Review by rcrowley 
UPDATED: 45 days ago
member for 323 days, 4 visits, last login: 45 days ago
 Hillsboro,Washington,OR
 $30 per month (24 month contract)
 about 1 days
 "Nice when it works"
 "Decreasing speeds, erratic service"
 "Doesn't live up to the hype, big dissapointment"
| Pre Sales Information:
Install process:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
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I signed up for the Mobile (4MBPS) Unlimited Service at the Clear kickoff event on Jan 6. I had been using Sprint EVDO, but with my Intel employee pricing, Clear WiMAX is 1/2 the price and 4-5x the speed. You can't hardly beat that combo.
After they got my account setup (overnight) I was up and running the next day with a simple driver installation and plugging in the USB RF modem dongle.
The dongle is a Motorola USBw25100 (i.e a USBw100 for 2.5 GHz). It doesn't use an internal battery like the Sierra Wireless 595U, and it is half the size, too. The Motorola unit gets rather warm, though.
I had some intermittent connection problems (connected, authenticated, but couldn't get an IP address) so they installed new firmware (in the dongle) and new software on my computer, and I haven't had the problem since (about a week).
It is excellent having much higher speed than EVDO (and dialup before that), but at the loss of coverage area (Clear vs EVDO). Clear coverage is pretty much limited to metro PDX, where Sprint EVDO has coverage across the USA (not wall-to-wall, of course, but in cellphone service areas.)
Their customer service (located in the USA) seems above average (but I've only called them twice). But they keep "bankers hours" which is inconvienent if you need help before 9 am, OTOH, they are open til 10 PM.
UPDATE: October, 2009: Speed keeps decreasing, signal strength varies from 2/10 to 9/10 at home. Download speeds rarely reach 2Mb, and upload 200K. This is way less than advertised (and I am paying for). Customer service is tied to lame scripts and cannot (or will not) provide any actual support.
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