I was presales for an enterprise software company that got called in propose a solution for a VERY large company which is heavy in equipment. (I am being intentionally vague here.) Some of their equipment moved from one piece of equipment to other pieces of equipment. Picture a big box with little boxes inside. You could move a little box from one big box to another big box. Each of these little boxes had to have a record of everyplace they went, which meant that they had to be identifiable.

This organization somehow had been loosing track of the little boxes, and would arbitrarily reassign ID numbers to boxes. They said something like the ID tags would fall off or some sort of nonsense. Since this caused regulatory problems for them, they came up with a project called the "Permanent ID Project" wherein they would use software to keep track of the little boxes.

The first question out of someone's mouth during the demonstration of how we would track the "permanent" ID number of a box was "You know that ID number you just showed us? How would we change that?"

This organization had "incredible unique and specific needs."

I used Clearwire for a little over a year, and dropped them due to their throttling.

Cool story bro time:

Working from home for an enterprise software company, and moving to a rural area with no real broadband other than Clearwire, I went to their store/office to sign up. Since I was using it primarily for work, I worked with a sales manager who specialized in business accounts. After making it clear what I would be using the access for, including the data volumes I would be using, I was assured that the speed and access I needed would be no problem. I even made it clear that my company used VOIP. I was even given a loaner modem, so I could test the service. After about a week of testing, I decided to sign up, putting the recurring charges on my corporate AMEX.

About three or four months of everything working swimmingly, I was on a call one day, when the phone just stopped working. I had a hardware VOIP device, so I could see the LEDs weren't working, but my other Internet access was fine. I called our VOIP support, and they figured out that the port for VOIP had been blocked.

I called the Clearwire sales guy who I had worked with--and who had assured me that VOIP would not be an issue--and he denied that the port had been blocked, but he contacted Clearwire support, and was told by a manager that indeed the port was blocked. He put me in contact with this manager, who helped me figure out a port that would not be blocked, so I could set the VOIP modem to that port. During this time, he warned me that the speed would be throttled when the system registered the usage that was coming from my IP address and port.

I saw my speeds slowly degrade to unusable on all Internet access, not just VOIP, and by this time DSL had come to my area, so I took the modem in to the store to return it. The very unfriendly person who took the return informed me that I would be hit with a ~$300 termination fee, even though I had not agreed to a contract or terms, and she could not prove that I had.

As soon as the charge hit my AMEX, I filed a dispute on the charge, which was promptly reversed, and I never heard or saw anything again.

Cool story, huh?

That's what she said.

(Am I doing it right?)