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Review by tagar 
UPDATED: a few hours ago
member for 5.4 years, 433 visits, last login: a few hours ago
 Souderton,Montgomery,PA
 $63 per month (24 month contract)
 about 2 days
 "To early yet but low cost good Customer Support"
 "Nothing yet."
 "Low cost for unlimited calling and fast internet"
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11/28/09 :: Full Success
I checked my Phone adapter and the phone line is lite up and I can get on the internet via the router. I did a couple test calls and we are ready for a week of testing.
11/28/09 :: Partial Success.
I had to wait a day for the equipment because of the Thanksgiving Day holiday. But pretty early on Friday I got the Modem and TWO phone adapters. I called support but did not have time to get into set up at that point. Later in the night I hooked up the Modem and connected it to my Westell 327w Wireless modem\router from Verizon and had that working with just a couple hiccups. I was trying to configure things but then found that the 327w and the Clear modem worked everything out on their own.
The Two phone adapters turned out to be an issue. After trying both of them and trying t activate them on the web I had to call tech support. It sounds like neither one of them were attached to my account. He opened a ticket and asked that I try it again in a day or so.
As for my signal. I haven't done to much moving around of the Modem and it blinks between 4 and 5 bars, once in a while dropping to three if I push it back were I would really like to hide it. I run a bunch of speed tests and it is getting between 2 and 3 down. Keep in mind that I am maybe a Mile from the tower too. I was only getting 1.2 or so from VZ DSL.
As long as the phone quality is good I'm going to consider this a win. I couldn't get these internet speeds (unless I did fios which I'm not sure i can get here) and unlimited calling plus DSL was up around $80 or $90.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
11/25/09 :: Jumping from Verizon to Clear.
I found out the tower was less than a mile away even though we are a good 50 minutes from Philadelphia.
I ordered the internet and phone bundle $50 for life. Plus I am leasing the modem for $5 a month.
Start up total was $70. First month service($50)+lease ($5)+buying the phone adapter($15 special)
I let them pick a new phone number for me.
Estimated delivery for Black Friday 2009.
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Review by lineinteract
Posted: 2 days ago
Fair warning: reviewer joined this week
Austin,Travis,TX
$50 per month
about 1 days
"$50 for home and mobile is very good"
"2-3MBps vs 6 advertised, random outages"
"Stick with DSL or Cable unless you really need mobile "4G""
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Signed up Nov 1 - and have had mediocre service ever since. Getting 200-300k/s at best on downloads while the service is advertised as "6MB usually/Unlimited occasionally" for download speeds. CPEi 150 modem for the home can be bricked by simply unchecking the "Use DHCP" checkbox in the management interface - and Clear will want you to buy a new one to replace it. Check the forums here for my solution to unbrick.
Had a full 1 day service outage earlier this week due to Clear "upgrading" their towers - no advance notice, and no reason to have it be out.
Stick with DSL or cable - they're faster and more reliable.
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Review by The1TheOnly
UPDATED: 4 days ago
member for 17 days, 12 visits, last login: a few hours ago
Jacksonville,Duval,FL
$40 per month (24 month contract)
about 60 days
"Great speeds, connection, price, reliability"
"None"
"I highly recommend clearwire personally."
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I've had clearwire for a few months now. I have read a lot of horror stories about clearwire, however my experience has been completely opposite. From the day I purchased clearwire, I have had a full signal, with excellent speeds. The package I have is supposed to get speeds of 1.5 D/L and .256 U/L. When running speed tests, I average around 1.56 U/L and .30 U/L. Installation was as simple as taking it out of the box, and plugging it in. Thats it! I've had cable with comcast, and AT&T U-Verse, both more pricey, and had more issues as far as reliability, and speed that I was supposed to get, I didn't. Clearwire is a newer company and is still working on their coverage areas, so I can imagine that a lot of the reviewers of this service are having some issues as do all new companies and technologies... With clearwire, it's truly does matter where you are located in relation to one of their towers, as well as where you modem is located in your home. Fortunately for me, I have a tower about a mile down the road from me that I can see from my front door, which is why I have probably had such an excellent experience overall. When you purchase the service, the representative can tell you exactly where a tower is in relation to your home address. I think if you ask that question before you buy this service, you should definitely go for it. If clearwire as a company isn't the future of the internet, the technology is.
Followup comments:  ernliz
join:2001-11-25
Abilene, TX
 ·Clearwire Wireless
| Really? As you said, you have a tower a half mile down the road, and can see it. Any wonder? How about the claim by Clear that their service is excellent up to 5 miles from a tower. That, of course, is BS.
Good for you! But many don't live on top of a tower, and apparently that's what it takes to get fine service. But thanks anyway for your report. | |
| | 
love CLEAR
@clearwire-dns.net
| Re: Lets Get our Facts Stright Clear does not say you can be 5 miles from a tower and get signal, I don't know where you got your information, If you would know how the technology works you would not say that. Clear ( Clearwire ) spectrum only goes as far as 1 to 2 miles. I have Clearwire and I LOVE THE Service, This company is the only internet provider I have ever had that there Tech support is great as well as the sales person that sold it to me. | |
| | | ernliz
join:2001-11-25
Abilene, TX
·Clearwire Wireless
| Lets Get our Facts Stright: OK, straight facts here YES, several Clear Tech Support types told me 5 miles is fine, but about max. In fact, one said I was getting my signal from a tower 7 miles away, and I had two lights. I'm in a flat zone, but I find that hard to believe.
True or not, that's from Clear directly. In any case, I used to get 4 -- 5 lights prior to the WIMAX conversion from a tower 4.7 miles away (confirmed). Now I get nothing from that tower, and apparently I now use some other tower they can't identify, but which is at least 5 miles distant and get 2 solid lights. Performance mostly sucks though, as you suggest.
Big question: does anyone know whether Clear can actually identify which tower we're connected to??? I get mixed opinions from Clear, depending on the person at the time. | |
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Duramax08
Oh rly?
join:2008-08-03
San Antonio, TX
·Clearwire Wireless
 ·Juno Express
| Re: Lets Get our Facts Stright: OK, straight facts here Clear should be able to tell you which tower you are on since they told me im 3.5 miles away from the tower NW from my house. Sometimes I think there are monkeys typing and are following a script which sometimes dont even make sense.
--
High speed internet is on my road thanks to Clear 4G! F$*% you AT&T and TWC! | |
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Review by kguru
UPDATED: 4 days ago
member for 11 days, 11 visits, last login: a few hours ago
Seattle,King,WA
$45 per month
"Easy, fast setup, pretty reliable"
"Pings are sometimes high, sales kiosk at mall was not familiar with plans available"
"Good option for people not able to bundle Internet with the cable company"
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The Clearwire mall kiosk was advertising the 3G service in the Seattle area. There was confusion about the types of plans available. The plan I selected was the 1.5 mbps plan for $36 a month, which includes the modem lease. The modem is a Motorola wireless broadband modem. The modem has had full bars of service (5 bars) the whole time I have had the service. The connection might occasionally drop as I have noticed instant messenger has disconnected overnight, but I have not noticed any times where I had no service. I was told that the Seattle area will be upgraded to Clear's 4G network within the next few weeks, in which case an upgraded modem would be used to access a faster network. Speedtests yield me between 1.2 mbps and 1.8 mbps depending on server I use. The ping test results vary from about 29 ms to about 300 ms. The higher ping times result in some delays of the page loading, though usually the pings come back down after a little while. Installing the service consisted of unpacking the modem, placing it by a window, and then connecting an ethernet cable and power to it. It then loaded some welcome to Clearwire information, and then was ready to use.
Update: 11/24/09 I have ordered the upgrade to Wimax and should receive the modem in the next day or two. Pings seem to be a little lower the last few days, perhaps this is a result of some people having already been transferred over to the new network in the Seattle area.
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Review by AngelComa
Posted: 5 days ago
Fair warning: reviewer joined this week
Visalia,Tulare,CA
$29 per month (10 month contract)
"Easy set up, nice when it works"
"Up and down speeds, ping times are not stable"
"If you are not into using real time applications, this is for you"
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Hey guys, this is a quick review of my first month on Clearwire. First of all I have done extensive research on the company, I know about the shady contracts, I know the complaints, but decided to try it anyway because it was either this or Dial up and I'm glad I did.
First of all the speed has been jumpy, from 80kbs downloads to 180kbs (oh yeah). I'm subscribed to 1.5mbps up and what is it down? 500kbps? I don't really know but upload in general is trash.
Ping times are hit and miss really. I'll be playing a game and its running smooth for 10 mins and then all of a sudden, big hits of lag. Very annoying!
The ping and downlaods are much faster in the middle of the night/early mornings. Here is 5:23AM
»www.speedtest.net/result/631160959.png
»www.pingtest.net/result/4170686.png
It can play nice when it wants, but it doesn't do it all the time.
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Review by johnslater
UPDATED: 7 days ago
member for 164 days, 17 visits, last login: 1 days ago
Wheaton,Dupage,IL
$30 per month
about 1 days
"Easy install"
"Haven't seen 6Mbps yet"
"Good value, decent service"
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So far so good. Clear is new to Chicagoland and doesn't claim to work in Wheaton yet, but I drove around last night listening to a web stream and only had a couple of brief drops. I understand they are still in the process of activating towers in the burbs. Best bandwidth I have seen is about 2.5Mbps which is not too shabby, although short of the promised 6Mbps I signed up for.
Promotional rate was too good to pass up: $30/month for first 6 months, rising to $45 thereafter. No contract! USB modem for $50.
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Review by dysfunkshun
Posted: 10 days ago
Fair warning: reviewer joined this month
Las Vegas,Clark,NV
$40 per month
"not many"
"spotty at best, slow, bad support"
"terrible choice"
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Ive had clear for about 3 months now, and have never had a fair connection. when i first got it, i had it hooked directly into my computer. it took 7 hours to download an iphone update because it kept knocking the connection off. since, ive tried updating my ps3, which took 28 hours to finally update and download my purchases. i constantly received messages about the update being aborted due to internet timeouts. i have called clear several times to try to resolve these issues with the pretty much standard "try unplugging the modem and router and resetting." after that didnt work, it was "maybe theres a tower problem." its still spotty at best, and overall just a waste. at this point, id be better off going with cox, which i decided against because of their temporary outages at least once a week. now i get outages multiple times a day, ranging from a couple minutes to a couple hours. i even get times where my computer still says it is connected, but no page will load. i tried to do a ping test from a website which failed because it kept timing out. i tried with another site and got 149ms ping with 11ms jitter, which i dont know what that means. the speed test resulted in 1.32 down and .49 up which is less than the 3 down and 1 up i pay for. bottom line, avoid clear like the plague!
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Review by gpctexas
UPDATED: 15 days ago
member for 5.8 years, 110 visits, last login: a few hours ago
Odessa,Ector,TX
Contract price not specified.
"Was good for 1 week"
"has been poor ever since"
"Clearly cannot provide the needed capacity for the services they offer"
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What other options did you consider for broadband?
Only 2 options in my area for internet, dial up or wireless.
What SPEED/package did you order, at what monthly price?
6mb service, barely receive 0.2 mb at ~$45 with static ip
What good or bad experiences most struck you?
Clear aka clearwire has never provided the service they offer. I am 4 weeks in on the new Wimax service and during that time there has been a major service outage and speeds never get above 256k. The new modem forces you into their nat router on their modem which cannot be disabled. I'd rather have my cisco router handle my internet and nating,
Tech support, although improved somewhat, still make you jump through the hoops to prove it is not your computer.
Update: 11/13/2009 Issues still persist, service is highly unstable and poor performance. So called "Tower Problems" for the area are taking too long to repair.
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Review by Duramax08
UPDATED: 19 days ago
member for 1.3 years, 510 visits, last login: a few hours ago
San Antonio,Bexar,TX
$30 per month (24 month contract)
about 1 days
"Unlimited, Fast and Cheap"
"All of a sudden im out of the service area?"
"Starting to get fishy........."
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Clear recently launched in San Antonio and they said I can get their services so I decided to go for it after years of dial up. Got the 3mbps down with 1 mbps up for $30 a month. You can lease or buy the equipment but the home modem was only $70 so I decided to buy it rather then lease it for $5 a month. Got home and hooked it up but had no signal. Moved it around the house and got 1 out of 5 bars at the kitchen and decided check out the speed. Got on and did the simple registering stuff and was on the web. Did a speed test and got 5mbps down ON ONE BAR! Upload was a little on the slow side with .1mbps but its probably because of the signal. Also the latency was 142ms. On dialup I use to play realtime games with a latency of 300ms so im gona try xbox live and tell you the results. Im just happy that I can finally get something better then dial up. Thank god for clear coming into town. 4G FTW!
Update 11/08/2009
Lost signal around 3pm today. Still have my dial up connected so I got online with that and got on the clear website to chat with a rep and they say they have a problem at the local tower and it should be fixed within 2 hours. Other then that its been smooth so far. Still getting 3mbps down. I can play gta4 with a friend with no problem but i get some problems when playing with other people. I can also play runescape which I have been playing for years and it seems faster now due to the lower latency I have now which is around 150ms. on dial up i believe it was 300ms. Will keep you up-to-date if anything else happens.
Update Evening 11/08/2009
Signal was still gone so went back to chat with the rep online. They said that I am not in the coverage area. WTF? I was in it all last week and now im gone? They said I would have to call tech support but I really dont got time to do all there run arounds. I moved the modem where I first had it and I got 1 bar. Better then nothing I guess.
Update 11/9/2009
Still have a bar on the modem and this is the last day of the trial. I can back out now or go for the long nasty ride............
too bad they didnt put a antenna port on the modem. That would really help me. Right now im thinking of going outside and looking for the best signal and put it in a weather proof enclosure.
Followup comments: ernliz
join:2001-11-25
Abilene, TX
·Clearwire Wireless
| Clear Stuff... Good for you and your Clear performance. It seems like you can get more than 1 light if you play with the the placement of the modem a little more.
You're one of the lucky ones. I get 2 to 3 lights on my modem and am very, very lucky to get over 500 kbps. I suspect a tower issue but the local Clear people at Abilene TX are mentally-challenged as far as their service and technical prowess goes.
Please keep us posted on future performance issues. Many have started out with excellent speeds (like me) only to have them deteriorate soon thereafter. | |
| |
Duramax08
Oh rly?
join:2008-08-03
San Antonio, TX
·Clearwire Wireless
·Juno Express
| Re: Clear Stuff... Got 2 bars now in another room and getting what im paying for. Getting 3.5mbps right now. Thinking of upgrading to the next plan with no cap on the download side. I tried xbox live but it seems like I cant play that great due to the latency but I can play another game that ive been playing since dial up. Going to take it to town soon and will post results.
--
High speed internet is on my road thanks to Clear 4G! F$*% you AT&T and TWC! | |
| ernliz
join:2001-11-25
Abilene, TX
·Clearwire Wireless
| Hey Duramax....... Thanks for the updates. I read your comments of Nov 8th and 9th and it's getting interesting! As I wrote before, things seem to get worse as the days go on with Clear for many users. Please keep us posted on your performance in the days to come.
Also, this may be trivial, but when you update, and the report is not so good, adjust your rating of Clear. Your last update still has your original "very good" rating, and this may not have been what you wanted. Sure as hell don't want Clear to get credit for their service when it's not warranted. | |
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Duramax08
Oh rly?
join:2008-08-03
San Antonio, TX | Re: Hey Duramax....... What I am going to do tomorrow is put the modem in a weather proof enclosure and put the modem outside somewhere.
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High speed internet is on my road thanks to Clear 4G! F$*% you AT&T and TWC! | |
| | | ernliz
join:2001-11-25
Abilene, TX | Re: Hey Duramax....... Great, and plz keep us informed. This may be THE answer for some of us. | |
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Duramax08
Oh rly?
join:2008-08-03
San Antonio, TX | Re: Hey Duramax....... will do. | |
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Review by danclearwire
UPDATED: 25 days ago
member for 25 days, 3 visits, last login: 19 days ago
Lockport,Will,IL
$50 per month (24 month contract)
about 1 days
"Much faster than DSL -- Down"
"Clearwire site was so slow, it was difficult to activate. Probably b/c Chicago on boarding."
"Too early to tell, but considering my town was shown in an uncovered spot, I'm pretty happy."
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4.5 x my DSL speed for download. Apx. same for upload.
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