Clearwire's
far too young of a company to be dealing with a mid-life crisis, but just a year or so after it really began rolling out its Clear
WiMAX services in select portions of America, it appears that the outfit is changing names. Confusingly enough, the company (currently Clearwire) will be renaming itself as the service (currently
Clear), leaving us to wonder what exactly CLEAR (the rebranded company) will call its WiMAX offerings. There's no indication on the company's website as to when it plans to make the rebranding official, but a customer in
Charlotte, North Carolina has informed us that the change is already underway in the Queen City. According to him, his equipment was recently swapped out, with the new modem boasting a Motorola logo and a "CLEAR" logo instead of the "Clearwire" emblem as before. Interestingly, he also claims that his download speed received a (gratis) bump from 1.6Mbps to 5Mbps, which resulted in a "huge improvement in speed." So, any other users out there getting their modems swapped out? Call us crazy, but we're guessing it's just a matter of time.
[Thanks,
Rick]
Update: Clearwire pinged us with a few clarifications here. Ready? Good. Clearwire, as a company, is not changing its name. So far as the SEC knows, the corporate entity will remain "Clearwire." The new "CLEAR" branding is a push to market its true 4G WiMAX services (as opposed to "pre-WiMAX service"), which are rolling out to over 40 existing Clearwire markets around the country. Seems that explains the speed boost Mr. Rick experienced, huh?
posted Sep 24th 2009 9:01AM
they should focus less on they're name and more on building out there network. i don't care if there company was called i hate jay jay i want a 5mb download speed.
they just launched there new site
http://www.clear.com/
No, they couldn't call it that. That's the name of MY company. I can't keep the jay jay repellent in stock it's so popular!
I kinda liked "Clearwire". Like Radioshack's lame efforts to rebrand themselves as "The Shack", I think this is an attempt to look more 'cool', I could be wrong though.
For the record, they did not just rebrand. They are advertising their higher speed service as Clear, their lower speed service as Clearwire for now. When I checked my area for availability, it said Clear was not available, but I could sign up for Clearwire. They are probably deploying their dual band LTE/Wimax modems now for future interoperability.
And some should focus more on THEIR grammatical skills and less on THEIR ability to give unsound business advice.
They didn't just change their name or rebrand their product...
In fact, when last year they combined Sprint assets with Clearwire's, along with an infusion of cash from Intel and Comcast, they rebranded the new service as Clear.
And, it's been well known for the past year that the old pre-WiMax customers on Clearwire would see their networks eventually upgraded to the new Clear true WiMax.
What sort of business is this, that you're purveying old news as new???
Wow, that was fast! I just sent these pics this morning.
Thanks guys!
I saw that clearwire is setting up a new store on michigan avenue in chicago. It had the new logo and it looks like it will be open soon.
thank god ... chicago was supposed to be one of the first.
goodbye comcast.
yeah, they have one in the ogilvy train station, too. i just saw "clear" with that new logo and didnt know if it was a new place for clear channel or clearwire. good to know it's clearwire!
yeah, i saw that store at Michigan and Lake in Chicago
Ah, that used to be Chicago Community Bank!
Once they expand outside metro Atlanta to my area, I am there. Yum.
Wow. Don't know why, but that looks an awful lot like the Sony Ericsson logo...
Yup, that's what I was thinking...
My first thought too.
8 years in the making and WiMax hits 3rd world nations rapidly before it even touches the states. It finally comes to Chicago.
Wow, I'm excited by this...
Way to rip of Ocado's logo (online supermarket UK)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ocado_logo.PNG
If I would have know this was new I would have told you guys this three weeks ago
Agreed. This has been marketed in Atlanta as Clear for several months now.
Hrm, the website at clear.com hasnt changed significantly in months. They've been using the Clear brand, with the swirl logo, since launch here in Las Vegas. All our gear has the Clear name and logo on it. We've never had anything labeled Clearwire and the service has been live for a while. Not sure where the reports that the website clear.com is new are coming from.
totally this has been in use since around NOVEMVER 2008. a "Friend" of mine worked with them for a bit. nothing is new. this has been out for awhile now.
Isn't this old news? I live in the Atlanta area and I've had that modem in my house for about a month. They were going by just Clear then too.
Boise store already changed names.
Having used XOHM since pre-launch, and having used Clear since last October, I can tell you that the clear.com site is not new. Baltimore and certain Washington, DC, users have been using Clear for nearly a year now. The logo has not changed either, I have XOHM-branded gear and I have Clear-branded gear, both have had their same logos since the inception of that brand.
Coverage in DC Metro area??? When I check clear.com and clearwire.com they show no coverage for MD at all.
Check out the coverage section. Clear.com shows less coverage than clearwire.com. New tech?
I noticed that myself, I'm in the Daytona Beach market and it's not on the list at the new site.
Yeah, the Clear site has had an outdated map for a while. We're a Clear dealer and we found that a lot of areas in town show no coverage on the online map but get great signal.
Umm you guys are confused. There are two sites. The clearwire site and the clear site.
Of course those who sign up with clearwire will be upgraded to clear down the road when it comes to your area from what my local rep told me.
I'm considering going with clearwire but the thing is that I hear various stories bout its service. Most of them not good. And I don't know if I'd get good quality internet from them. I game (360 Elite) and I download a lot of music so I want to be able to do those things without losing connection all the time and suffering from lag. Despite how much I hate TWC the one thing I can say for them is that I've never had any issues with the internet itself (aside from being expensive).
My ideal situation would be to bundle tv and internet with clear but I hate the idea of my phone signal relying on my internet. Which is why I haven't even considered Vonage.
I'm in Atlanta. It's been clear the since they started here earlier in the year. Also, there have been the two same Clear commercials on Hulu for weeks. Also, the website looked like that weeks ago.
Must be a regional thing.
Oh and also, they have poorly trained employees. I went into a store and nobody there knew if the service worked with Macs. I tried their live online chat. Same story. I finally called them in person (after finding a Leopard Beta driver with no help from them on their own site) and asked if it was compatible with Snow Leopard. "Tech Support:" "I dunno."
Do Engadget writers do any actual research? Clearwire has been using the brand name "Clear", the new logo, and the clear.com web site for all of its WiMAX properties and products since January. OVER 8 MONTHS.
This makes me wonder how many other stories on here are just pulled out of thin air when someone emails a "tip."
Lol I wasn't gonna say it quite so mean like but yeah you speak the truth.
It appears though that Clearwire is in the process of switching all their current tech and subscribers upwards to the Clear service like I said right above you.
If so that's excellent. I need to talk to my parents about this cuz from everything I'm reading online
Clearwire = SUCKS
Clear = WIN
So I'm def interested. And since Verizon FIOS will probably never show up in my area (Ral, NC) I'll probably go with Clear instead. Unless U-Verse get their shit together and reaches my address finally.
I don't see anything new here. Clear.com has always been online for the Wimax covered areas, where as the Clearwire.com site has been up for pre-Wimax covered areas.
The company and the technology aren't going to go anywhere until they start convincing the hardware companies that they need devices that support Wi-Max, *and* 3G.
It's a chicken and egg problem. Who's going to by a device that can only be used in a handful of locations? If I can't get data in the vast majority of the country, then it's useless. WiFi is just as useless in most circumstances.
Practically every device that supports 3G also supports 2G, so why don't the 4G devices support 3G?
Intel originally was going to include WiMax chips into the Centrino2 chipset, but later made it available as an optional inclusion.
At some point, having WiMax on your laptop may be as common as having WiFi.
Well, the company launched their WiMAX services as CLEAR last October, this isn't news. clear.com has existed in its current format since then as well. But yes, current Expedience markets are being converted to WiMAX all across the country, there are plenty of press releases that speak to which markets are slated to be swapped out from "clearwire" to "clear" over the next 14 months.
Clear is what the new family of 4G services is being called. The company's name will remain Clearwire.
It's not available in Phila until the 29th of this month.
i had a knock on my door yesterday and a cute young girl was walking the neighborhood handing out flyers and trying to get people to sign up for clear.
I live in Dallas, and Clear just pushed back their launch here until Nov1. They swapped to Clear right after the Portland launch, and it is a branch of Clearwire. We got to play with the modem for a bit and achieved over 4Mbps with only 2 bars. With the modem by a window (as per instructions by Clear) we got bursts over 9Mbps......not bad for complete Wifi. Over 2500 Sq Mi of coverage aint bad eiher.
Yea, they've been CLEAR for a while now. Atlanta has stores with the signs already and they regularly run TV ads using the name. ...pretty much everything they offer seems to require a 2-year contract though, so I don't get the hype =/
Wow, I guess I'm the only one in Lubbock here.
I'm in Geek Squad here and we have a guy come in and sell Clear at our store on a regular basis. He told us that it's just Clear now. He also set up one of their modems for us and it's really freakin fast. What's sad is the connection we use for work is 3Mbps and theirs is like 5! Best Buy should just use Clear for their Internet needs where possible.
New new logo looks like a XBOX logo with the X replaced by a C.
I'm i Raleigh, NC and we just upgraded to the Clear service. The signal reception hasn't improved but the bandwidth has finally increase to the point where clearwire is usable. Prior to the upgrade I had be trying to get out of my contract but now I have usable internet, not great just usable.
WOW! That looks identical to my Beamspeed modem, except mine uses BRS (broadband radio service). I wonder when there will be WiMax service in my area.
I'm in Portland, OR, so this is 9 month old news.
Clearwire bought a different company, Clear, and it's not just a rebranding but they are taking their technologies. They do work a lot better than Clearwire, which is unfortunate because of the bad rep Clearwire has. My boyfriend works for Clear in Portland, he lets me in on the skinny.
This is not new. The have been calling themselves "Clear" since the launched in Atlanta.
A friend of mine works for clear and he convinced me to try the internet even though I already had fios. This was months back and it's the same modem in those pictures. So I guess in washington state this has already happened a long time ago. The speeds were shitty... with fios I got 1.2 megabytes down and clear didnt even give me half that...
They have been advertising as Clear for a few months here in Atlanta, since about a month before the service went live. There's been a clear store on Peachtree in midtown for a while now, too.
I also have the Motorola WiMAX modem and Clear out here in Las Vegas. I just recently started using the service so it's always been fast for me and everything has been labeled as Clear.
So far I'm pretty happy with Clear Internet.
http://www.acreativedesktop.com/clear-high-speed-internet-help.html