First impressions: CLEAR WiMAX

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After checking out the CLEAR launch event in Philly last week I decided to give the WiMAX service a try and I signed up for a $50 for life plan that gives you both a USB modem for mobile use and and a home modem that you can hook up to a WiFi router to run a home network. That’s just a few bucks a month more than I’m paying right now for Verizon DSL, and it gives me the freedom of roaming around the city of Philadelphia with my WiMAX modem and a netbook. The service is also available in about two dozen other cities around the country, including Las Vegas where I’ll be spending about a week for the Consumer Electronics Show in January.

My CLEAR hardware arrived today, and it’s pretty no-frills stuff. The USB modem is fairly small, but if you don’t like the way it sticks out from your computer, you can use an included adapter to angle the modem so it shoots upward or runs along the side of your laptop.

CLEAR also ships a 32MB USB flash drive with the software you’ll need to connect to the internet using the USB modem. Unfortunately, the version of the software that’s included on the flash drive doesn’t support Windows 7, so you’ll need to download the latest version of the connection software from the web if you have a Windows 7 system.

The home modem is much easier to use. You just plug it in, insert an Ethernet cable and run the cable to your PC or a WiFi router. That’s it. You should be online in a few seconds.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that the CLEAR modems are pretty sensitive to location. I’ve been both the USB modem and the home modem in my office for the past 45 minutes or so, and my internet connection has already dropped out once. My upload and download speeds have been averaging somewhere in the 3-4MB/s down and 0.2-0.4MB/s up ranges. That’s significantly short of the 6MB/s down and 1MB/s upload speeds CLEAR promises.

But after wandering around the house a bit, I discovered that it’s a completely different story on the other side of the house where I get close to the advertised speed. What’s the difference? From my office window I have a nice view of the three-story building across the street. On the other end of the house, there are no tall buildings blocking our view. I’ll probably wind up sticking the home modem in the third floor window on that side of the house and plugging in a WiFi router.

If things don’t work out, I have two options.

  1. CLEAR offers a 7-day money back guarantee, so if I decide to return the equipment this week I won’t have to pay anything.
  2. I’m on a month to month plan, which means that I could keep the service for a few months, cancel, and then sign up again in a year if I want to. The only extra charges I would have to pay for would be the activation fees.

CLEAR is also available in Chicago, Atlanta, Dallas, Austin, Las Vegas, Portland, and a few other cities.

You can check out some photos I took while I was ripping open the boxes this afternoon in the gallery below.


Posted on Wednesday, November 11th, 2009, 4:04 pm by Brad
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  • flintstone
    The Clear WiMax service is fast in areas where the signal is strong. WiMax will be a viable alternative when/if Clear can afford to install more transmission equipment. For the moment, the cell phone companies have a big advantage in installed base. This makes their service close to ubiquitous, while WiMax is spotty. This is particularly true inside large buildings.
  • John Morris
    So how do they define 'Unlimited' Internet? Is it 10's of GB like AT&T's DSL service or 1 or 2GB like most cell carriers?
  • Neither. It's unlimited. They also have cheaper plans that do have caps. But
    the plan I'm on is capless.
  • John Morris
    I guess if they list caps on the other plans that would really make it extra hard for them to weasel out later. Excellent. Of course the odds of them making it far enough out into flyover country where I'm at before they wise up and stop offering unlimited contracts is pretty much zero. :(

    Of course there are the other questions you have to ask these days about Internet service. Do they offer static IP? How many ports do they block?
  • Not sure about ports, but you have to pay $10/month extra for a static IP.
  • markntravis
    No FiOS in your area?
  • It is in Philly, but I'm not sure if it's available on my block. More importantly, it's pretty expensive if you don't sign up for TV and/or phone service too and we do over the air TV and don't have a landline. So we're on DSL for now which is the cheapest broadband option, but pretty reliable overall.

    If CLEAR performs well over the next few months I might cancel the Verizon line though, as $50 for home *and* mobile broadband is an even better deal.
  • I recently ordered an Intel Wimax 5350 mini-pcie card for my little Aspire One, to replace that horrendous Atheros one. Aside from Draft N speeds, I can't wait to test Sprint's Wimax coverage here in Boston whenever it officially rolls out next year.
  • DougC3
    This sounds very promising and enviable. I was pining for WiMAX a few years ago, but finally gave up after realizing it might be decades before it gets to Alabama, which is sub-flyover-land, unless flying from Atlanta to New Orleans or Dallas-Fort Worth counts (not to say that we don't produce a lot of technological firsts here).

    Compared to my Comcast cable broadband, your laptop 4G is more or less free. The cable is much faster, but the I think the WiMAX will undoubedly speed up.
  • Yeah, technically it's not any faster than my Verizon DSL at the moment. But
    the fact that I can get mobile and home broadband for just a few bucks more
    than I'm already paying made it too good a deal to pass up. The promotion
    will probably end soon and the price will jump up to $65 for the deal I
    have... until another promotion comes along. But I signed up partly because
    I'm locked in at this rate "for life," whatever that means. :)
  • DougC3
    Too bad dongles are one of the few things where men think a smaller one is better ;)
  • briank66
    I tried signing up for the $50 plan Unlimited 2, home internet and voice, through the Clear.com website. I call customer service three times to confirm the $50 plan but each time they didn't know what I was talking about. It took a day for the account to be activated on their Clear 360 system when I logged in I found I was being charged $57.50 not $50. So I call Clear and canceled the service and returned the modem and Voip device. Clear is new to my area in Philadelphia, and I just don't trust them. So I'm doing a wait and see.

    Also I don't understand the 7 days why don't they offer 30 days.
  • Nice pics! I like how they sent you everything in one box.

    Over here in Las Vegas my experiences so far have been very close to yours.

    To help explain, I posted a few pictures of Clear WiMAX towers, networking devices, and screen shot examples on my Clear help tips page.

    http://www.acreativedesktop.com/clear-high-spee...
  • Van
    I can't get more then 1-2 bars with my WiMAX modem in my apartment no matter where I move it around me. I'm on my first day and already thinking of canceling.
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