Clearwire: Just Say No

[Jack Unger]

Tom - Just a few comments inline.

Tom Marshall wrote:

> I have just had the most awful experience with Clearwire and I wanted to
> warn others on this list just in case they were considering signing up for
> it.
> 
> I figured it would be cool to get wireless broadband for a reasonable price
> so I tried to sign up via their website.  That didn't work -- the website
> did not allow me to sign up with my address, even though addresses as close
> as two blocks away in any direction did work.
> 
> So I called up clearwire sales.  The sales rep ran into the same issue so he
> entered my work address into the system in order to let him make the sale. 
> In retrospect, this should have been a big warning sign, but I didn't think
> anything of it at the time.

Yes, that should have been the point where a person should say to 
themselves, "OK, for some reason, their coverage at my house is poor and 
  If I proceed, I'll have only myself to blame if I waste a lot of time, 
  energy, and money".

> 
> I'm a firm believer in providers being providers and staying out of the
> firewall business, so one of the very first questions I asked was whether
> they blocked any ports at all.  The sales guy was very nice and upfront and
> said he didn't know, so he transferred me to tech support.  The tech support
> rep assured me that no, they don't block any ports at all on their side.
> 
> Once I received the modem, I plugged it in and was unable to get a strong
> signal.  I spent quite a long time walking around my house waving a modem
> around in the air like a dork but the best I could get was a marginal
> signal.  I've made several calls to tech support and they all say that I'm
> well within range of at least two towers (about 0.25 miles to either) and
> they just can't understand why my signal is so bad.  

But someone (the person who prepared the website coverage page) knew 
that service would be poor at your location and properly coded the web 
site.


Today (two weeks later)
> they finally decided that they can't fix the problem over the phone and they
> actually have to send someone out to my house.  So sometime in the next
> three days I'll have the added inconvenience of scheduling a time to miss
> work so I can let a technician into my house and wave another modem around
> in the air.  If he can't get a good signal, they may want to mount a modem
> outside my house and that's sure to be another uphill battle (I'm not keen
> to put holes in my house to support a crappy service with technicians that
> lie to me in order to make a sale).

Mounting a modem outside will likely make a significant positive 
difference so the service shouldn't be crappy anymore. Broadband 
wireless really doesn't travel through walls very well, in spite of all 
the advertising hype and consumer mis-information that's out there. 
About the "holes"... well, for every benefit there is a price to pay. 
The price of one hole in your wall for the cable to come in is a pretty 
small price for the value of being able to use a speedy Internet 
connection.

> 
> Meanwhile, I went out and purchased a Linksys WIP300 and tried to get it to
> work with the marginal clearwire service.  I spent all night trying to get
> it to place calls but was unsuccessful.  Yesterday, I was at Racha in Queen
> Anne and I noticed they had free WiFi.  So I decided to give the phone a try
> there.  Worked like a charm.  Next I tried from work.  Again, it worked
> great.  So I went home last night and did some investigation.  I did some
> monitor-mode packet captures using my laptop while I tried to place calls
> with the phone.  The SIP packets were going out but nothing was coming back. 
> So I figured maybe my wireless router (a WRT54G) was at fault.  I tried
> everything to get it to work -- everything failed.

VoIP works poorly or not at all over a crappy broadband connection. 
There should have been no surprise there...

> 
> So I figured I'd call clearwire support to see if they could resolve the
> issue.  The tech support rep immediately told me that they block all ports
> but that customers can request ports be opened.  But, I explained, the first
> tech support rep said that there was no port blocks on the service.  He said
> that was "not the truth" -- I had been lied to in order to make a sale.  So
> in order to open the VoIP ports (that I am paying for, that should be opened
> anyway, and that I was told would be open when I signed up), I need to fill
> out a request that includes detailed information about what application I
> plan to use, why I need it, and so forth.  Then the request goes up to the
> next level and some anonymous network manager gets to decide whether my
> request is acceptable.  If they do choose to allow the requested ports,
> their policy is to open the ports within six (6) business days.  Yes, that
> is more than a full week.

Granted, there is no excuse for a tech who either lies or who was 
insufficiently trained by his employer and, as a result, unintentionally 
misled a customer.


> 
> So if you are planning on getting clearwire, make sure that (1) you get a
> GOOD STRONG signal, and (2) you don't need to use it for anything but web
> browsing -- VoIP, VPNs, and anything else that your average AOLer doesn't
> use on a regular basis are subject to filtering and the whims of their
> network managers.

Too bad about Clearwire's practice of making it difficult to get ports 
unblocked. It sounds like they don't care about trying to satisfy their 
customers. Bad!

> If the "technician" that shows up at my door next week can actually get the
> modem to provide a clean signal, I get the privilege of setting up an
> encrypted tunnel to a server outside the reach of clearwire's idiotic
> firewall policies in order to get access to arbitrary IP traffic that have
> already paid for.  Obviously I'm hoping that he can't fix it and I can go
> find a provider that isn't so unfriendly to the tech savvy community.

Friendliness to the tech savvy community would be a great bonus but the 
tech savvy should be smart enough to avoid getting wireless (or any) 
service from a provider that says on it's web site that they don't 
provide service to a specific location. Good luck with your next service 
provider. FWIW, I have no connection to Clearwire; if anything, my 
impression of them in general is not particularly favorable.

jack

-- 
Jack Unger (junger at ask-wi.com) - President, Ask-Wi.Com, Inc.
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