Aaron Huslage

You may have read my earlier piece on Clearwire’s strange bandwidth management practices. Shortly after I wrote it, a representative from the company called me to see what they could do to make my life better. I informed him that I needed better data regarding what they saw as my overuse of bandwidth such as usage figures, time of day, etc. I also told this gentleman that I would have preferred a phone call or email prior to their intervention. He agreed to “look into it with engineering.”The following day, he called me back and basically told me the same thing that the Level-2 technician had said earlier that week: Clearwire couldn’t give out “proprietary usage information” to me - even though it was my account I wanted usage for. He also said that he noted my account so that prior to intervention I would be notified and given a chance to more closely monitor traffic.As a carrot to them, I offered to closely monitor my traffic for the following month and send them the data for comparison with what their systems saw. He didn’t really seem to understand this, but said he’d call me back in a month for an update.I received a second email from Clearwire today:

A message from Clearwire - Immediate Response Required: Second Email 555335

Mr. Aaron Huslage, We have recently notified you regarding an issue with your account.  An excessive amount of Internet traffic on your Clearwire connection is negatively impacting other Clearwire customers in your area.  These issues can be caused by a virus or spyware on your computer, by having a wireless router with no password set or by using peer to peer/file-sharing and FTP programs.

Until the issue is resolved, we have modified your connection to the network.  Please contact us at 888-657-1456 as soon as possible so we can assist you in resolving the issue.

I haven’t gotten a phone call or email from the gentleman who called me, level-2 support or engineering at Clearwire, but my account has once again been throttled. This isn’t unusual in this day and age, since good customer service is more often than not just placating the customer and moving on with business as usual, but my situation is particularly interesting.

You see, shortly after my second phone conversation I unplugged my router from the Clearwire modem and switched back to Comcast until my DSL line is installed tomorrow. I left the modem on, but disconnected all ethernet from it. There is simply no way that I can be sending any traffic on this link. No bandwidth should be being used at all!

I was mistaken. Apparently at some point during all of these fits of changing things around, I switched back to the Clearwire modem. My opinion of the company has still not changed, but in all fairness I am using the bandwidth.

Indeed this is a conundrum and I hope that someone from Clearwire will see fit to refund the money I’ve spent over the past two months and cancel my account. I’m not particularly angry or surprised over this, but my bandwidth needs are such that I cannot handle incompetence from my provider or inconsistency such as Clearwire has shown over the past 9 months I’ve been a customer of theirs.

Wireless technology is great, but the wireless ISPs out there need to step up and play the same game as others in their industry or they will continue to fall like flies.

I just received this lovely email from Clearwire, my current main broadband provider:

Dear Mr. Huslage,
 
While monitoring our network, we noticed that an excessive amount of internet traffic from your Clearwire connection is negatively impacting other Clearwire customers in your area.  These issues can be caused by a virus or spyware on your computer, by having a wireless router with no password set or by using peer to peer/file-sharing and FTP programs.
To prevent further strain on Clearwire’s network resources we are actively managing your connection per our terms of service.  Please contact us as soon as possible at 888-253-2794 so we can help resolve the problem.
 
For more information on Clearwire’s Acceptable Use Policy, please follow this link:
https://www.clearwire.com/company/legal/aup.htm
 
Thank you for your prompt attention.

This is enough to chill my bones and make me think about going back to dialup. I called the number, gave my account info and the tier 1 person sent me on to the 2nd line person to be dealt with. The 2nd line person said that my bandwidth had been degraded to aid other users in my area and I was emailed to see what I might be doing on my link. He said that engineering had been looking at my neighborhood and noticed a “large continuous upload use over the past 5 days.” I haven’t been running Bittorrent, a big server or any large file transfers over the past 5 days. I have Macs at home, not prone to the usual virii or trojan horses that might occur on an open link.  My wife plays World of Warcraft, but that’s hardly a big bandwidth hog. I informed the gentleman of these things and he promptly “fixed my modem to the Clear Premium bandwidth level” from what he called dial-up speeds. On top of this, he said that per the Acceptible Use Policy I could “do this” 3 times, but that I was okay because this was the first time.

I pay Clearwire $50 a month for the privilege of getting a 2Mbps wireless link, but I can reasonably expect to see the same modem speeds that I got in 1993 on average. Clearwire turns around and tells me that I use the thing too much and they are really turning the screws to make me feel the burn and stop using what I pay for. They try to appeal to the needs of my “neighbors” on the network. Then they have the hubris to threaten me. Forget you. I pay for service at a certain level which you never actually deliver on a consistent basis.

This sort of behavior has become commonplace in the ISP world and is very disconcerting. Back in 1993 when I helped found a large-ish ISP in North Carolina, we always strived to have the customary 20% overhead in Internet network bandwidth while maintaining at least a 30% oversubscription rate. Today’s ISPs seem to be running at somewhere greater than 100% oversubscription with no overhead in Internet network bandwidth (this is anecdotal, I have no clue what the real numbers are).

What has changed to make this happen? Bandwidth is cheaper than in 1993. Infrastructure is cheaper than in 1993. The wireless access points that Clearwire uses are even cheaper than when they started 3 years ago. The consumer has to pay the price for poor node distribution, low Internet network bandwidth and lack of infrastructure in general. The customer’s needs require them to utilize their connections fully, often through much of the day yet ISPs continue to fight to not do the investments necessary to insure customer service levels.

I sure am happy that I ordered the ADSL2 line from my friends at ISOMEDIA today. I hope they have more sense than Clearwire, who is clearly treating the customer as a liability.