Internet

Do you get on the Internet? Obviously you do, or you would not be reading this. I've been paying $50/month (used to be $40) for my DSL. I love my DSL connection, but that is way too expensive. I can't get the lower speed connection (and lower price) that they offer, because I don't have a land line phone to connect it with.

Well, I just found out about Clear. They promote themselves as mobile internet providers, but they do offer home service as well. I'd love to get the mobile service, but home service is all I need and saving some money right now is super important.

I'm thinking I might sign up for their low end 768 Kbps/128 Kbps service. Not nearly as fast as what I'm used to, but for $20/month for the service and $4.99 per month for the hardware lease, that is half of what I am currently paying. When I can afford to upgrade, I will upgrade to their 6 Mbps/512 Kbps plan, which is still only $40/month for the service, still less than I currently pay with a faster download (and slower upload).

Their mobile plans are reasonable too. They have three plans, $30, $40 and $50. You can get a $10 monthly discount by signing a 2 year agreement. They are all 4 Mbps/384 Kbps, but differ in the bandwidth you get to use. The low plan gives you just 200 MB per month, the mid plan 2 GB and the big plan is unlimited.

The plan that I really want is one of their combo plans, the fast internet and the frequent mobile. That would get me connected at home and on the road, when I needed it, for just $40/month (with contract).

Before I signed up, I wanted to know how it worked. I didn't want to pay for the equipment, so would my current equipment work? Are their any other charges? Like with DSL, you pay the service provider and you pay the phone company.

Unfortunately, I will need to get the equipment from them. That is the $5 charge mentioned above. My equipment is not WiMAX compatible. Now what is WiMax? Basically they will be connecting to me via a cell tower. Cool, eh? With the home service, I don't think I can pack up my equipment and drag it along, I think it is just for the house, but it still comes via the tower. Their are no other charges though. Just the $25/month.

Hmmm... I've sometimes lost my cell connection here. What if I can't get good connection here? The guarantee I could not find on their site. That worried me, so I used their chat service to ask a representative. Here was the response: "If for some reason, the service doesn’t work you can cancel with a refund within 7 days." I wanted to make sure that was from when I hooked up service, not when I signed up for it. So I asked: "It is from the time you sign up with us." Too bad. That does not get much time to check out their service and make sure they are going to work well. Should be 30 days, imo. At least 14 days.

What about security, is it safe to do my banking over this connection? That was on the site. They claim it is very secure, using the OFDM Transmission protocol. Don't know what that means, so I looked it up. According to Wikipedia it means "Orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing". After looking at that article, I still don't really understand, but it sounds secure. Hey, I might be a tech, but I don't know everything!

You want to sign up? Well, you might be out of luck. They are expanding, but currently only offered in Portland, Oregon. Normally our city is not one of those chosen to be beta testers like this, but I'm not complaining this time. They will soon be in Atlanta, Las Vegas and Grand Rapids, MI.

Basically, I decided to sign up, but I think I'm going to go to the kiosk I saw at Lloyd Center the last time we were there and talk to the people there. I hope I can get the equipment from them directly, so that I actually have 7 days to try it out and make sure I'm happy.