Clearwire HSIA-Anyone using/tried them?
 

Am looking to move up to high speed internet here at the hacienda(yea I know-it's 2006 and that's stuffs been available since before Al invented the internet but with 300+ nights on the road, I had no real need for it(dial-up took care of my few needs-slowly but lived with it), Travel is changing now, so here I am)

House is in Raleigh, NC and you'd think with RTP just down the road(silicon gulch) that HSIA would not cost an arm and a leg but it does(I for one hopes that AT&T buys Bellsouth-I want 14.99 SBC/Yahoo/AT&T HSI, like on the West Coast

Got an offer from Clearwire.com for their HSIA-it's wireless HSIA(founded by Craig McGaw)
The plans are
768K-$29.99/mth with 3 months at 19.99(avg 27.49/mth)
3 emails/no storage
1.5M-$36.99/mth with 3 months at 19.99(avg 32.74/mth)
5 emails, 10MB storage.

Those prices seem fair to what my other options are(more below) but $50 activation fee and $99 for the modem(or 4.99/month) so 768K is now 36.65 and 1.5M is 41.90.
1 or 2 yr term-don't see amount for term fee

In comparison
Earthlink Cable Light-768K-29.95/month
Earthlink DSL-1.5-Avg is 29.95/month([email protected] and [email protected])
Earthlink Cable-upto 5.0Mb-35.95/month([email protected] and [email protected])
Free set up and modem(BUT it's Earthlink-had issues with them in past trying to cancel dial up service years ago)
1 yr term-149 fee for early out

(Since this is FT, I can get 10,000 NW/AA/DL miles for around .006/mile by raising monthly cost slightly)

Bellsouth
DSL Lite-256K-24.95/month
DSL ULTRA-1.5M-32.95/month
DSL Extreme-3.0M-37.95
Modem after rebate

Time Warner Cable(Roadrunner)
RR Lite-768K-24.95
[email protected]+6@????
RR [email protected]+6@????
(gotta love a website that you can't find complete pricing information on)

So----it appears that Clearwire is not priced that poorly v. the others.
It appeals to me
1.Because they offer service in Greensboro/Winston-Salem(my parents live in Jamestown)
and I may be able to use the service when I'm there and/or they may be able too as well(maybe even at the same time)
2. I like the idea of new ventures and believe wireless internet is on a good bubble.

Any one tried it?

Thoughts???? Feed Back ?????

Realize latency (if it's important to you) will be worse with wireless, and the connection may be less reliable.
I always prefer a hardwire connection over wireless, even if there is a bit of an extra cost.
-a

Avoid it at all costs.

I had it for about a year in the Jacksonville, FL market. I found the service to be extremely location sensitive (more so than a cell phone). Accordingly, the connection (and thus performance/throughput) was either very good or execrable.

If in an apartment or multi-story dwelling, you will find that the supplied modem will get a signal only if placed flush against a window facing the transmission tower for your "cell". If without such a window, you are SOL.

(Incidentally, when the service did work, throughput was ~20% less than the rated throughput of the plan purchased.)

Performance issues aside, the worst thing about their service was their practice about commitments. Example: When I "downgraded" my plan from one speed to another, the customer service agent, when asked, told me that I would not be bound to a new commitment cycle by virtue of this change. Guess what happened? My commitment was renewed anyway. The term fee? The remaining months on my commitment. Luckily, I ended up moving to a market that they did not serve, which, according to the contract, was a legitimate way to break the commitment.

Clearwire is pushing WiMax, however they don't even use standard WiMax. They have proprietary gear which is why you have to buy their modem (which will be completely obsoleted by a standard WiMax modem).

This is just my opinion, but CM is building this network in order to sell it for 3 times what he paid. We call it "dressing up a pig" and hoping some fool will buy it. I would stay far away from it.

He dressed his first pig up pretty damn well.

But thanks to responses here and a few other boards, Clearwire and I are not going to be in the same pen.

However, ,looks like AT&T claims to now offer service to me and I signed up with them for 19.99/month-woot

If you are going to sell something for over a Billion, you have to make it look real good.

But really the only value Clearwire has is the spectrum. How valuable that is is yet to be determined.

B@ST@RDS(covad-who was reselling AT&T) are now saying-oops looks like we can not really provide you with service, too bad-claims to be too far from central switch. Guess a letter to the FCC and state utilities commission is in order for false advertising

Pretty interesting. They're rolling Clearwire out hard in the Seattle market and we've had about three pieces of direct mail about it here at the house. I must say I was tempted -- we're currently on Verizon DSL and have not been impressed. But the direct mail stuff is pretty sneaky -- it never reveals the standard monthly rate after the promo rate wears off, and it never lets slip that you have to pay a monthly modem rental fee or buy the modem outright.

Any more Clearwire reports?

http://www.dslreports.com/
and search on Clearwire.

I think verizon is offering dsl for 14.99/month for new customers 768k. See if you are in their area.

As the OP says above, he is outside the range of DSL. So he has to go with another technology. Rural customers don't have it easy. They can use satellite, or perhaps EDGE or EV-DO or hope that a wireless operator like Clearwire covers their area. However you want a wireless operator that actually does a good job.