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Review by cleonamar  - Location: Seattle,King,WA
- Cost Contract price not specified.
Good "No phone or cable lines to your house."
Bad "They always give you a fake 192.168.*.* address. Static IP is not possible."
Overall "Do not use if you want any inbound access."
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Call me crazy, but I thought part of paying for internet, was getting an internet address. Sure that address would change every so often, but at least it was real. You could game with your friends, host a web server, etc.
Ask them if you could pay for a real address and they're response was "no, sorry, go somewhere else". So here I am warning others, DO NOT GET Clearwire!
Clearwire is doing the kind of cheat like if you re-sold some of your internet to your neighbor.
member for 36 days, 0 visits, last login: 36 days ago
lodged 36 days ago
Comments:
 isnoop
join:2006-10-18
Seattle, WA | It ain't necessarily so. I have a clearwire device whose only purpose is to be the remote access point for an IP security camera. It has a proper web IP address, not a 192.168.*. However, I had to ask for that feature. | |
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| Review by cmarslett - Location: Pflugerville,Travis,TX
- Cost: $52 per month
Good "FAST, EASY setup. No contract, cheap install ($50)."
Bad "Storms do take it out (wireless, y'know)"
Overall "After several months, I am even more satisifed than when I started"
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The standard Clear package for my location is 3-6 Mbit (estimated, not guaranteed) using a wireless modem/router (refurb, $49). Initially, corporate VPN got about 480 Kbps, most FTP transfers get about 1.5 Mbps, Netflix worked, and the flash speed test typically reported 3.3 Mbps up, 1 Mbps down. I am paying $52/mo, a bit more than AT&T DSL, but it works all the time!
Bought the modem at Fry's, brought it home and plugged it in. Can't get much simpler. Modem is a Motorola 25725 black monolith.
After several months, the connection has settled down (maybe they had a lot of sales last summer?). Early on connections varied a lot. Sometimes no connection (say 20 hours the first 3 months), sometimes 8-9 Mbit down and 1-2 Mbit up. I have had about 2 hours down in the last three months and haven't seen a connection above 5 Mbit down. Uploads are still 1-2 Mbit. Which suits me fine.
Mostly I notice how easy everything is, I did do some moving of the modem around the house to find the best spot, but that runs rings around the hassles of getting a cable or DSL connection to work in this house. Since one early speed test (where I got 13.2/0.9 Mbps) I consistently do not get download speeds as fast as my DSL, or upload speeds as slow as my DSL connection gave me.
Well after 6 months it just stays the same (no chance of that with AT&T). If I get the urge, I may try Suddenlink, but I'll never go back to AT&T with their poor reliability and regular price increases. So I raised my ratings a bit, but otherwise no real changes.
member for 6.8 years, 91 visits, last login: a few hours ago
updated 60 days ago
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| Review by CompTech210 - Location: San Antonio,Bexar,TX
- Cost: $55 per month (24 month contract)
- Install: about 1 days
Good "Mobile Broadband without a insanely low cap and its suited for mobile operations"
Bad "Speeds Variey from time to time. Motorola Box doesnt have a DHCP/NAT Routeing disabled mode."
Overall "Its great as a broadband connection when you cant find much else from traditional ISP's"
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We currently have Clear as our work internet connection and so far we have not had any issues with it.
Its a wireless connection so we dont expect the greatest in connectivity and or speeds but it does work quite well for what we need.
We are a alternative educational program affiliated/located off San Antonio College so the local tower from here is pretty congested at times but overall we have no issues with it as it preforms as expected and we get what we pay for.
We then move twords the Northwest side of town to another location we operate two days a week with the same equipment and so far we have had great luck with its ease of use and portability.
So far we have not had any outages to speak of as we arent in the office at 12 - 6am to notice any currently.
We are not using their provided DNS Servers due to we need more filtering options so we are using OpenDNS to accomplish this.
Currently we have the Office Pro Package which is 6.0 Mbps down / 1.0 Mbps up.
Our download speeds range from atleast 3.0 to 12 depending on the time of day and tower congestion. The upload is always spot on at .99Mbps and sometimes it bursts all the way up to 1.5 and sometimes almost 2.0 which is great when starting out those big FTP transfers to a off site backup location.
We average around 3 to 4 gigs of traffic a day and sometimes upwards to 7 or 9 gigs when its twords the end of the reporting month for state records. And with our type of useage we havnt heard a peep from clear about it and havnt been throttled or we would have noticed it right away as we have some pretty heavy streaming media users in this office.
Our setup consists of a Clear Series M Modem feeding a Cisco RV110 Wireless Router.
member for 5 years, 275 visits, last login: 1 days ago
updated 125 days ago
Comments:
 rm
@spcsdns.net | service sucks I just got service and I mus
t say it sucks. I can't keep a connection. | |
| | | Clear We go the stick and so far everything is A ok! | |
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| Review by ronnotel - Location: Wilmette,Cook,IL
- Cost: $55 per month (24 month contract)
Good "Fast, easy install, slick customer service web site"
Bad "none so far"
Overall "check coverage overlay map in store before buying"
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I have been waiting years and I am finally ready to cut the last wired service extending into my home (AT&T subscriber phone service). I signed up for Clear's home internet + voice for $55/month. Installation was a snap and I get five bars when I position the modem near my window. Upload/download speed is 3.5M/1.1M which is far better than the SpeakEasy DSL I am replacing (which was $55/mo all on it's own). Service quality seems to be highly dependent on location. Being near the tower helps, but the service is quasi-directional. If you are directly in the path of one of your tower antenna's three horns you will do better. Clear has a Google Maps overlay you can see in their store that will give you an idea of exactly what kind of signal strength you will get - it's worth a trip to find out before you sign up.
BTW, Clear's VoIP has some cool features - such as vmail to email, selective call screening, etc.
May 2010 - have had the service for four months now and it's all good so far. Signal has never dipped below four bars, even during heavy downpour or snow. I have had to reboot the wimax modem a couple of times but no biggie, have never had an outage that I could prove was due to Clear. We have used the phone for a lot of international calling (screening au pair candidates) and the rates are crazy cheap. As long as signal strength is good in your location then I can strongly recommend.
May 2013 - Three years on and I guess I'm one of the lucky ones - perhaps because I'm directly in one of the tri-corn paths of my local tower and get a solid signal. I probably get one or two issues every six months requiring a modem reboot or a call to Clear. However, the issue almost always goes away before I can get someone on the line. I watch a lot of HBO TO GO and streamed movies from Amazon. Most of the time the show goes through uninterrupted, with perhaps 1 in 10 times I get some minor buffering. Overall I'm pretty happy and would hate, hate, hate to have to a get my service from devil spawn such as AT&T, etc.
member for 8.2 years, 18 visits, last login: 130 days ago
updated 130 days ago
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| Review by chbrs34 - Location: Salt Lake City,Salt Lake,UT
- Cost: $49 per month (month by month)
Good "initial sales was good due to fact sales is based in U.S."
Bad "cleare towers cant handle the customer volume. outsource"
Overall "Comcast/Ceturylink have better value, more experience company based in U.S."
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Since I have had Clearwire, i have had to call every month about the connection speed, usually a week before the bill is due and i have been with them for 5 months and i am going to make it my last. I paid for a modem that cannot get service if there is too many people on a certain tower, which means they should open up the bandwidth so customers can still get there service that they pay for, or they need to get more towers in the area. Clearwire knew that there was a problem yet still had me jump through the resetting hoops for 2 hrs and 2 days instead of putting the service conditions on the website or sending an email or text or some kind of communication to let you know there was a problem. They could at least let you know at the beginning of the call that service was slow or down so you do not have to sit on the phone. Another thing I will never do again is buy from a company that outsources to other countries such as the Philippines just because of the fact they sell in America so why not employ in America. For what you pay for which is around $60.00 you get up to 6 or 7 mbps download if your lucky and up to 1 mbps upload which is the high end package. You are better off going with Comcast or CenturyLink who employs tech support agents in America.....I'm just sayin!!! If you don't believe me just watch!!
member for 131 days, 0 visits, last login: 131 days ago
updated 131 days ago
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| Review by Elodean - Location: South Weymouth,Norfolk,MA
- Cost: $35 per month (month by month)
- Install: about 3 days
Good "simple setup, functional speeds"
Bad "latency, inconsistent performance"
Overall "a viable alternative to cable/dsl, or if you have no other option"
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I was never a fan of wireless broadband because of the rather unreliable nature of radio signals. Any fixed radio-based wireless networking setup will either work or it won't work. Even if it works, the signal typically depends on all sorts of factors, including weather. Still, back in November 2011, I decided to give Clear a try to see if their wireless offering was usable.
First of all, I see a lot of complaints about Clear. Apparently, if you can get good signal, people are generally happy; if you don't have ideal signal, then people are unhappy, and the infamous Clear customer service doesn't help either. I actually suggested Clear to a friend, who signed up but couldn't get a signal. He had a hell of a time trying to cancel service. (He even tried to go to a Clear brick-and-mortar establishment in New York and they said they couldn't cancel him at the store.) In the end, it took months and a lot of arguing to cancel his service.
I was one of the lucky ones; it worked for me right out of the box, so I didn't have to deal with support. I got a G-Series modem, and was able to position it in a good place near a window with a relatively open view towards the nearest tower to get 5 bars (~25dB CINR). Latency was better than what I was expecting, but still not on par with wired services. Basic network access worked well. However, weather events such as snow and rain definitely affect the connection. I agree with many other reviews that if you don't get 5 bars, then even basic network access becomes unpleasant.
Based on the Clear coverage maps and my past year of use, my signal is apparently "borderline" good (which is why it's so jumpy). In my particular case, sustained download speeds can swing wildly across the range, so streaming media such as video and voice would often stutter. These days, sites that don't let the user set the video quality will automatically adjust the quality based on the current bandwidth. For a bursty connection, the result can be very frustrating, as the video tries to change to high definition, then pause before dropping to lower quality because the jumpy speeds can't maintain the video buffer.
I was originally on their $50 uncapped service, but dropped to their $35 1.5Mbit offering because I figured that if they could only really sustain about 2Mbit consistently, then I'd rather pay for a lower tier of service. But apparently, the practical speeds dropped as well, with speeds often hovering between 100kbit and 700kbit. As some people have pointed out, hacking in an external antenna should greatly improve signal, and I'm definitely starting to consider that option. Hey, if your connection is lousy and the warranty expired, you've really got nothing to lose.
In the end, Clear is pretty good - for wireless. Their service is bound to the same limitations as all radio-based technologies. While the price is decent (since it includes all fees and taxes here), the connection quality makes the service inferior to other ISP offerings in the equivalent pricing tier (typically the $29.99 DSL or cable plans, when you add in taxes and fees). A good signal makes all the difference. Sadly, their signal map is only a rough estimate; the only way to get a good idea of the practical connection quality is to try their service yourself. If you don't get ideal signal, I'd say Clear would be fine for occasional network use. If you often deal with streaming, gaming, video/voice conferencing, remote desktop, development/productivity, then you need a strong signal, or look for a wired solution.
member for 1.9 years, 32 visits, last login: 139 days ago
lodged 159 days ago
Comments:
Reviews:
 ·Comcast
| re: Clearwire Review i found when i went to their home service the speed dropped like an anvil. i went back to my clearspot in the window and was getting 16-18 /1.5 mbps. I use it now for backup and went to Comcast. the latency was killing me for video conferencing. Have you tried to buy an external antenna. I have seen this improve connections. I am in CT and it works great in some places and doesnt work in others. | |
| | Elodean
join:2011-10-29
South Weymouth, MA Reviews:
 ·Clearwire Wireless
 ·Verizon Online DSL
| Re: re: Clearwire Review I don't think an external antenna would help me much here; I'm already 25dB CINR and -65dB RSSI, which I consider pretty good. But I do plan on hacking in an external antenna just for fun - after I sign up for another service first, so I have a fallback in case I mess up the modem while cracking it open and drilling holes.
I think the problem for me is that I'm at the edge of Clear's coverage area (not just the edge of a tower's coverage area, but Clear's entire Boston coverage area). Based on their maps, my location has strong service (dark green), but I only have access to 1 tower, and I'm betting that this tower gets congested. Also, when the connection goes down (maybe for maintenance), the modem can't switch over to another tower, so I get occasional and annoying bouts of downtime, frequently at night and weekends.
Another point is that Clear resells its service to FreedomPop. If you use Clear for a backup connection, you're probably better off dropping them and just getting FreedomPop, which will get you free wireless service up to about a gig a month, based on their current service descriptions. (However, I'm not sure if you'll need a different modem for FreedomPop.) | |
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·Comcast
| Re: re: Clearwire Review Yes you would need a separate modem. I think I have two towers by my house and its mostly residential here. But I believe when I look up the stats it always points to one tower in particular. I have gotten Comcast 50/10 now and they have a 6 month special. So I keep it as a backup or when I am travelling in my car in the local area. I really have had good luck with them despite some people not having such good luck. I find its always good to have a backup in this day and age. Storms and such can put you out of contact really quickly. | |
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| Review by SanAntonioTx - Location: San Antonio,Bexar,TX
- Cost: $45 per month
- Install: about 2 days
Good "Only if you live with in 2,000 feet of the nearest sprint tower"
Bad "You get what you pay for"
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This is one of the worst 4g providers how ever when you do get a signal the data is Unlimited the only time you will see past 10mbps is at night time at 4 am unless the local cell phone tower *sprint* tower is not over congested by the unlimited data users best speed i've ever seen on clear wire was back in 2010 26mbps down and 1.5mbps up now today if lucky I'll see 12mbps down and 1.5mbps up
if you have no other options and a very tight budget and don't really stream anything and for basic internet clear wire would be good for you
member for 5.2 years, 170 visits, last login: 5 days ago
updated 162 days ago
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| | re: Clearwire Review yes thats about right. good accurate review  | |
| | | | Re: re: Clearwire Review I absolutely hate the clear 4g service i live an go to school in the middle of nrw york and have yet to see the 4-g hotspot actually work at 4g speed or 3g speed for that matter hell just getting it to work at all without losing signal is a job in an of itself i can't wait for the day something better comes along im switching asap | |
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| Review by Snowy - Location: Kailua,Honolulu,HI
- Cost: $35 per month (24 month contract)
- Install: about 1 days
Good "They got caught ripping me off"
Bad "Adding worthless premium features without my consent"
Overall "They cheat customers using phantom charges"
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DO NOT USE Clear's Autopay option!
They think 'autopay' pay means they can auto add premium service charges without bothering to ask the customer how they feel about it.
A $9 mo overcharge that ran 4 months before the crooks got caught.
The CS believed that since they credited the $36 back to the account I should be grateful.
I am not grateful for crooks paying restitution.
Despite Clear's unclear terms & costs it does have a place as backup connection.
With RR as my goto provider a recent rash of power outages has either knocked me offline or RR offline, Clear to go has kept me online.
Clear to go has been dependable.
Not fast but dependable.
Clear to go has saved the day twice in the past year when TWC went offline.
As a backup, it's not a bad thing to have.
member for 10.5 years, 5919 visits, last login: a few hours ago
updated 184 days ago
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| Review by PamelaTS - Location: Dallas,Dallas,TX
- Cost: $52 per month (12 month contract)
- Install: about 3 days
Good "When Moving the home modem is all you have to move and the service moves with you"
Bad "Much higher latency than I expected, FAR short of the UPTO claimed max speed"
Overall "I will likely take advantage of the $15 p/m intro for two months and switch to Cable ugh"
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See my newer CLEAR review; post moving.
I admit I was skeptical going into this. Had been an SBC DSL customer for near on 10 years. The recent rate increase they were putting forward were the last straw.
Information on installation is EXTREMELY spartan. Had to call tech support just to initialize the account. I understand green means saving paper there comes a point when taking it to such extreme is just ridiculous. No where was there any indication what to do setting up my third party router? is this a DHCP setup, or what?
I was supposed to see 6m down and 1m up. I see anywhere from 1.2 - 4.5mb down very inconsistent and the best up I've seen is low 600kb (very briefly). Based on wireless I anticipated higher latency SBC/AT&T I saw 16-19, latency on Clear is 64-97. Pingtest.net scored it a D, before it got blocked!
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Called to cancel, gawd I wanted this to work well. It does work the latency is really high though. The initial sales rep was attempting to use high pressure which I did resist. The second rep I talked to was better, yet it would seem still dishonest. This morning the best rates I could get where under 2.75M down and barely over 500K up.
Customer service wanted to con me into waiting and trying other things with tech support so that my 7 day trial would evaporate. I'm hip to their high pressure BS.
I'm sure that if they would invest in rural towers where DSL is not and cable maybe then this could potentially be a viable option. In the city though where ROCK solid performance by DSL VDSL and even cable exist this is NOT a credible, economical option.
Want a laugh they actually expect you to believe they are gonna run a reliable VOIP service on this shaky connection, and sales was Oh yeah you can send/receive the occasional fax over VOIP. Sales said affirming oh yeah no problem, LOL! No, I didn't try the VOIP add on wanted to see a solid ISP first. There is no way a reliable VOIP is gonna run on the wild roller coaster connection, much less FAX over it.
Not happening, don't believe it.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 8-17-2011 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Ok, I moved a slight distance (3 blocks) had issues with AT&T no longer could get the elite tier. TWC had a wiring issue in the building which I wasn't going to pay for.
Giving Clear a second chance a friend informed me since I first tried them they had improved. I did not want a 2 year contract but that what the jerk gave me, Tha'ts ok, that Ccard expires soon I'll use that and the issues I been having since to renegotiate. Oh second tier tech support determined the modem was bad (flaky) expecting a new one today.
Still no way in hell they gonna run stable voice/phone on this and I'm only 5 minutes from downtown Dallas, Parkland Hospital and Love Field airport This is not a REMOTE area just blocks from I-35 the Dallas North Tollway and a mile from North Central expressway
member for 9.4 years, 1107 visits, last login: 2 days ago
updated 186 days ago
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| Review by wfidler42580 - Location: undisclosed location
- Cost: $50 per month
Bad "Slower than watching paint dry"
Overall "never again"
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Got Clear for my home me and my son play games on pc and console and we also watch netflix as far as multi-tasking goes this isp blows we couldn't play a game on the pc and watch netflix on the ps3 at the same time and i starting getting dial up d/l speeds. When we cancelled our service they cut off our service a day before our billing cycle had ended even though it was paid for till the next day. Would never do buisness with them again. Switched to centurylink and never been happier 30 bucks cheaper a month and have not had any issues with it. we are loving the 12mbs with centurylink and would never go back to clear.
member for 300 days, 0 visits, last login: 300 days ago
updated 300 days ago
Comments:
| | 4 years of making payments on time and Piss Poor Service Clear just cut my internet today after 4 years of dedicated and religiously making payments on time, and sometimes 2 or 3 days before due date, and them delivering piss poor service. I only stayed with them because I thought one day they would try to improve their service, and I could watch streaming video without interruptions. They have got to be the slowest internet provider in the world, one step above dial-up maybe. I would not recommend anyone getting service with them. Stay as far away from them as you can. You have been warned! | |
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