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Why I Dumped Clearwire

There are fundamentally two business models a company can pursue. The first is to provide the best possible experience to the customer. By providing the best possible experience to the customer, you will grow a large loyal customer base who will not hesitate to pay a fair market price for your products or services. This model is followed by the majority of small locally owned businesses, although some large corporations have been credited with following this model. Note that virtually all large corporations claim to put the customer first, but most follow a second model.

The second model is to lock in customers as much as possible, then squeeze as much money as you can from each customer. This could very well be referred to as the airline business model, although you don’t need to look far at all to find examples in any industry. When Apple applies a patch to iTunes that prevents you from syncing your Palm, they aren’t doing anything any customer would have ever asked for. Rather, they’re hoping you’ll throw up your arms in frustration and buy an iPhone because “it just works.” This “bleed them until they die” model works surprisingly well when customers believe they don’t really have a choice. Fortunately, we always have a choice.

Now that I’ve waxed philosophic for too long, why am I leaving Clearwire, the ISP whom I’ve recommended to so many friends over the years? A couple of months ago I was online playing QuadRadius when I lost my connection (meaning I lost my game). This is a little upsetting, but we all remember the 2400 days and, well, line noise happens. I wanted to know if the entire Internet was down or not, so I pinged a few servers. None of my pings were successful, but the results were odd. Normally I ping a few servers by domain name and a few by IP address, which lets me know if my connection is broke or just my DNS server (always carry a spare DNS server!). I saw none of my pings succeeded, but all the domains resolved … to the same IP address.

At this point I fired up Wireshark, and sure enough all my packets were being dropped except DNS resolutions, which all resolved to the same IP address. On a hunch, I fired up the browser and pointed it towards Google, where I was greeted by a Clearwire page telling me they would be willing to reduce my monthly service fee by $10 per month if I agreed to sign a two year contract. That’s right, my Internet had been cut off in order that I could be served an advertisement.

There is nothing in the Clearwire Terms of Service that allows this, or at least there wasn’t when this occurred. The obvious analogy would be if an AT&T operator cut into your phone call to your aunt to offer you a reduced rate on long distance. You might want the service offered, but when they interrupt your communications to do it, well that’s just rude. It could be dangerous as well; if I had a VOIP phone I would have effectively lost the ability to send or receive phone calls until I tried to browse the web. I am not a lawyer, but I believe disconnecting a paid customer’s Internet connection to provide advertising in violation of your own terms of service is breech of contract.

Naturally, I was pretty annoyed. All this from a company that had never done me wrong before. So I called them up, and demanded two things. First, I asked for an apology. I was told, and I quote, “I’m sorry you didn’t appreciate our offer.” Despite failing to receive an apology, I gave my second demand: a promise to never perform a “network capture” (their term) on me again. I was told that since I declined that offer, I would never be given that offer again. I asked if I would receive other offers, and was told they didn’t know.

So I wrote a letter repeating my two demands, and stating that I would cancel service if they weren’t met. Not only were my demands not met, but I received no response. So today I followed through with my threat, and disconnected Clearwire (after twenty minutes of on-hold time).

I’m not particularly mad at Clearwire, and I don’t think they’re more evil that most ISPs. However, like many small companies that have grown into large companies, they’ve stopped following the “provide the best service possible” business model. Clearwire exists as an ISP, and they are contracted to transfer bits back and forth between customers and other people in the world. In cutting off my Internet they did a less than optimal job at their primary mission in order to lock me into a two year contract. As a customer for the last two years, I can honestly say that had Clearwire continued to provide excellent Internet service, you wouldn’t need a contract to keep me signed up for another two years. But if you’re going to provide less reliable service than my local ISP, then I’m not signing any contract at any price.