Review by whitebark 
UPDATED: 323 days ago
member for 1.5 years, 13 visits, last login: 297 days ago
 Seattle,King,WA
 $34 per month (12 month contract)
 about 1 days
 "Installation is effortless"
 "Service is unreliable at times; they make it really hard to quit"
 "don't get Clearwire, unless you have no alternative"
| Pre Sales Information:
Install process:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
|
I was a former dialup user and wanted to join the high-speed fun. Having heard vague good things about Clearwire, I wandered over to the university bookstore, a Clearwire vendor, and ordered the slower level service (800 kbs) which goes for $29.95 plus modem lease which is another $5 a month. After entering in some information into the computer kiosk and enduring a quick credit check, I was soon a proud owner (well renter) of a Clearwire modem. Rushed home to try it out and was amazed how quick and easy it was to set it up and go online. The next day I got an Apple Airport router and effortlessly set up a wireless network. Coming from dialup I was in high speed heaven!
The first month or so, the Clearwire performed well and at the advertised speed. But then, more and more, slowdowns, brownouts where speed slowed to a crawl, freezes, stalls,and outright service blackouts started occurring. I don't do VOIP or massive downloads--I'm just a plain vanilla web surfer--yet performance for that use has been getting insufferably bad at times.
The signal strength is somewhat weak at my residence, one to three bars. The strength fluctuates randomly and the connection speed does not seem to correlate with the number of bars. The modem often has to reconnect (flashing bars), causing more service delays.
Someone said that Clearwire is only good for grandmothers downloading knitting patterns, but if the service keeps getting worse, Clearwire is going to have a lot of angry grannies on their hands!
I can't compare this high speed service to other ISPs as I have not used any others. But I'm ready to give up on Clearwire, throw away the $180 early termination fee, and try Qwest DSL or something else.
update: I think the problem is that the local tower is overloaded. The connection during non-peak times seems to work much better. Right now (late Sat night) the signal strength and connection speed are good. Once the work week starts, I expect the miserable performance to return. This is Seattle, Clearwire's home base, a big market with many tech-savvy users. If they can't make it work here, where can they?
update 2: To be fair, I'm working through Clearwire's support system to give them a chance to fix the problem. Getting a hold of a live person was easy...we will see what they can do.
update 3: The internet connection has improved greatly after the tech found the one small sweet spot for radio reception. I'm not quite so pissed off. Still, because of their vicious contract terms, I would avoid Clearwire if possible. Also, as others have noted, they will throttle your bandwidth if you do anything other then websurf.
update 4, July 30: The clearwire connection has been working pretty well. I will still cancel when the year is up, because I don't want to get "reupped" for another year.
Update 5, Nov 7: For many months, I have been getting o.k. service from Clearwire. Few big blackouts or slowdowns have occurred like those last June. Speed seem to be meeting the 700 kbs that I paid for. Disconnects occur far too frequently..they are simple to fix by resetting the router or rebooting computer, but annoying.
Update 6, Jan 14
Am in the process of terminating my contract. This must be done carefully and by the book, otherwise they will sign you up for another year contract and there will be nothing you can do about it. Exactly one month before your contract ends you must call clearwire. They will not notify you to do this (even though they say they will). The folks at their retention department are unpleasant, borderline nasty. Don't lose your temper. They are supposed to e-mail you a shipping label that you can use to send your modem back. Typically, you have to call them several times before they will do this. They will give you bogus reason why the e-mail did not show up. If all else fails, you can bring the modem back in person to one of their main offices( not stores). Look at the "contacts" menu item for main office locations.
I've managed to get the shipping label, so I'm close to the end of this process. My modem is on the way to Vegas.
Followup comments:  
Matt F
@clearwire-dns.net
| Are You Having Issues again? Hi I read your updates and was intersted because i too live in the seattle area and i think my tower was overloaded as well, back in June i had horrible service, then around early mid july it was great (Just like you said) now weather is getting crappy and people are staying indoors more and hmm, 1 or 2 bars most of the time. They are overloading their own network. Something needs to be done about this. Please contact me at my email matt8875@msn.com and we can discuss this further
Thanks | |
| whitebark
join:2007-05-18
Seattle, WA
 ·Clearwire Wireless
edit:
November 7th, @07:30PM
| clearwire update Hi Matt, My clearwire connection had worked o.k. for the past few months. The connection seemed "laggy" sometimes but when I did a speed test it was up to spec. There was a lingering problem with random disconnects, where I had to reset my wireless router or do various things to get the connection going again. Note, however, that I am not a power user of the internet, mostly web surfing with some large software downloads that Clearwire dealt with o.k.
Recently I moved to an apartment with a rock solid, lightning fast dedicated internet connections via ethernet cable. This is far superior than Clearwire ever was. My clearwire modem sits unused, and I plan to terminate service soon. | |
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