Clearwire: 'You WILL be Assimilated'

07.08.2009
I have a new alarm clock, and it's Clearwire.

It's actually a bit late for an alarm, most mornings. But Clearwire's telerobot calls me regularly shortly after 9 a.m. every day to cheerfully announce, "Clear is here!" and babble on about the virtues of now being rolled out in my neighborhood, and exhorting me -- with increasing urgency -- to upgrade to the new equipment, because my current gear will soon not work.

For the life of me, I can't get Clearwire to stop calling. It doesn't pay to be an early adopter.

You see, we upgraded from Clearwire's original wireless service to nearly five months ago, when Bellingham, Wash. was one of the early test sites of The upgrade process was a tale in itself, hampered by Clear's mistaken assumptions about when the new gear would arrive, a sudden spring snowstorm, delivery problems, and the company's bizarre and annoying habit of deactivating our old service before we had even received the new modem. I urged any Clearwire staffers who'd listen that they reconsider that practice, perhaps deactivating the service only after the old modem was returned (which they all assured me was their policy -- although not my experience).

But now it's up and running. I think it's stronger than the previous service, if not faster (though Clearwire says it is, and our ping tests showed it works at the advertised speeds). It still has some quirks and needs rebooting on occasion (usually in mid-download, but that's Murphy's influence and can be true of any ISP).

Yet the robocalls keep coming. They're annoying but not harmful, but they are symptomatic of Clearwire's bigger customer service challenge. The company has good technology, great intentions, and conscientious staff, but doesn't quite have its act together.