Is anyone using Clearwire/Clear's wireless broadband offering for stationary
branch offices/remote equipment monitoring? Looking for results/experiences
off-list. We're looking at it for industrial telemetry, and have spoken to
people using ATT and VZW who are doing the same, but we wanted to look at
Clear as well. Curious as to reliability, link performance, and support
quality.
Thanks!
Brandon
Is anyone using Clearwire/Clear's wireless broadband offering for
stationary
branch offices/remote equipment monitoring? Looking for
results/experiences
off-list. Curious as to reliability, link performance, and support
quality.
Me too! I'd love to hear from anyone that's used it extensively.
I haven't in a few years (I worked for someone who thought of themselves as a clearwire competitor), but we replaced a bunch of them that customers had, we installed a few of them with our own stickers on them, and we always kept one in the truck for those times we couldn't hit our own networks but we could hit theirs...
the gear was generally solid - as long as you could get a good signal.
inside datacenters, basements, and telco huts, though, were not places that good signal was often available....
My coworker has a total of 6 hours into calling each and every Clear number that is publically facing and has yet to reach a person that even understands the question. We have boiled it down to the Clear business model is designed merely to sell you the generic modem and have a nice day. There appears to be zero interest in their business model to accommodate the enterprise.
I really hope I am wrong, and if someone has a number of someone willing to deal with the enterprise customer base PLEASE forward it on.
Mike
There
appears to be zero interest in their business model to accommodate the
enterprise.
In my own personal experience, there appears to be zero interest in their business model to accommodate the CUSTOMER.
They go on and on about how their frequency-space gives them a competitive advantage, but their network is unreliable and extremely traffic policed (try downloading something. You MIGHT get close to the advertised speed for a few seconds, but you'll spend the next 2 hours browsing at the speed of mud when the traffic policer kicks in. Do it too often, and it seems to stop de-limiting you altogether). As far as I can tell, the issue isn't on the customer-leg, it's on their backhauls and core network. Worse, their customer service is nonexistent, and their cancellation policy is a nightmare (so bad that there's a class action against them - not sure where it's at, haven't checked in a while).
I have heard horror stories from their employees, their resellers, and fellow former customers. They're filing/have filed for bankruptcy. How many letters does it take to spell 'broken'? If you have a POTS line at locations where you need a connection, find someone who will sell you dialup, or get 3G service from a cell carrier (careful - 4G Sprint service is provided by Clearwire). You will, sadly, be happier.
Nathan
(This is my own personal opinion based on my experiences and the experiences directly related to me by others. It does not reflect solid fact or reality. My employer probably thinks my opinion is false - and it may well be.)
I replaced a 3mbps/768kbps ADSL provisioned through Qwest with Clearwire's
home offering. I've been mostly satisfied from a cost/performance
standpoint - for $55/mo I get a mostly equal replacement for the DSL
as well as service for a second usb dongle for my laptop. I've had to
go through an uncomfortable process with their support people on two
occasions when their service was booting me off every 3-10 mins. Turns out
somehow my home address changed in their system and they decided to treat
my home modem as a traveling modem. As others have stated they seemed aloof
and lacked access to more than a script and basic tools for troubleshooting.
Service has been mostly reliable for me in the Seattle area. Transfer
rates are sufficient.
-m
We use it for some of our juice bar operations but we buy the service from Sprint. We have been very happy with the service.
Cheers
Ryan
Since I'm not with Clearwire anymore (end of contract) I can say that
there are people in the core networking that do follow and respond the
this list.
I can say that their backbone is solid and the people there really do
care about the network.
If you have serious a backbone issue with Clearwire a message on this
list will result in a response..