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Sarusan
join:2010-08-30
Seattle, WA

Sarusan

Member

[Fixed] Seattle, WA - AVOID Clear Wireless!!

Clear's 4G Home (fixed location) service is horrible in the Seattle market, especially if you are located in West Seattle around the Admiral District.

The tower here suffers from RF issues that I have been unable to have Clear resolve for over 5 months.

After finally talking with a rep who was actually helpful, it turns out previous trouble tickets requests were never generated or were never looked into by Clear.

Basically if you order service in this area you are on your own ... customer support is worthless!!

My service went down last night at 11 pm, came up around 9:20 am while I was on the phone with tech support (that is only available form 9 am to 9 or 10 pm) but has only managed to regain connectivity at a level 1 signal. According to Clear reps, a minimum of level 3 signal is required for proper service.

In any case, I keep getting stupid excuses or having the problem blamed on my CPE (which has been upgraded recently) or that I am simply outside the tower's coverage area.

Well WiMax is supposed to have a range of 2 + miles LOS form an antenna .... I am less than 0.50 miles LOS from the antenna which also sits at a higher elevation. Anyone that understands RF signals will know that this should be an optimum situation .... it is not. As a matter of fact I have been able to determine that the likely cause of these issues is a poorly mounted antenna that is not secure enough to prevent it from shifting when the conditions are windy as well as other provisioning issues.

In any case, if you are in the 98116 or 98126 zip codes I highly recommend using Qwest DSL (most reliable) or Comcast.

The 4G mobile service seems ok, but it has roaming issues compared to 3G cellular data services ... basically the modem does not quickly or smoothly hand off between antennas ... or at all some times.

FYI, I took the time to track down their (well hidden) corporate telephone number for Kirkland, WA .... and that was a waste of time as well since they will pass you off to one of the CS call centers.

10 + years experience in telecom ..... CS wasn't this bad even when I worked for a LEC (US West) ... at least their support personnel listen to someone who is knowledgable enough to properly diagnose a service issue 100% of the time!!!
jasg
join:2008-12-13
Seattle, WA

jasg

Member

Boy, I hope I don't have to deal with CS.

Not all of Seattle is so bad though, I get good performance in Shoreline and can ride the 358 bus to downtown and only lose signal for a few blocks just north of Greenlake.

DoRight
join:2007-07-20
East Petersburg, PA

DoRight to Sarusan

Member

to Sarusan
Works great for me..
cliffcor
join:2006-08-01
Bothell, WA

cliffcor

Member

I'm not is Seattle Proper, but up in North Bothell, it's been great for me.
JJV
Premium Member
join:2001-04-25
Seattle, WA

JJV to Sarusan

Premium Member

to Sarusan
I dumped them. They couldnt handle the voip and netflix traffic on my home network.

I may try them for a mobile connection some time in the future.
Sarusan
join:2010-08-30
Seattle, WA

Sarusan

Member

Thank you for all of the responses.

I travel to Redmond & Kirkland where my mobile service works fine.

But there are a number of areas that are having chronic issues and they appear to be predominantly in and around Downtown Seattle & West Seattle.

After spending over 5 months trying to resolve the problem with my service degrading I recently learned that a large portion of the towers in the area require major upgrades or hardware replacements which are not slated to begin for another 2 months or longer.

Apparently a lot of these locations are towers that were formerly owned by Sprint before their transfer to Clearwire.

Unfortunately they are stating that it will be late November before they begin working on these towers.

After reading many forums here and elsewhere, it seems this is a common problem nationwide in areas with towers that are over a year old.

It seems that Clear's focus has been with rapid expansion rather than proper maintenance and monitoring of existing facilities and relying on sub-contractors who apparently are not doing a proper job.

In any case, I expect service to degrade in other areas once they mature and become neglected by Clear .... or had low quality hardware installed that begins to fail.

In any case, this is why I will be switching back to cable, DSL or FIOS once I move to the Eastside soon.

FYI, Bellevue and some of the surrounding areas appear to be experiencing similar issues recently.