Restriced Modem due to Skype Use! – User Submission by John D. Begonia Jr.

Aloha,

I am from Honolulu, HI. I have been a “Clearwire Customer” for 16 months. Let me start out by saying prior to March 2008, I received excellent service from Clearwire. I normally was averaging speeds in excess of 2.0 Megabits. I understand that those rates are unusual; however the market in Hawaii during this period was not yet evolved. With more “Tower locations spanned across shorter distances, the coverage map was plentiful.” More towers, shorter spanned towers, and no network saturation, means a super-fast connection. Now I am no network expert but there are loads and heaps of information on the internet that provide statistics about “Internet Service Providers.” According to my needs, and based on my experience, I concluded that clearwire was clearly the best alternative to the other service providers in my area.

I started using the service a bit more frequent then the prior months, and during the month of March 2008; I began to experience slowdowns, hiccups, and degraded service. Checking email was painfully long, and so was surfing the net. I even had difficulties obtaining system updates from Microsoft. I initially suspected that it was possible the market was expanding and these slowdowns were only temporary, however this was not my case.

I called tech support numerous times inquiring about my degraded service, but they had no remedy for my speed issue. After calling everyday for the past few months due to speed issues, I was finally transferred to an account specialist. He informed me about their “Acceptable Use Policy.” I asked, “Does clearwire consider me to be an abusive user?” He replied, “No.” I then asked, “How are users notified about abusive practices?” He said, “First we restrict the modem by limiting the amount of bandwidth, this provokes customers to call customer service. If the customer continues to abuse the service, we send the customer an email informing them of their abuse, and if the abuse continues, we cancel the account.” I explained to him, “If I am not an abusive customer, and I have not received an email, why is my modem being restricted?” He answered, “bit-torrent, P2P, and other third party applications are against the (AUP).” This explains why I am experiencing degraded service; I use Skype which is a third-party p2p application. The account specialist recommended that I uninstall Skype and not to use p2p based applications. I told him that I would comply, and asked if my service would be restored. He said, “As long as you do not use bit-torrent, p2p, or any other third-party p2p based applications, you will not experience speed limitations.”

It has now been two weeks since I spoke to the account specialist, and I still experience difficulties doing simple tasks that require internet access. I have contacted CS; they cannot determine why I am still having trouble, and claim that my modem is not restricted, nor is my account specially provisioned. They did not resolve my issue and are not willing to admit that the problem is on their end. I decided to cancel my service and terminate my relationship as a customer of — CLEARWIRE.

Consumers beware if you are looking for CS you will not find it at clearwire, I have been told “I Don’t Know Why” from CS and TS more times than I can recall. If you want unrestricted internet access, then clearwire is not for you. If you enjoy paying for service you don’t get, then clearwire is the right choice.

Mahalo,

John D. Begonia Jr.