Wireless / Mobile > Clearwire > [General] Does Clearwire Have a 5 GB Cap (or any cap)?

[General] Does Clearwire Have a 5 GB Cap (or any cap)?

In Portland, there is an unlimited plan and I don't know of any cap on that..

It doesn't even compare to cell phone companies.. It's a different technology.

I tried out the mobile service and it was screamin fast.. 5mb down.. 60ms ping.. but only got that signal downtown.

EDIT: Oh sorry, this was for the WIMAX service. i think it's only available in like 3 cities right now

reply to dbiz
I've read through the Clear Terms of Service (»www.clear.com/company/legal/terms.php) and the definition of the "Unlimited" plan is a bit unclear. Here's the wording:

3. Data Plans/Overages - Applicable only to CLEAR Accounts

You will be entitled to use the CLEAR Service for the bandwidth amounts and download speeds (collectively referred to as the "Plan Amount") listed on your Order Confirmation. If you exceed your allotted Plan Amount, Clearwire will automatically charge you and you agree to pay an additional internet service usage fee per gigabyte of additional bandwidth pursuant to the provisions of your Order Confirmation (the "Overage Charge"). Your Plan Amount does not roll-over, but expires at the end of each month with all unused amounts forfeited.

reply to mihooper

reply to dbiz
As far as I can tell, the unlimited plan has no "Plan Amount" specified. Will let you know if that changes after the "official launch" this month.

Hi,

Clear Kevin here. The unlimited plan is, indeed, unlimited. Keep in mind, you can provide questions or comments @ clearwire.com/tellus and myclearservice.com/share.

Thanks for your interest,

Clear Kevin out.

reply to dbiz
Kevin,

Thanks for weighing in. A couple of questions.

1. Any plans to fill the coverage gap in Marietta (suburb of Atlanta)? I would love to give to boot to AT&T but can't with the lousy signal level here at home.

2. When's the "official" Atlanta launch?

MikeH

"
2. When's the "official" Atlanta launch?"
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It lauched this week "offical" per the local tech happen to run into. Just got activated today in 30044

There are caps obviously on the capped plans, but not for the unlimited plans.

I pepper the sales guru and the local tech hard about this and both confimed there are no hard caps at this time and point to AUP\Terms. Basically he said look if your really abusing the crap out of it pulling down like 1tb a month consistently and doing it during peek times and it's stressing your area in theory you could get a call to take it down a notch but he's never heard of that happening yet and just said... keep under 500gb a month and you should never hear from us, and suggested only thing they might do during peek is throttle you back to 50%, but was not aware of any automated system in place for that yet. Take it for what it's worth.

reply to dbiz
I asked about this when I signed up, and they gave me what sounds like the same response everyone else received.

They state that there are no caps on the Unlimited plan, but that "excessive" usage will incur throttling. I specifically asked about 60-120gb/mo, as that's what I was doing on my DSL, and they said that that was well within reason.

Both the Clear.com chat and the local rep seemed to be "with it" regarding streaming video. They sound like they're on board with users who do a fairly large amount of video streaming and downloading, which is to be expected from them since the majority of their targeted demo. is going to be people moving away from Cable internet+TV and the AT&T Satellite+DSL packages.

We've been banging ours sometimes for 10GB/day but nobody has said anything. Once I started getting better DL speeds (gone from 1-3Mbps to 6-9Mbps) we were hogging it up even less.

But after a while, you get caught up and then it's not a whole lot anymore. It's really hard to eat up that amount of bandwidth with only streaming (even if it's HD video) on a single device. Sometimes I can fill the pipe up if it's not running smoothly (less and less often these days, good job Clear!) but as far as overall mass of data transfer per month, it's not happening casually...you have to try to use that much or have a lot of automation that does it for you.

Of course, they make it all too easy to run multiple devices since they have DCHP and NAT turned on for you. Get a switch or WiFi AP...again, most people aren't going to be doing that on all their devices all the time, simultaneously.

What will put it to the test is not voice but when they decide to implement any sort of real internet subscription TV/radio (or more generically, "content") strategy...then people will be streaming constantly, from (many) multiple devices, at any time of day, and that's not even taking into account that at some point TV will get even more interactive...which means heavier upstream traffic...