Clearwire: Just Say No

[John van Oppen (list account)]

The worst thing I have heard about with clearwire, is when a friend of
mine got in a billing dispute and they presented a list of URLs this
friend had visited and when.   While I don't make a claim to the quality
of the billing dispute, I do think it is amazing that they engaged in
that level of logging of customer data.

This is why most of my friends have DSL lines from me.  :)  (Since I
will do geeky things like give out subnets of routable IP space.)

John :)

-----Original Message-----
From: talk-bounces at seattlewireless.net
[mailto:talk-bounces at seattlewireless.net] On Behalf Of Tom Marshall
Sent: Friday, January 26, 2007 11:39 PM
To: SeattleWireless Talk List
Subject: Re: Clearwire: Just Say No

> Worst case, I'll setup a tunnel to the Real World for VoIP

I tried this and it works great.  Just needed a tunneling daemon and a
few
iptables rules.  Total time invested was about an hour.  I've spent
longer
on the phone talking to their support reps.

I don't understand how a company can be so myopic as to think that the
strategy of making life difficult for the average user and annoying the
tech
literate user enough to spread the word that their tactics are hostile
is
worth the short term gain of a captive audience.  But I guess there's
precedent -- look at the RIAA and MPAA.

The real irony in this absurd situation is that I _did_ check into VoIP
from
Clearwire and they don't provide it in my area (not that I would have
paid
their absurd prices but that's beside the point).  The situation reminds
me
of a jealous ex-boyfriend -- "if I can't have her, then nobody can!"

-- 
"Trying to make bits uncopyable is like trying to make water not wet.
The
sooner people accept this, and build business models that take this into
account, the sooner people will start making money again."
        -- Bruce Schneier
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