Clear Launches Today in Austin, San Antonio and More Cities

morgan1112 · 11-01-2009, 09:24 AM

Clear soft launched their wireless broadband services today in my market, Austin, Texas along with several other cities that were previously listed as "Coming Soon" on their website. The following 23 cities now have Clear services:

Abilene, TX
Amarillo, TX
Atlanta, GA
Austin, TX
Bellingham, WA
Boise, ID
Charlotte, NC
Chicago, IL
Corpus Christi, TX
Dallas/Fort Worth, TX
Greensboro, NC
Killeen, TX
Las Vegas, NV
Lubbock, TX
Midland/Odessa, TX
Milledgeville, GA
Philadelphia, PA
Portland, OR
Raleigh, NC
Salem, OR
San Antonio, TX
Waco, TX
Wichita Falls, TX

www.clear.com

I went into my local Best Buy yesterday where a Clear representative had a booth setup. While he was not selling services yet, he did have a laptop configured using the Motorola Home Modem. SpeedTest.net resulted in approximately 2.3Mbps down, 0.05Mbps up with latency of 534ms and one bar of signal on the modem. PingTest.net gave the connection a rating of "D". With horrible results like that, I don't see how they are going to avoid a significant number of complaints from customers actually trying to use the service. At this point, I would rather stick with my Sprint 3G connection which seems to have better coverage and much more reliable U/D speeds. A 0.05Kbps upload test is pretty bad and no where near the advertised 1Mbps. Just to make sure my eyes where not deceiving me I ran the test 3 more times on different cities with similar results. I'm assuming the 1 out of 5 lit green bars on the top of the Motorola modem indicated a single bar of signal but since I have not read the manual I really don't know. Until I see regular upload speeds at or around 500 Kbps or more I don't think I will recommend the service to anyone. It's important to note, that my Sprint Palm Pre cell phone had a full 5 bars of service inside the Best Buy which tells me that my 3G phone would have likely crushed that 4G modem in an upload speed test. 0.05Kbps per second upload is just simply unacceptable for any broadband service let alone dial up. While reading numerous reviews displaying slow upload speeds I had always assumed the network upload capabilities were saturated. However, now that I see slow uploads before they have even launched their services it seems to indicate that the tower bandwidth is significantly throttled or there is a major configuration problem. If I can pull down more than 2Mbps I should easily be able to push 1Mbps up in the same location and signal strength. I hope this company get's their act together soon so I can sign up someday.

jess101 · 11-01-2009, 05:50 PM

I'm a clear authorized retailer in Austin and activated my demo modems today. I haven't played around with the USB yet, as I just haven't taken it out and about (NASCAR at Talledega). I'll give you the straight skinny on the home modem though from what I've seen so far.

I've only taken it out of the box and set it on my desk near my computer monitor which is near an outside wall. I rotated it a few times to get a constant 4 bars. Every now and then it will fluctuate between 3 and 5 bars, but holds 4 fairly steady. After running a few speed tests, I see between 4 and 8 Mbs down and between .25 and .5 Mbs up. That upload speed concerns me a bit as it tends to run around .4 most of the time. I bigger issue for me is latency is running around 100 to 160 ms.

I suspect, since this is the first day of service, that things need to be tweaked. There has to be almost zero load on the towers at this time, so speeds should be blazing if everything is tuned just right. High latency is not something I want to see, as I run an in house VoIP, phone server, and once you get up in the 150 ms latency area, you can start to have call problems. I can say this about the Clear service...my web pages render much faster than when using my SuddenLink service that consistently speed tests at 8 Mbs down and .6-.8 up. Go Figure.

It's weird you saw such slow speeds at the Best Buy. I kind of expected that the Best Buys around town would have towers on their roof, since this is where many people are going to be introduced to this service. Maybe this store location is in a fringe area. I guess time will tell.

TECH · 11-01-2009, 09:10 PM

but i bet it wont last like that just 4 days

jess101 · 11-01-2009, 09:25 PM

I'll keep you posted:

morgan1112 · 11-01-2009, 10:37 PM

If they were smart they would set the upload speed closer to 1mb. Clearly they are slowing down the uploads on purpose. 3-4 bars should easily be able to deliver 1Mbps.

jess101 · 11-02-2009, 10:31 AM

Clear is hanging in there this morning:

Compared to my SuddenLink:

Got a steady 5 bars on the home modem for Clear. I agree with morgan...the upload speeds need to be tweaked. I would definitely give up some download speed for a bit better upload. You never know when I'll need those 4 or 5 concurrent calls going at the same time.

morgan1112 · 11-02-2009, 09:18 PM

I ran the following Speed Test today while at a BestBuy store in Austin, TX:

As you can see the upload speeds are really really bad. I hope they do something about this soon. Also, I have no idea how they can provide VOIP services with Line Quality results rated at a C. They really need to fix the upload problem or they will continue to recieve negative reviews their customers.

-Fixed the embed -dlichterman

morgan1112 · 11-02-2009, 09:35 PM

In my neighborhood, Clear is competing with services from U-Verse and Time Warner. Here are the results from my U-Verse 12 Max connection for a comparison with the Clear results that I have previously posted.

As you can see from my previous posts, Clear cannot touch my U-verse speeds or line quality. I would really like to leave U-verse for a mobile Wimax provider but with Clear's dismal line quality and rediculously low upload speeds my wife would kill me and my boss would fire me if I switched to a provider that is so slow. How am I going to VPN into my company with a .06 Mbps upload let alone send files? Do you know how long it would take to upload a 1MB attachment at .06 Mbps? I think its something like 10 minutes a Mb at those upload speeds.

jess101 · 11-03-2009, 09:02 AM

I don't believe the speeds "we" are seeing in the Best Buy stores is indicative of what you can get with the Clear Wimax service. The reason I say that is, the buildings are thick walled and ours has a metal roof. Probably a little tougher to get a signal in the building, but this is not what I am thinking is the bigger problem.

Yesterday, I received a coverage map for reps that includes tower locations. Now that I know where the nearest tower is in reference to the Best Buy I went in to on Sunday and Monday, I think there is another issue that they (sales reps) need to be aware of.

The home modems (Motorola CPEi 150) they are using to demo the service are VERY sensitive to a correct orientation. The antennas in the modem are located on the side of the unit with the Clear and Motorola logos. These antennas must be faced toward the tower the unit is locked on to for best performance. The unit I saw at Best Buy was 180 degrees out of sync with the nearest tower. Believe me, this is extremely important in set up, and depending on how I rotate my unit here at the house, I can get from .08 to .8 Mbs upload speeds. Quite a difference!

Let me know which Best Buy you were at, and I'll let you know how far, and in what direction the nearest tower is to their location. I think I remember you mentioning 1 bar. That just ain't gonna cut it.

jfs2 · 11-03-2009, 06:38 PM

you say you have the location of the towers? where are the western area ones?

jess101 · 11-03-2009, 10:19 PM

Draw a line from Brushy Creek North down to Bowie High School on Slaughter Lane South, and everything is pretty much East of that. Highest concentrations are around I-35 and spread out at the intersections of 183, Ben White, and the 45 toll.

The farthest west is on the eastern side of Cedar Park in the North, and the one at Bowie High School on the South side. If you'd like something more specific, let me know what area you are interested in. Basically, it's pretty tight around I-35 right now.

NovaCrystallis · 11-04-2009, 04:34 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by morgan1112

In my neighborhood, Clear is competing with services from U-Verse and Time Warner. Here are the results from my U-Verse 12 Max connection for a comparison with the Clear results that I have previously posted.

As you can see from my previous posts, Clear cannot touch my U-verse speeds or line quality. I would really like to leave U-verse for a mobile Wimax provider but with Clear's dismal line quality and rediculously low upload speeds my wife would kill me and my boss would fire me if I switched to a provider that is so slow. How am I going to VPN into my company with a .06 Mbps upload let alone send files? Do you know how long it would take to upload a 1MB attachment at .06 Mbps? I think its something like 10 minutes a Mb at those upload speeds.

Sorry this is going to sound a little dumb but how did you speed test while in Best Buy?

Did you just bring your laptop in and they put a usb modem in it?

morgan1112 · 11-04-2009, 10:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by NovaCrystallis

Sorry this is going to sound a little dumb but how did you speed test while in Best Buy?

Did you just bring your laptop in and they put a usb modem in it?

They have a laptop in the store so that folks can test out the connection. I just went to speedtest.net and pingtest.net then emailed myself the forum links provided at the end of each test. After I arrived at home, I checked my email then posted to this forum. I thought this was the easiest way to explain the problem that I witnessed while testing out the clear services. Besides, they only have a 7 day return policy before I'm stuck with a 2 year contract. Trying out the connection speeds in the stores is the only way I'm really going to see what the service is like over a long period of time. I can't believe they don't even give you 30 days to try out the service. What happens if service goes to crap at my house after they over sell my tower. Until I know they are going to offer consistent speeds for a period of time, I'm not planning on signing up. Hopefully, they will get that connection fixed or the configuration straight at that Best Buy. Until I can see some consistent speeds over a least a month I'm afraid that Clear is going to screw me by not delivering reliable services.

morgan1112 · 11-06-2009, 12:03 AM

jess101, Can you please scan the Austin tower map and attach it to your forum reply post? I'm trying to get a better handle on where the towers are located. I think it would really help me to better understand were I live in relation to the nearest tower. If I live close to a tower I would be more likely to sign up. Thanks

morgan1112 · 11-06-2009, 12:10 AM

The closest major intersection to me is Heatherwilde blvd and Texas 45 Toll or Texas 45 Toll and 130 intersection is a little further east but also close by. In Round Rock.

11-01-2009, 09:24 AM	#1
morgan1112 Telegraph User Join Date: Oct 29, '05 Location: Austin, TX Posts: 13 Phone: Palm Pre Thanks: 0 Thanked 0 Times in 0 Posts SU$: 212	Clear Launches Today in Austin, San Antonio and More Cities Clear soft launched their wireless broadband services today in my market, Austin, Texas along with several other cities that were previously listed as "Coming Soon" on their website. The following 23 cities now have Clear services: Abilene, TX Amarillo, TX Atlanta, GA Austin, TX Bellingham, WA Boise, ID Charlotte, NC Chicago, IL Corpus Christi, TX Dallas/Fort Worth, TX Greensboro, NC Killeen, TX Las Vegas, NV Lubbock, TX Midland/Odessa, TX Milledgeville, GA Philadelphia, PA Portland, OR Raleigh, NC Salem, OR San Antonio, TX Waco, TX Wichita Falls, TX www.clear.com I went into my local Best Buy yesterday where a Clear representative had a booth setup. While he was not selling services yet, he did have a laptop configured using the Motorola Home Modem. SpeedTest.net resulted in approximately 2.3Mbps down, 0.05Mbps up with latency of 534ms and one bar of signal on the modem. PingTest.net gave the connection a rating of "D". With horrible results like that, I don't see how they are going to avoid a significant number of complaints from customers actually trying to use the service. At this point, I would rather stick with my Sprint 3G connection which seems to have better coverage and much more reliable U/D speeds. A 0.05Kbps upload test is pretty bad and no where near the advertised 1Mbps. Just to make sure my eyes where not deceiving me I ran the test 3 more times on different cities with similar results. I'm assuming the 1 out of 5 lit green bars on the top of the Motorola modem indicated a single bar of signal but since I have not read the manual I really don't know. Until I see regular upload speeds at or around 500 Kbps or more I don't think I will recommend the service to anyone. It's important to note, that my Sprint Palm Pre cell phone had a full 5 bars of service inside the Best Buy which tells me that my 3G phone would have likely crushed that 4G modem in an upload speed test. 0.05Kbps per second upload is just simply unacceptable for any broadband service let alone dial up. While reading numerous reviews displaying slow upload speeds I had always assumed the network upload capabilities were saturated. However, now that I see slow uploads before they have even launched their services it seems to indicate that the tower bandwidth is significantly throttled or there is a major configuration problem. If I can pull down more than 2Mbps I should easily be able to push 1Mbps up in the same location and signal strength. I hope this company get's their act together soon so I can sign up someday.

11-01-2009, 10:37 PM	#5
morgan1112 Telegraph User Join Date: Oct 29, '05 Location: Austin, TX Posts: 13 Phone: Palm Pre Thanks: 0 Thanked 0 Times in 0 Posts SU$: 212	speed in austin If they were smart they would set the upload speed closer to 1mb. Clearly they are slowing down the uploads on purpose. 3-4 bars should easily be able to deliver 1Mbps.

11-02-2009, 09:18 PM	#7
morgan1112 Telegraph User Join Date: Oct 29, '05 Location: Austin, TX Posts: 13 Phone: Palm Pre Thanks: 0 Thanked 0 Times in 0 Posts SU$: 212	Still Bad Today I ran the following Speed Test today while at a BestBuy store in Austin, TX: As you can see the upload speeds are really really bad. I hope they do something about this soon. Also, I have no idea how they can provide VOIP services with Line Quality results rated at a C. They really need to fix the upload problem or they will continue to recieve negative reviews their customers. -Fixed the embed -dlichterman Last edited by dlichterman; 11-02-2009 at 09:23 PM.

11-02-2009, 09:35 PM	#8
morgan1112 Telegraph User Join Date: Oct 29, '05 Location: Austin, TX Posts: 13 Phone: Palm Pre Thanks: 0 Thanked 0 Times in 0 Posts SU$: 212	In my neighborhood, Clear is competing with services from U-Verse and Time Warner. Here are the results from my U-Verse 12 Max connection for a comparison with the Clear results that I have previously posted. As you can see from my previous posts, Clear cannot touch my U-verse speeds or line quality. I would really like to leave U-verse for a mobile Wimax provider but with Clear's dismal line quality and rediculously low upload speeds my wife would kill me and my boss would fire me if I switched to a provider that is so slow. How am I going to VPN into my company with a .06 Mbps upload let alone send files? Do you know how long it would take to upload a 1MB attachment at .06 Mbps? I think its something like 10 minutes a Mb at those upload speeds. Last edited by morgan1112; 11-02-2009 at 09:51 PM.

11-03-2009, 06:38 PM	#10
jfs2 Two Cans & String User Join Date: Nov 3, '09 Location: Johnson City Texas Posts: 3 Thanks: 1 Thanked 0 Times in 0 Posts SU$: 17	towers you say you have the location of the towers? where are the western area ones?

11-01-2009, 05:50 PM	#2
jess101 Telegraph User Join Date: Nov 1, '09 Location: Pflugerville, TX Posts: 20 Phone: Palm Pre Thanks: 0 Thanked 1 Time in 1 Post SU$: 377	I'm a clear authorized retailer in Austin and activated my demo modems today. I haven't played around with the USB yet, as I just haven't taken it out and about (NASCAR at Talledega). I'll give you the straight skinny on the home modem though from what I've seen so far. I've only taken it out of the box and set it on my desk near my computer monitor which is near an outside wall. I rotated it a few times to get a constant 4 bars. Every now and then it will fluctuate between 3 and 5 bars, but holds 4 fairly steady. After running a few speed tests, I see between 4 and 8 Mbs down and between .25 and .5 Mbs up. That upload speed concerns me a bit as it tends to run around .4 most of the time. I bigger issue for me is latency is running around 100 to 160 ms. I suspect, since this is the first day of service, that things need to be tweaked. There has to be almost zero load on the towers at this time, so speeds should be blazing if everything is tuned just right. High latency is not something I want to see, as I run an in house VoIP, phone server, and once you get up in the 150 ms latency area, you can start to have call problems. I can say this about the Clear service...my web pages render much faster than when using my SuddenLink service that consistently speed tests at 8 Mbs down and .6-.8 up. Go Figure. It's weird you saw such slow speeds at the Best Buy. I kind of expected that the Best Buys around town would have towers on their roof, since this is where many people are going to be introduced to this service. Maybe this store location is in a fringe area. I guess time will tell.

11-01-2009, 09:10 PM	#3
TECH Walkie Talkie User Join Date: May 22, '04 Location: Odessa tx Posts: 349 Phone: SPRINT TOUCHPRO Thanks: 1 Thanked 1 Time in 1 Post SU$: 1,030	but i bet it wont last like that just 4 days

11-01-2009, 09:25 PM	#4
jess101 Telegraph User Join Date: Nov 1, '09 Location: Pflugerville, TX Posts: 20 Phone: Palm Pre Thanks: 0 Thanked 1 Time in 1 Post SU$: 377	I'll keep you posted:

11-02-2009, 10:31 AM	#6
jess101 Telegraph User Join Date: Nov 1, '09 Location: Pflugerville, TX Posts: 20 Phone: Palm Pre Thanks: 0 Thanked 1 Time in 1 Post SU$: 377	Clear is hanging in there this morning: Compared to my SuddenLink: Got a steady 5 bars on the home modem for Clear. I agree with morgan...the upload speeds need to be tweaked. I would definitely give up some download speed for a bit better upload. You never know when I'll need those 4 or 5 concurrent calls going at the same time.

11-03-2009, 09:02 AM	#9
jess101 Telegraph User Join Date: Nov 1, '09 Location: Pflugerville, TX Posts: 20 Phone: Palm Pre Thanks: 0 Thanked 1 Time in 1 Post SU$: 377	I don't believe the speeds "we" are seeing in the Best Buy stores is indicative of what you can get with the Clear Wimax service. The reason I say that is, the buildings are thick walled and ours has a metal roof. Probably a little tougher to get a signal in the building, but this is not what I am thinking is the bigger problem. Yesterday, I received a coverage map for reps that includes tower locations. Now that I know where the nearest tower is in reference to the Best Buy I went in to on Sunday and Monday, I think there is another issue that they (sales reps) need to be aware of. The home modems (Motorola CPEi 150) they are using to demo the service are VERY sensitive to a correct orientation. The antennas in the modem are located on the side of the unit with the Clear and Motorola logos. These antennas must be faced toward the tower the unit is locked on to for best performance. The unit I saw at Best Buy was 180 degrees out of sync with the nearest tower. Believe me, this is extremely important in set up, and depending on how I rotate my unit here at the house, I can get from .08 to .8 Mbs upload speeds. Quite a difference! Let me know which Best Buy you were at, and I'll let you know how far, and in what direction the nearest tower is to their location. I think I remember you mentioning 1 bar. That just ain't gonna cut it.

11-03-2009, 10:19 PM	#11
jess101 Telegraph User Join Date: Nov 1, '09 Location: Pflugerville, TX Posts: 20 Phone: Palm Pre Thanks: 0 Thanked 1 Time in 1 Post SU$: 377	Draw a line from Brushy Creek North down to Bowie High School on Slaughter Lane South, and everything is pretty much East of that. Highest concentrations are around I-35 and spread out at the intersections of 183, Ben White, and the 45 toll. The farthest west is on the eastern side of Cedar Park in the North, and the one at Bowie High School on the South side. If you'd like something more specific, let me know what area you are interested in. Basically, it's pretty tight around I-35 right now.

11-06-2009, 12:03 AM	#14
morgan1112 Telegraph User Join Date: Oct 29, '05 Location: Austin, TX Posts: 13 Phone: Palm Pre Thanks: 0 Thanked 0 Times in 0 Posts SU$: 212	jess101, Can you please scan the Austin tower map and attach it to your forum reply post? I'm trying to get a better handle on where the towers are located. I think it would really help me to better understand were I live in relation to the nearest tower. If I live close to a tower I would be more likely to sign up. Thanks

11-06-2009, 12:10 AM	#15
morgan1112 Telegraph User Join Date: Oct 29, '05 Location: Austin, TX Posts: 13 Phone: Palm Pre Thanks: 0 Thanked 0 Times in 0 Posts SU$: 212	The closest major intersection to me is Heatherwilde blvd and Texas 45 Toll or Texas 45 Toll and 130 intersection is a little further east but also close by. In Round Rock.

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