Why CLEAR Wireless Sucks

I recently did a trial of CLEAR Wireless Internet. I’m not super happy with Comcast and we were experiencing a lot of slowdowns and repeated internet loss. The pitch from Clear was that, while it was slower than Comcast, it was a dedicated amount of bandwidth that was a consistent speed. We were supposed to get 5-6mb/s, which would have been adequate for video streaming and online gaming.

So I signed up, first checking that there was a trial period, and received the modem. I hooked it up and logged on. I had a full strength signal (measured by the five lights on the modem). I do a Speedtest.net test get a whomping 1.5mb/s. I play around with the modem placement and work with their technical support. The tech person was completely unhelpful, so I filed a ticket and decided to give it some time. Later that day, I checked and speeds had improved to 4-5mb/s. Not what I was expecting, but not unreasonable.

In order to give this new speed a try, I turn my X-box on and fire up Netflix. Typically on Comcast I would get the full HD stream. It would occasionally slow or fail but full HD was the average. This time, the playback was two bars. During the 22min show I was watching (Better Off Ted, quite funny), the internet speed shifted constantly. It went from 2 bars down to 1, up to 3, and back down to 2. Even when Comcast was being stupid, it would only change speeds once or twice. This shifted 3-4 times.

I gave it a few days, continuing to do Speedtests and try Netflix. The playback continued to be changing constantly. Speedtest even started returning regular results of 1.5mb/s. With no response from technical support on my request, I called them back. This time, I got a helpful person. He checked things out and informed me that my bandwidth was being regulated. It seems the amount of data I had downloaded had exceeded some automatic limit. When I asked, he informed me that I had downloaded about 10Gb in the week I had had the service. He informed me that the only way to remove the automatic speed cap, was to reduce the amount of data I downloaded.

So that’s when I knew Clear sucked. You can technically get good speeds high, but if you actually use it, your speed will be capped at a measily 1.5mb/s. Comcast still sucks, but not that much.