I'm confused (which happens easily, so take it light on me, guys).
Didn't i
see this just yesterday:
It's a $10/smartphone fee for "premium data".
Sprint is slimey in that they advertise those prices, then add $10 fee for smartphones.
How is this slimy? Verizon charges $30+ for a smartphone compatible dataplan, but offer some feature phone compatible ones for less. Sprint just builds the base fee into your plan, and charges a premium for the people who will use more data. I was pissed when they added it, but I am glad they gave people a choice rather than just raising rates.
I thought the $10 fee was for "4g smartphones"
I love how phone companies claim to have "4g" when its not.
It's NEVER been a 4G fee. They never advertised it as such. They put it on "premium devices" which all happened to be 4G, but they later (about 10 months ago) added it to all new smartphones. I was pissed about it, but even with that fee they're still a few bucks less than a 2gb capped ATT smartphone and even less compared to Verizon (at least in my usage scenarios).
History would seem to imply that it's far more likely the iPhone will force Sprint to give up on offering unlimited data.
I don't think it will happen in this case. Reasoning is that it's Sprint's ONLY compentitive advantage. They're not much cheaper for smartphone users anymore, so it's all they've got. They also have a 2 year plan to do some significant updates to their 3G (and 4G, of course) networks using the old Nextel iDEN spectrum (800mhz, which the iPhone will support CDMA over) so they're going to have more capacity coming online pretty shortly. Lastly, this isn't like when ATT go the iPhone and attracted a ton of new customers becuase they were the only game in town. It's not even like Verizon who converted a lot of people who hate ATT or were previous feature phone customers on their own network. I suspect Sprint will see modest influx of new customers/switchers and a lot of Sprint Android user converts, but the impct on the network won't bee quite as severe as when the last two carriers got the iPhone.
a few hours after Steve's death, people are getting ready to buy phones and discuss data plans... That's how people are: Death, catastrophes and the like make people feel sad for a certain time, but it does not deeply concern them that much so they really think deeply about life, death, the purpose of life.
Life goes on for them until they themselves face death... Then what?
Why should this impact anyone here's daily lives? It's not like we knew Jobs personally. We can note his passing, celebrate his accomplishments and carry on. It's not like we're his family. I hate all this fake grieving people have for celebs.
Oh Sprint... I thought you were different. I was wrong
Voice/Data Usage Limitation: Sprint reserves the right, without notice, to limit throughput speeds, and to deny, terminate, modify, disconnect or suspend service if off-network usage in a month exceeds: (1) voice: 800 min. or a majority of minutes; or (2) data: 300 megabytes or a majority of kilobytes. Prohibited network use rules apply. See sprint.com/termsandconditions for specific prohibited uses. 1,024 KB equal 1 MB. 1,024 MB equal 1 GB.
Off-network. Roaming. You can roam onto Verizon's network fro voice and 3G for FREE, you just can't do it all the time.
I'm wondering about this too? Is this a CDMA vs. GSM issue?
Yes. CMDA doesn't support voice and data at the same time. GSM does. But, there's a way to do it on CDMA with the approprate technology in the handset - called SCDMA. There's maybe one Verizon Android phone that does it, and it might not even be out yet.
You can use WiFi and voice at the same time, and it the iPhone was a WiMax device you could use WiMax data and CDMA voice (of course, it's not).