In another bit of bad news for the beleaguered Clearwire, the mobile broadband provider’s previous lawsuits regarding its lack of clarity on its internet service performance and lack of disclosure regarding throttling practices at the network level has now reached its conclusion with a merged class action and proposed settlement. The announcement was sent to current and former Clearwire customers late yesterday evening and affects those that were customers from November 14th 2004 to February 27th of this year.
The aforementioned network management practices exercised by Clearwire without explicitly being mentioned were previously detailed last year and led to a now merged class action suit worth up to $2 million in potential refunds and account credits for current and former Clearwire customers, though should the settlement be approved, Clearwire will not officially claim any wrongdoing, with the 3 individual suits on misleading advertising, internet service quality, and network management policies being merged into the current class action.
The final settlement date for the case will be on December 19th of this year, with anyone affected being asked to submit a claim form before January 9th of next year or formally request exclusion from the class action suit by November 30th at the above link, which also contains a FAQ on the case and all of the necessary links to paperwork.
The settlement is also expected to lead to changes to Clearwire’s legal notices regarding ETFs and its legal notices regarding current network management policies, policies that were not previously implemented or detailed until last year due to the unexpected growth in popularity of the wireless broadband service, after significant price reductions for two tiers of unlimited monthly service, which in turn led to significantly degraded internet and VoIP service for new customers.
With the class action settlement, those that have been affected will be able to cancel without ETF for those customers that are still on fixed term agreements if cancelling for service quality and speed concerns while Clearwire will agree to more transparent network management policies to ensure the best service at all times and pledging to modify term agreements by eliminating ETFs going forward if Clearwire decides to reinstate such agreements in the future.
