When it comes to wireless broadband services, the economics dictate some tough trade-offs for the benefit of mobility and wider coverage.  The wireless towers can cost several hundred thousand dollars in equipment and several hundred thousands more for the land to install the tower.  Then there’s the cost of back-haul connectivity and the radio spectrum licensing which all has to be recovered from the subscriber base.  This hard reality means wireless broadband networks have to be heavily shared to make the costs manageable which means congestion levels will be high and usage must be restricted through pricing mechanisms.

A financially desperate Clearwire Internet deemed these terms to be unmarketable to the public and decided to play fast and loose with their advertising which is now getting them sued by their customers.  Clearwire previously proclaimed on their website:

“Usage is unlimited—believe it. You can upload, download, and surf as much as you want for one low price with any of the CLEAR Internet plans. We don’t slow down your connection—the way some Internet providers do—if we think you are using too much bandwidth,”

These claims were clearly proven to be unsupportable by the Clear WiMAX network and some users were getting as little as 256 Kbps which is clearly unacceptable in light of the advertising claims.  Had Clearwire been more upfront about the limitations of the service and consumers entered into the service knowing what they were buying, there would be little controversy though far fewer consumers would have signed on to the service.

There are some who would bemoan the limitations of wireless broadband services whenever usage caps are instituted, but a wireless provider can’t and shouldn’t sell what they can’t provide.  This lesson could not have been made clearer by the failures of Clearwire WiMAX Internet services.

[Cross-posted at Digital Society]