Clear Discontinues iSpot

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Clear is cancelling their iSpot. Yep, the Apple-centric mobile WiFi (Don’t call it a MiFi! That’s trademarked by Novatel!) hub that used Clearwire 4G WiMAX is off the market. Despite a cheaper monthly plan, it doesn’t look like Clear found much success with the iSpot.

A user reported on the Clear forums that the iSpot was classified as “end of life” by the carrier, and the $99 iSpot was given discounted pricing. When a Clear employee stepped in to clarify things, he did confirm that yes – they were canning the iSpot.

The only locations currently available to purchase an iSpot are at certain retail stores. These stores only have a limited supply and once sold out will not be ordering more. We do however have the iSpots in stock for devices still under warranty that need to be replaced.

The iSpot was at the cheap end of Clear’s mobile WiFi offerings (just $99) and they did off an iSpot exclusive data plan (just $25/month), but the caveat was that you could only use it with Apple’s “i-Devices” like the iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad.

Clear obviously hasn’t commented on why the device was taken off the market, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they weren’t selling and were losing money on what they did sell. The MiFi hub had MAC filtering to make sure you could only use it with the Aple devices, but that was easily spoofed. Once you had that down, you basically had a discounted Clear WiFi hub with a discounted monthly Clear plan.

Did any folks out there buy a iSpot? We’d like to hear about it in the comments.