ClearSpot 4G+

Introduction

I recently acquired a new gadget: the ClearSpot 4G+. It’s sold by ClearWire, a mobile broadband company that’s relatively new to my area. Given the relative newness, I thought it might be nice to write down some of my thoughts on the device for those of you who might not have heard of it, or its parent company. In the next section I’ll detail the events leading up to my decision to rent the device, so if you don’t want to know, feel free to skip it.


The Buildup

I hate Comcast with an undying passion the heat of which could melt the sun. Over the last few weeks my wife and I have been trying to cut back on our monthly expenses, and the first thing up on the chopping block was our cable plan.

We currently have Digital Starter, one high-definition DVR box, and one high-definition regular cable box. We also have a cable modem. Our internet gets about 8-12Mbps down and 1-2Mbps up according to Speedtest.net. All of this costs us $131 a month.

I tried every permutation of “options” I could with Comcast. No HD service, no cable, no internet, reduced channel lineup, and everything in between. I spoke with three different phone reps, and the same thing happened with each: any time I tried to take something off our service, the remaining services increased in price so much that they displaced any savings I might have received. The lowest possible bill I could get was for cable with no internet at $80 a month.

The only cable provider in our area is Comcast. DSL is available from a local mom and pop operation, but it is expensive and slow, and requires us to buy a home phone line we do not need. Satellite internet is an exercise in futility. In the face of this, I had to explore other options.

I ended up trying one of the mobile services offered to our area: Clear. I had played with their products a few years ago but found them just not quite ready for prime time. The rep at our local store assured me that both the 4G network and their devices had improved since my last trial, so I gave them another shot and did a trial run of the ClearSpot 4G+.

The Gadget

The ClearSpot is a combined 4G/3G modem and router. It gives you a portable wifi hotspot for up to 5 devices simultaneously. For $55 a month you get unlimited 4G data downloads. If you use the 3G side, your monthly free limit is 5GB, after which you’re charged 5 cents per megabyte.

In the Houston metro area there are several 4G towers, and I have yet to reach a part of Houston where I don’t have at least 20% of a 4G signal, so effectively for me that means unlimited data in my hometown. Works for me.

The store I ordered my device from didn’t have any in stock, so they shipped it to me overnight. The packaging for the device reminded me of a traditional Japanese bento box. Instead of a tasty meal, you got a tasty mobile internet solution.

The device itself is relatively small, only a little larger than a pack of gum. It has a USB-charged battery (an AC adapter is included in the box as well) that gets a reported 4 hours of battery life. For my real-world battery test I brought the device to work and sat it on my desk during my typical work day, using the browser on my phone occasionally to surf a few sites and download a few podcasts with Podcaster. Since the device keeps track of how long it’s been turned on it was easy to tell how long the battery lasted.

With intermittent use, the ClearSpot 4G+ got almost exactly 4 hours of battery life. With higher loads like streaming video I’d expect significantly less. Overall it’s enough for running around town, and for long road trips I can plug it into my USB power block in the car.

There’s a tiny LCD screen on the device that’s not visible unless it’s on, which was a surprise to me the first time I played with it. The unit I’d played with in the store didn’t have a battery. On the screen you can see whether you’re on 4G or 3G, how much data you’ve downloaded for that session, how many devices are connected, the battery life, and the name of your device’s wireless network. Optionally you can have it display the hotspot password onscreen as well.

There’s a speaker inside (with a hardware on/off switch, thank goodness) that makes little beeps and blips whenever you connect or disconnect a device. It’s cute, but annoying after a while. I turned it off. There’s also a microSD card slot in the side that will read up to 16GB cards, so you have the option of making your ClearSpot a mobile network backup.

You can access the setup for your ClearSpot with an easy-to-remember URL. It’s just http:// followed by your network’s name. So if your wireless network was named BobsInternet, the configuration URL would be http://BobsInternet. From the config screen you can set a number of options, including passwords and security settings (WEP/WPA/WPA2). Here you can also tell the device what type of connection to use.

The ClearSpot 4G+ can do 4G or 3G. It will swap over on the fly if you let it, or you can tell it to use only 4G or only 3G. Since in my area 4G is pretty reliable, I set it to “4G Only” so that I’d always be on my unlimited data side.

Also, you can set the power options from the config menu. The default is to maximize range when it’s plugged in and maximize battery life when it’s not. I kept those settings. You can set a sleep timer too. Mine is set to 10 minutes on battery and never when plugged in.

If it’s just you and one device (like a laptop) you can turn off the wifi completely and just use it as a USB network device. When you plug it into a computer it creates a virtual drive with driver files on it. Judging from the manual, it’s apparently compatible with Windows, Mac and Linux, though I haven’t tried that yet. It just seems easier to me to connect to it wirelessly so the OS doesn’t matter.

Contract/No Contract

You have two options with any Clear service: contract and no contract. The difference has to do with how much you pay up front and whether you want to deal with an early termination fee. The ClearSpot 4G+ can be purchased outright for $225, as of the date this article was posted. If you buy the gadget outright, you don’t need a contract. Our monthly service runs $55.

If you go with a 2-year contract you pay an extra $9/mo to lease the device. You get 2 weeks to try out their stuff and get a full refund. After that you’re bound to the 2-year contract, but you can cancel at any time for a flat-rate ETF of $40. Considering the last ETF I ran into with our Verizon internet dongle was around $300, I don’t consider forty to be an unreasonable exit strategy.

While you’re leasing the device, if something happens to it that wasn’t your fault they will replace it no questions asked. You also have the option for $3/mo to insure it against things that are your fault, such as extemporaneous flights out a second-story window or unwanted alien abductions.

Speeds

On my phone and laptop in two different areas (northeast side of town and central downtown) I got a consistent 4-5Mbps download and 0.5-1Mbps upload. That’s with what the device reported as a weak signal (20%). The signal strength varied between 20-40% most days, even though I’m supposed to have a 4G tower within a mile of my house. The download speeds I got were well within the range specified on my terms of service, so obviously there’s some leeway there on signal strength.

I’m curious if I were able to get a stronger 4G signal if these numbers would be better. For the intended use, however, my wife and I have not had a problem with the download speeds and are actually quite happy with the uncluttered look of the gadget itself.

Home Use

On a typical weeknight my wife and I tend to have two laptops, two cell phones and perhaps one internet-connected streaming device (like my PS3) using the Internet at any given time. This tidily fits within the 5-device limit of the ClearSpot.

I tested streaming video on my laptop (a full-screen 1080p episode of House, M.D. from the Fox website) and saw no noticeable stutter issues. We also streamed a standard-definition video (Mythbusters) on my PS3 through Netflix and saw about the same quality video we got on our cable internet.

We were both able to surf on our laptops and phones simultaneously with no problems. It goes without saying that none of our wireless devices had any issues connecting to the ClearSpot. Since I’d named it the same as our previous router, most of them assumed it was the same connection and picked up right where they left off the previous session.

We haven’t tested it under simultaneously stressful situations yet (like surfing and streaming, or streaming and downloading) so I’ll post back here when I have more information on that.

Conclusion

For about the same price as what we paid for bundled internet from Comcast (but less than the unbundled price) we’re getting comparable performance from the ClearSpot, with the added bonus that we can take our home internet with us anywhere that has a cell phone signal. As a first step toward Comcast-independence, this is definitely a viable option. The speed isn’t quite as good as what we get over cable, but we’ve found that for our usage patterns it’s good enough.

Clear as a company has been pleasant to deal with. During my first trial a few years ago every time I called in I got a friendly, helpful person who sounded like they actually worked in the United States. They understood my concerns and took my return of the first set of devices without any trouble. The reps I’ve talked to this time around are no different, and the company’s policies regarding contracts and pricing seem reasonable to me. Hopefully that won’t change if we decide to continue on with Clear for the foreseeable future.