You might have seen where I started a free trial of CLEAR’s 4G Wireless Internet service at the beginning of the Fourth of July weekend, when our Comcast cable internet had some downtime (once again, contrary to the phone support person’s opinion, the problem was not our modem).

I’m happy to report that the two-week trial period of CLEAR’s On-the-Go mobile service went very well. The software installation was quick and super easy on all of the laptops we wanted to test: two running Windows Vista, one running Windows XP, and one running Mac OS X Snow Leopard. We tested service in several locations in the city of Chicago and in a few suburban areas. I can report that signal strength and speed were good in the spots where we would most need to use the service. My husband and I both liked the service enough to keep it, so the service was upgraded to a 2 On-the-Go bundle.

During our trial period, I also took some time to check out comments online from other Chicago area CLEAR users. Most of the negative reviews seemed to be about the home service or weather-related downtime. My only experience with the home service is in the Honolulu market, where my mom has used it for almost three years. When we helped her set it up, modem position in relation to the windows and electronic equipment in the room was very important. We have not personally had those issues with the mobile modems in Chicago. We also had several stormy days during the trial period, and our connectivity did not appear to be affected.

CLEAR’s home service is not yet available at our address, so we will also be keeping Comcast cable internet unless we find a better solution. We will most likely cancel our other wireless internet service as soon as that contract expires.

I also want to mention Marcos, the sales associate I spoke to at CLEAR’s Harlem-Irving Plaza kiosk. He was friendly, professional, and very quick in getting me set up and on my way, both in my initial visit and when I went back to upgrade to the 2 On-the-Go bundle.

So far, I’m a satisfied new CLEAR customer, and also glad that Comcast has given us no problems since the outage I mentioned at the beginning of the post.

I have not received compensation for this review, and neither I nor my husband has any connection to CLEAR except as paying customers. Our CLEAR contract is at the standard rates and promotions offered in the Chicago metro area during July 2010.

(NaBloPoMo | July ’10: 21 of 31)

I actually did have a topic planned for today, but since our Comcast high speed internet went down as I started to write, that topic has been shelved for a bit so I can give you my first impression of CLEAR’s 4G High Speed Mobile 4G Wireless Broadband service.

CLEAR is a relatively new player in the Chicago area, and we’ve been receiving promotional mailings for some time. The most recent one mentioned some special package rates, and also a 14-day free trial period. Since the Comcast service was so thoughtful as to go down while the mall was still open, it seemed like a good time to start the free trial with CLEAR.

This is actually sort of a second look, because Mom has had CLEAR service in Honolulu for almost three years now. At the time we set it up for her, the company was still called Clearwire and the service had not yet been upgraded to 4G WiMAX (that happened in January).

I decided to test the On-the-Go mobile internet because we have another provider’s mobile service contract expiring in December. I was given a 4G Mobile USB modem that will work with both PC and Mac. I’m testing it right now on my Sony VAIO laptop running Vista. Setup was super easy, as promised. So far, so good. Speeds are listed as up to 6Mbps down/1Mbps up; I don’t think I’m getting a full 6Mbps at the moment but it’s pretty healthy. I’m watching a YouTube video in another window and I’m not getting any unwanted skipping or pausing.

Back to Comcast for a second. We’ve had a lot of very brief periods of downtime this week, and today the service was down for about five hours. Every time I call Comcast when the internet service is down, they tell me that my modem is the problem. So far, it has never ended up being the problem, and it gets really annoying to be told it’s the modem when I’m usually 99% sure it is not. Including tonight. Only once did I get a support person who acknowledged that it might actually be a problem on the network and hunted it down.

When the service is working, it’s very speedy, though.

We’ll see how this trial goes, and hopefully it will help us make a good decision on whether to keep Comcast for home and switch to CLEAR for mobile only, or switch to CLEAR for both home and mobile. If you’ve tried both Comcast and CLEAR, please leave a comment with your thoughts and experiences!

(NaBloPoMo | July ’10: 2 of 31)