Clearwire Sued Over WiMAX Throttling

suraj.sun writes with this excerpt from Ars Technica: "Wireless operator Clearwire has had a bumpy few months, and now things are getting worse. A lawsuit has been filed by 15 users over the company's throttling practices, accusing Clearwire of not delivering advertised 'high-speed Internet' services to customers and charging them termination fees when they walk away unsatisfied. The complaint focuses heavily on Clearwire's advertising, which not only highlights the speed of the connection, but also the fact that there are no limits on data usage. 'Usage is unlimited — believe it. You can upload, download, and surf as much as you want for one low price with any of the CLEAR Internet plans. We don't slow down your connection — the way some Internet providers do — if we think you are using too much bandwidth,' the complaint quotes from Clearwire's website. (That text appears to have been removed at the time of publication)."

Comments

yay.

[unity100]

deceptive advertising, DESPITE they have advertised that they were not doing deceptive advertising.

Wow...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Who could ever have expected that a wireless(and thus inherently shared-medium, with some partial exceptions from clever antenna shaping and stuff) ISP would be even worse than the wireline ones about bandwidth throttling and general dickishness? I, for one, am shocked.

Re:Wow...

[spinkham]

Which is exactly why there is a proposed bill in NC written by the Time Warner that would make it illegal for any more municipal Internet, and greatly increace the tax burden and accounting practices of the few that have already sprung up. They're scared still they might have to provide good service, so are willing to hobble broadband in my state for the forseeable future. My rep has gotten an ear-full about it, with more to come as the bill moves through...

Re:Wow...

[Svartalf]

The problem isn't so much the "precious limited wireless spectrum" that everyone presumes that is the cause of things like the throttling, etc. is being done.

It's NOT that for which they throttle for. The backhaul can't handle the loads in question. Seriously. It's not that the phones/dongles can't transact the tower properly in most cases, it's that the stuff the towers are connected to that can't handle the loads. And, most of that is the jokers trying to oversell capacity or under allocate the resources in question to "maximize profits".

Re:Wow...

[Hatta]

Municipal WIFI is socialism. You're not a socialist, are you?

Re:Wow...

[markana]

Oh, there's an issue with the radio side of it also. The more data you are shoving over the radio channels and the more devices you have in the field, the more spectrum you need. That's simple physics. This is why all those people hoping to get fantastic speeds on Verizon LTE are in for a big shock, once the number of units in the field gets past the miniscule level. They just don't have the radio bandwidth to support lots of 4G users, and it's going to fall over badly.

T-mobile does this.

[gad_zuki!]

We really need a federal law that defines "unlimited broadband internet." Throttling me down to dial-up speeds past 5 gigabytes per month is not unlimited broadband. Hell, anything under 3mbps shouldnt even be called broadband.

The DSL reports forums about Clear are horrific. I was thinking of using them for a remote office's backup line, but absolutely no way now. Random throttling to 256k for day or weeks on end is not acceptable.

I feel if they had a decent business level service and priced it accordingly they could really break into the business market. Instead, the "business" package they sell is just a static IP and the same horrible throttling policies.

Re:T-mobile does this.

[Stenchwarrior]

We really need a federal law that defines "unlimited broadband internet."

Maybe I'm jaded, but anytime I see the words government and Internet in the same sentence I get worried. The last thing we need is the government involved with anything that has to do with the Internet lest we end up with the "government's version" of the web. I like that it's a true "free frontier". Or at least, as much as it can be.

Re:T-mobile does this.

[penix1]

We really need a federal law that defines "unlimited broadband internet."

Ummm...Do you really want a bunch of "get off my lawn!" grampys who have absolutely no clue what the Internet is deciding something that already exists in law?

It is called bait & switch and it is already illegal.

Re:T-mobile does this.

[jacobsm]

It seems to me that government is less evil than corporations right now. I'd welcome its intervention in ensuring that the internet isn't hijacked by corporate evil-doers.

Re:T-mobile does this.

[characterZer0]

It would not be government regulation of the Internet, it would be government regulation of advertising about the Internet.

Re:T-mobile does this.

[dkleinsc]

The last thing we need is the government involved with anything that has to do with the Internet lest we end up with the "government's version" of the web.

Yeah, especially not the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. If they got involved, it would just wreck the whole thing.

Also, keep your government hands off of my Medicare!

Re:T-mobile does this.

[N0Man74]

Why does it have to be internet specific? Can't we just have the word, 'unlimited' defined as to mean.... 'unlimited'? Regardless of what the industry is?

Re:T-mobile does this.

[Svartalf]

It actually IS bait and switch if you claim you don't throttle and then do it anyway.

Re:T-mobile does this.

[camperdave]

Dialup means an off the shelf modem and a POTS line. It maxes out at 56kbps in North America. Anything beyond that requires special lines and/or customer premises equipment.

Re:T-mobile does this.

[C_amiga_fan]

>>>The barrier of entry is astronomical -

The barrier to entry is the GOVERNMENT forbidding any other company but Comcast to run high-speed lines. That was the Grandparent Poster's point.

Antenna Animosity

[garcia]

The single biggest issue was that residents, especially those in cities around me in Dakota County, Minnesota, were unwilling to permit the antennas to be placed where Clearwire wanted them.

Clearwire planned to place the 125 foot tower in a city park and residents surrounding the park became motivated and forced the city to deny the request.

Kinda hard for them to provide the speeds they want to their customers when residents won't allow the infrastructure to be built out as the ISP originally planned.

Sucks for all involved regardless of your place in it.

A support manager admitted that they throttled...

[gimple]

I used Clearwire for a little over a year, and dropped them due to their throttling.

Cool story bro time:

Working from home for an enterprise software company, and moving to a rural area with no real broadband other than Clearwire, I went to their store/office to sign up. Since I was using it primarily for work, I worked with a sales manager who specialized in business accounts. After making it clear what I would be using the access for, including the data volumes I would be using, I was assured that the speed and access I needed would be no problem. I even made it clear that my company used VOIP. I was even given a loaner modem, so I could test the service. After about a week of testing, I decided to sign up, putting the recurring charges on my corporate AMEX.

About three or four months of everything working swimmingly, I was on a call one day, when the phone just stopped working. I had a hardware VOIP device, so I could see the LEDs weren't working, but my other Internet access was fine. I called our VOIP support, and they figured out that the port for VOIP had been blocked.

I called the Clearwire sales guy who I had worked with--and who had assured me that VOIP would not be an issue--and he denied that the port had been blocked, but he contacted Clearwire support, and was told by a manager that indeed the port was blocked. He put me in contact with this manager, who helped me figure out a port that would not be blocked, so I could set the VOIP modem to that port. During this time, he warned me that the speed would be throttled when the system registered the usage that was coming from my IP address and port.

I saw my speeds slowly degrade to unusable on all Internet access, not just VOIP, and by this time DSL had come to my area, so I took the modem in to the store to return it. The very unfriendly person who took the return informed me that I would be hit with a ~$300 termination fee, even though I had not agreed to a contract or terms, and she could not prove that I had.

As soon as the charge hit my AMEX, I filed a dispute on the charge, which was promptly reversed, and I never heard or saw anything again.

Cool story, huh?

It makes me suspicious...

[hellfire]

I got clear internet last year, in order to cut the cable cord. For a couple months it was good, then I would frequently drop to sub 1 Mbps speeds for extended periods of time. I called support, and they told me that the best antenna was to the south of my house, so they told me to move the router to the other side of the house for best signal. The problem went away for a bit but came back, so I called again, and they said the best antenna was to the north. This was in the span of 2 weeks, so I doubt they suddenly built a brand new tower in that time period. So I moved the router back to the north and since I've not had a problem.

I'm more likely to believe that this was simply stupidity on the part of their support, and I have a hard time believing in conspiracy theories, but as evidence builds I start thinking crazy things like the fact that they are just doing a shuffle while they put me on their "do not throttle" list just to shut me up.

I know it's annecdotal and crazy...

Re:It makes me suspicious...

[xMrFishx]

Dude, don't be silly, those damn antennas they planted just won't stand still! You must have missed the Clearwire support technician chasing your misbehaving antenna across a field with a whip until it sat back where it belonged. If you can't figure that out with why they told you to move your router I don't know. You should look to purchase some Clearwire binoculars to spot a misbehaving antenna as it moves across the countryside. They have even taken time to scratch some of the paint off the lenses so you can see too!

Something to show to the mall sales folk

[ravenscar]

Ah, good. Now I have some interesting documentation to fend off the hordes of moronic sales people that Clear has stalking around the local mall.

I use Clear in the Dallas Area

[guzzirider]

I use Clear in the Dallas Area. The USB dongle runs 3 to 5 mbit at work (24 miles from home) and the ‘Box’ runs 2 to 4 mbit at home. As with any RF system range is going to be an issue, so is its inherent bandwidth limitation (as with any system). Yes sometimes the data rate can get real bad, even drop out. This does not usually last a long time but it can be annoying. I have never experienced anything that I would believe as targeted or intentional limiting, however if enough people suck on the same straw at the same time what do you think is going to happen? As far as being able to get out of a contract for poor performance, maybe that has merit I don’t know.
Clear (sprint is involved here) has been having financial challenges lately, personally for me it would be sad to see them go. By the standards of the cable companies I would be a download hog. (multi part large WinRared binaries ..Clear provides me an alternative option, I Live in an urban connectivity hell, DSL for me is at best 2mbit, usually 1.4 or so. There is no upgrade available yet ( 3 blocks away it is a different story), and no Fios in my neighborhood. I own my home and it is not something I would sell over something that in 5 to 10 years will change.

Re:throttling? or insufficient capacity?

[ClioCJS]

And, getting back to comparing hypothetical situations with the actual article here on slashdot...

if the place had specifically said, "Eat all the crabs you want! We will never limit the amount!", they would be guilty of false advertising. End of story. I win.

Re:Sprint, too?

[evildarkdeathclicheo]

Sprint owns 51% of Clearwire. All of the "4G" services Sprint offers use the Clearwire network. Keep in mind that this is WiMax, and not really 4G, but because they sold it before 4G was a standard, they can continue to advertise as such. Rumors are of a deal between Sprint, T-Mobile, and Clearwire regarding 4G, so I suspect something significant to come of this soon, probably for the worse (for the consumer) and for the better for the beleaguered business deal.

Re:A support manager admitted that they throttled.

[mdielmann]

I ran 5 miles one day. The first mile was fine.

Given the premise, did I run 5 miles, or one?

Your pedantry needs work.