved that shopping online can still feel very alien.
Welcome to clearwire.com
Immediately, we visit http://clearwire.com. We are greeted with a general landing page with a clear-cut navigation, an invitation to "Save up to $100 when you order online today" (Bingo!), three service option summaries, a quick "Get pricing and service availability", and an invitation for "Live chat".
How much and is it available in the neighborhood?
We’re both informed, we know what Clearwire is all about, and we understand that Wi-Max coverage is still being rolled out. Let’s fast forward, check coverage availability, and enter the address where service will be used. Visitors have a convenient form for entering a street address, zip code, and floor. Floor?
I know Clearwire means to convey a message along the lines of "How many floors are in the home or building where the service will be used? This is important because your connection quality relies heavily on the modems ability to acquire a strong signal. Physical structures may prevent the modem from receiving the strongest signal possible.", but how would the average Joe looking to leave Comcast interpret the option?
Let’s assume that everyone understands that the option refers to the number of floors in the building where service will be used. Let’s also assume that service at the address is available but that I live on the 2nd floor of a 4 floor complex. Would I enter option 2 since I live on the second floor? Or, do I enter 4 because I live in a complex with 4 floors? What If I lived on the ground floor of an 8 floor apartment? If this extensive of a preliminary inquiry is required, users might as well be asked to enter whether or not they live in a brick, all steal, concrete, or wood structure. There are no directions or hints explaining why "floor" is so important. [No reference in the FAQ] Sprint or Verizon don’t ask whether I’ll be sitting in a garage, lounging at home, or walking outside during service usage.
Experimenting with a number of different scenarios, the resulting page which expresses whether coverage is available mentions nothing about what affect the floor may have on your service.
Our first few attempts checking coverage availability resulted with the above image. Because of this initial hurdle, we were unable to find out how much the service would be on a month-to-month basis. As potential customers, it would be much easier to see a quick overview of the pricing tiers – for comparison with other services – before having to enter any type of personal information.
I’m having issues ordering, can I talk to a sales rep?
After realizing that little progress was going to be made as far as ordering service online was concerned, we resorted to contacting a sales or support representative. At the time of posting, the Live Chat graphical links redirected to an email form with the prompt that no representatives were available. With that in mind, we located a telephone number at the top right corner of the page next to Store Locater. The number reads 1-888-Clearwire – C-L-E-A-R-W-I-R-E = 9 characters which when added to 1-888 would equal 13. Your standard telephone number is comprised of 10 – this might throw a few people off.
1-888-Clearwire = 1-888-253-2794-73 which does not equal the 1-888-253-2794 shown in FAQ. Regardless, we dial and listen to the available prompts for opening new service. Calling from both a 206 & 425 area code numbers (which area clearly major metropolitan areas in Seattle / Bellevue), we both received the following (20 sec. recording). Not exactly the answer we’re looking for when the coverage map clearly covers our area(s).
Disclaimer
It is important to note that this entry was published after initial attempts of checking coverage availability and ordering service online failed. At the time, Clearwire coverage availability was reporting that the address entered was outside of the coverage area. Subsequent inquires later in the day oddly reported that the address was indeed within the service coverage area. The experience shopping online does not reflect the quality of the actual internet service – I am more than happy to and look forward to comparing Clearwire to Sprints solid EVDO network which I use daily with both a Novatel U720 (external USB) & Vaio VGN-TXN15P (bult-in)..
Check out clearwiresucks.com.
Clearwire is a diffferent technology!! Would you try to run a business off of your cell phone or a lan line? Clearwire works good for portability but until Wi-Max drops you can’t use it for high bandwidth purposes (or they will shape ur ass). Clearwire would actually be awesome if they had better tower coverage (which will hopefully happen in the future)
I’ve had Clear (NOT EQUAL TO) Clearwire in the Portland area (new deployment) for about a month now. For the price and versatility I cannot complain . At home I do get a bit of desensing though (WiMax modem, wifi router, laptop, psp, cordless phone within 5 meters, all 2.4-2.5 Ghz). My thruput on speed tests run around 4-5 MB, ( Gaming seems to work OK (according to my kids), streaming video (hulu, msnbc, youtube, etc.) are fine with minimal buffering.
So far I am happy with Clear (!=Clearwire) in my area. Beats Comcast and Qwest for the money / versatility,
I guess we’ll see how it works out in the next year…
i’m not a Clear customer, but was considering it briefly (as in, for about 12 hours). what turned
me off right away is that on the website, under the “find Clearwire near you” header, they want
street address, zip code, and email address. my email address has nothing to do with where
my internet will be located, and i can only assume they want it so they can send me emails if
i decide not to go with their service. i hate this sort of thing more than i can express, so have
already decided they’re not the kind of company i want to do business with. after reading this
blog and also the many testimonials at clearwiresucks.com, i’m confident i’m making the
right decision. thanks for sharing your experience.
Jen, Thats why we are here, I have been watching for over a year, and started posting over a year ago, these folks are not getting any better. You made the right decision. I live in Seattle where they are based, they have the headquarters office in the most expensive office space per square foot on the west coast.
Bill Gates is one of the other residents in this building, that should give you and idea of the class your dealing with. If I was starting up a business I dont think I would be paying for a over priced penthouse office.
Rick is right!!! most of us complainers are non-tech’s. Unfortunately neither is Clearwire’s Tech Support reps. They are constantly reading from a book, manual, or on screen display (whatever). What they say is “please be patient we are having problems with our computer system today” they have said that line everytime I have called in the last 6 months instead of saying “I dont know crap, let me refer to my employee handbook.”
I kept losing my connection, after reseting my modem and google searching my error message I wanted to know why it was happening. Google and the Tech forums was 10 times more helpful. I had to pull the info out of him. I asked him more questions than he asked me. Right away and on cue the rep sugested that we open up internet explorer and began clearing out some info. After restating my issue twice we took a different path. This guy did not know what clearing the dns cache was, so I brought him up to speed on what I knew.
I was on the phone with tech support for 1hr 14mins when I asked the question
” isn’t there a log of some sort of my account that you can refer to.”
No Sir! we only keep records of when there is a connection issue. WHAT? THATS WHY I AM CALLING. No. No….. its only when our towers lose connection. out that we were and everytime someone callsthey could not look and see what actually happened. their systems do not follow
I was constantly coming to my computer and finding that my connection was lost. I attempted to repair throughMy issue was that my DNS Servers cache could not be cleared without unplugging my modem.
Rick is right!!! most of us complainers are non-tech’s. Unfortunately neither is Clearwire’s Tech Support reps. They are constantly reading from a book, manual, or on screen display (whatever). What they say is “please be patient we are having problems with our computer system today” they have said that line everytime I have called in the last 6 months instead of saying “I dont know crap, let me refer to my employee handbook.”
I kept losing my connection, after reseting my modem and google searching my error message I wanted to know why it was happening. Google and the Tech forums was 10 times more helpful. I had to pull the info out of him. I asked him more questions than he asked me. Right away and on cue the rep sugested that we open up internet explorer and began clearing out some info. After restating my issue twice we took a different path. This guy did not know what clearing the dns cache was, so I brought him up to speed on what I knew and did a few dianostic things.
I was on the phone with tech support for 1hr 14mins when I asked the question
” isn’t there a log of some sort of my account that you can refer to.”
(him) No Sir! we only keep records of when there is a connection issue.
” WHAT? thats why I am calling”
(him) No. No….. its only when our towers lose connection.
It appears that all they do is go fishing for answers with their manuals with the same steps, no matter what the issue may be. I have not had a single rep that I could not stump with connection and speed issues over the last 6mos. I am in a messed up stuation because I am on a private road without cable or broadband access. CLEARWIRE!!! we dont want much (us complainers) just what you advertised to real us in… Plug and Play ( not plug and replug and replug and play), Reliable connection, and helpful tech support..
Clearwire !+ Clear. I have been a user of Clear in Portland, OR. We are a CLEAR roll out area. Works fine for me, ~4-5 MB/ps. No problems. Clearwire IS NOT THE SAME as Clear!!! That’s the OLD pre-WiMax service. I pay $45 a month for unlimited home service plus my mobile.charges, no contract I’m very satisfied, beats Qwest DSL, and I don’t need to subscriber to Comcast. cable I’m very happy. Gaming, streaming video, big downloads – they all work fine.
I’ve been very happy with Clearwire. We live in about the worst possible area for reception (dense forest in a velly on near the top of a hill) and we get good reception. We’ve replaced our expensive Qwest and ATT long distance with thier telephone offering. I’ve used my laptop quite successfully during my entier commute (as a passenger of course) and I have only one deadspot, the exact deadspot where I lose cell phone service also. The service has been extremely responsive during the one time I needed them when I encountered a problem with set up. I know of others htat have had difficulty, but in all honesty, I’ve extremely pleased. It sounds like they need to be a bit more consistent.
We had horrible reception on Clearwire, living about 1 mile from the tower. We called, and they told us we lived too close, and that we needed to point it toward another tower, maybe 5 miles away. Now we get 3 bars at best, usually 1 or 2, and the connection still disconnects sometimes.
It almost makes me want to go back to Comcast.
Can you guys say what cities you are in?
And How good is the clearwire service in the CITY that you are in
I am in portland oregon clearwire sucks here dont get it
Duluth, Minnesota. My average speed is 834Kps and has been as slow as 123Kps. I hate to say I am getting used to it. Oh and the support staff really seem to enjoy jerking me around. The first time I called about my slow speed one of the Daves in support raised my speed to 1.5mb and did not charge me anything more money. I thought he was so nice that I even wrote a complimentary email.
I’ve made alot of calls since that first one and many times have just known I was getting the runaround having allready been through it.
I’ve had clearwire for 3 months now, and it’s spotty on its availability.
Take tonight. The local technical center (Anchorage, Alaska office) closed just as bandwidth dropped to 256kbs with a ping of over 550ms. Last week, there was an unannounced outage lasting at least 3 hours. The price is nice, but I’m looking at other options since I work online every day.
Do yourself a favor and do not even think about Clearwire for internet service. You pay for 1.5 mbps service, but you’re lucky to get 400kbps. I have screencaptures to prove it. Numerous calls to tech support did nothing to solve the problem. I did get up to 500kbps once! Still less than 1/2 the advertised 1.5mbps.
Stay clear of Clearwire.
Check out: http://www.clearwiresucks.com for more customer reviews.
You are all so-o Right I use speed test.net 3-5 times a day three tests in a row each time.
I pay for the premium connection 2mb/s and still cant get 1mb/s 99% of the time.
I’m done whith them as soon as I can.
does anyone know if you get a different IP address with clearwire everytime you disconnect and reconnect or is it the same IP address all the time?
I used to work for Clearwire in my area and understand the technology of the system pretty well. The answer to your question is yes. Your IP address is dynamic. And what’s funny is that even if you pay for a “static IP,” the system doesn’t assign it to the modem. Your modem still gets a dynamic IP, but the system ties the “static IP” to the the modem, unlike DSL, cable, or fiber based internet services where the IP address is tied directly to the modem.
Unfortunately, Clearwire’s problems are massive from a technical perspective. FIRST, they have choked the sytem with a backhaul scheme that violates every princip
e of sound broadbandb engineering. SECOND, the 2.5 and 3.5 GHz frequencies they employ necessitate a tight cell site topology but they ignored that in favor of saving money by deploying substantially le
ss cell site
than required to achieve 1.5mbps per the QoS portion of their Service Level Agreement. THIRD, despite the recommendations of experts, they dismissed other factors which diminish signal efficiencies into your home, and 4. Their senior teccal staff is inept insofar as knowing how to properly arrest the aforesaid matters. Trust me; I know their problems fluently and recommend against getting this service. They continue to sqander billions of dollars of investments and have done the ultimate “snow job” to investors Comcast, Intel and Motorola. It is a total mess.
Although there are a myriad of reasons as to why I hate Clearwire. The main reason is their failure to fulfill their end of the contract. I’ve paid the bill every month on or within reasonable time for every year that I have had Clearwire… but they have failed to deliver advertised speeds at least 90% of the entire time.
http://www.clearwire.com/support/faqs.php
Q: Is Clearwire as reliable as cable or dial-up?
A: Yes. With Clearwire, you’ll enjoy an always-on, always-secure connection that never ties up your phone line.
That is total horseshit, I haven’t enjoyed my connection in a long time, because it is over saturated and the connectivity is dodgy at best.
ClearwireBlows.com – Join the Revolution, Spread the Word, Force them to Improve or Go Away.
clear wire as telecom sucks
I have had clearwire and service in my community has been great. A VERY cost effective alternative to cable prices. both my wife and I can stream movies at the same time.
I’ve never had Clearwire, and I found this site on a google search with the intention of looking at them as an option, but I’ve been thoroughly warned. Thank you.
For you commenters who are suffering through their service, you may be interested to know that a class action lawsuit has been filed against them. Don’t know if it’s too late to join or whatever, but here’s the website of its initiators: http://clearwiresucks.com/blog/
Thanks JP here is a little more direct path to the lawsuit info
http://www.tzlegal.com/files/clearwirecomplaint.pdf
Ok Folks, If your really serious about doing somthing here is the direct link for the class action suit that is in place. I have made contact with this atty office and have joined. This is the one chace to maybe get somthing back on your fees.
http://www.tzlegal.com/clearwire.asp