Clear Internet in Austin Texas
Posted on April 5, 2010 by Aaron Ortega
Though their website advertises a professional plan, Clear is not a viable solution for a business. That should do it. You can stop reading now.
When I saw that I could get internet and phone for Umbrella Media’s office for around $60 a month, I bit. I did. For the first month it was great, and I was cocky about my choice. I beat the system. I was cutting overhead.
The honeymoon soon ended. The connection began to be intermittent despite having 5 bars of signal. It all reminded me of having Dish when I was a kid, and anytime it would rain the TV and internet would go out. It wasn’t raining here though, the sky was clear, the weather was great. So why did the business just come to a screeching halt?
I called Clear support, which to their credit were generally helpful. We narrowed it down to the following possible problems:
- Modem in the wrong angle
- Router interfering
- Modem not close enough to the window
I did the standard turn your modem in quadrants and see if you get more bars, but I was already getting 5 bars so that didn’t help. It is possible that it is your router interfering they said, so I linked up directly to my computer for a full day and experienced the same results. I moved the modem next to the window (which looked gross..) and still had connection drops throughout the day.
I called Clear back and let them know I was still having problems. This time I was pushed to Level 2 Support. The guy was kind, but not very helpful. I let him know what was going on, dropped connections, etc. He said they would send a rep to the office to see what was going on. He said it might be the tower, or the office might be too close to the highway, and the cars were interfering with the signal!
4 days later the rep showed up and looked around. We did some speed tests and she quickly concluded that since I was able to get 10 down and 1 up by pinging the Austin server my connection was good. I agreed, my connection was great, WHEN IT WAS CONNECTED. Lucky for me, the connection dropped twice while she was there. She let me know she would talk to a level 3 tech and see if they could get someone to look at the tower.
A week later I followed up, the rep put me on hold and then returned to let me know that they had no plans to fix the tower, and that I could cancel with no early termination fee. Lucky me.
Bottom Line, the service isn’t there yet. Is it going to be great one day? My cousin in the Wireless industry has high hopes for the Wimax standard. So in a year or so give it a shot, but right now, keep your infrastructure in place.
Although I loved the mobility of Clear (and price), Time Warner is much faster and reliable.
April 7, 2010 at 1:46 pmAaron,
Thanks for the info! I keep going back and forth on whether I should get Clear, for mobile internet, which would be valuable to me as a Realtor. Good to know what it’s really like by someone who has tried it out!
Thanks!
Kristen
April 9, 2010 at 2:42 pmYou know, if you are not planning to use it ALL the time (like we do) it might not be such a bad thing. The downfall for us was that our business revolves around being online, so if the internet went down we might as well send everyone home.
As a realtor, just having the laptop card might be worth your while. My advice would be to go get one and try it out. You’re able to return it within 5 days (I think its 5)
April 9, 2010 at 2:45 pmI agree with Aaron. They have a great package for home internet and internet card for only $60, and it worked great for us. It wasn’t until we moved into our office when the problem started (supposedly because we are next to the highway, but they advertise you can use it in your car while driving?). We actually still use Clear at home and it works fine, unless it’s raining pretty hard. That’s the only downfall – weather does have effect on Clear.
April 9, 2010 at 4:45 pmClear seems to be aware that not every location is ideal for the new WiMAX service. Anyone who buys this service strictly on price is taking a shallow approach. There are situations where it may be detrimental to drop cable or other wired infrastructure. Conversely, there are other locations that work just fine. The secret to this new technology is to have the Clear rep come over and demo it in your work location. Make your decision on the technology based upon how it serves your needs. Assuming that since one person complained that the technology is poor doesn’t make sense. There are plenty of happy Clear customers. I’m one of them.
July 30, 2010 at 1:22 amCLEAR return address to who needs it. Make sure you get signature required and keep receipt. Took a month to get this address from Clear employees. Apparently Clear employees are not allowed to know where they work.
CLEARWIRE
August 24, 2010 at 1:31 amRETURN SERVICES
888-253-2794
1051 MARY CREST RD STE K
HENDERSON, NV 89074
@Lloyd Richmond – Only that wouldn’t have helped out case, as we typically had great service at first, and it degraded over time.
October 14, 2010 at 9:02 pm