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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)."
deceptive advertising, DESPITE they have advertised that they were not doing deceptive advertising.
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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.
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.
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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.
This is a sig. This is only a sig. Had this been an actual sig you would have been informed where to tune for more sigs.
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.
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.
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!
I am officially gone from
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?
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?
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!
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.
Sure I'm paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?