Advice for Sprint user

[eyoungren]

Even s4gru.com has tacitly admitted that the rollout is stalled, at least in some markets. Guess what? My market's one of them!

The speculation in those markets that are "stalled" is that those markets have the old WiMax and Sprint is figuring out a way to bring those old Clearwire towers up with the rest of the LTE. Which is fine, but does me no good because all of the WiMax towers when they had them up are in downtown Phoenix. I live in the West Valley so I still have to wait until they get to the towers around me.

Yet too, I was in downtown PHX yesterday and the tower I was connected to was miles away in Scottsdale!

This rollout is so f-ed up!

EDIT: Our completion date has slipped four times! First it was December 2013, then January 2014, then July 2014 and now June 2014. Which I suppose it an improvement, but not much,

The guys over at s4gru.com like to have empathy for the workers on the towers in the Vegas, NM and PHX markets during the summer. But I take exception to that. These people work on towers, for whatever company at all times of the year, including the summer in these markets and they get the work done on time. Why are we cutting them slack now for delaying Network Vision.

I agree, it's not a good thing to be 100 or more feet up on 117º days. But they manage to do it for AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile. So, no, I'm not cutting them slack for Sprint.

Incidentally, T-Mobile has lapped Sprint. Read an article last night that T-Mobile is in 73 of the top 100 metro markets. Sprint is in 22. T-Mobile is covering 116 million pops and Sprint is still at 110 million. Sprint's in fourth place now.

If Softbank's intent is to be number one in the US and wants to use Sprint to get there…NOW'S THE TIME!

 

[DcGamer05]

I like sprints pricing but this NV rollout is ridiculous most of my area has 3G updates those speeds are better but no LTE in fact they cover the more rural town of new Milford with LTE but completely leave out danbury the much bigger neighboring city.

One particular tower in my area I watched the iden panels disappear but no CDMA panels are in it's place and its been two weeks now. Puting CDMA on that tower would greatly reduce load in my area I just don't know why they don't get out there and get it replaced

 

[SONiC5]

Even s4gru.com has tacitly admitted that the rollout is stalled, at least in some markets. Guess what? My market's one of them!

The speculation in those markets that are "stalled" is that those markets have the old WiMax and Sprint is figuring out a way to bring those old Clearwire towers up with the rest of the LTE. Which is fine, but does me no good because all of the WiMax towers when they had them up are in downtown Phoenix. I live in the West Valley so I still have to wait until they get to the towers around me.

Yet too, I was in downtown PHX yesterday and the tower I was connected to was miles away in Scottsdale!

This rollout is so f-ed up!

EDIT: Our completion date has slipped four times! First it was December 2013, then January 2014, then July 2014 and now June 2014. Which I suppose it an improvement, but not much,

The guys over at s4gru.com like to have empathy for the workers on the towers in the Vegas, NM and PHX markets during the summer. But I take exception to that. These people work on towers, for whatever company at all times of the year, including the summer in these markets and they get the work done on time. Why are we cutting them slack now for delaying Network Vision.

I agree, it's not a good thing to be 100 or more feet up on 117º days. But they manage to do it for AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile. So, no, I'm not cutting them slack for Sprint.

Incidentally, T-Mobile has lapped Sprint. Read an article last night that T-Mobile is in 73 of the top 100 metro markets. Sprint is in 22. T-Mobile is covering 116 million pops and Sprint is still at 110 million. Sprint's in fourth place now.

If Softbank's intent is to be number one in the US and wants to use Sprint to get there…NOW'S THE TIME!

That's awfully low, I can't imagine that Sprint's LTE is only present in 22 of the top 100 markets considering NV is already halfway completed, unless it's only launched markets that are being considered. T-Mobile launched LTE in NYC with what appears to be less coverage than Sprint, at least according to Sensorly, and I imagine the same is true for other markets.

I'm not defending Sprint, but 73 markets covering 116 million people vs 22 markets covering 110 million people, just sounds odd.

 

[Bacong]

Choosing Sprint is concerning, in my opinion. Their coverage, except for maybe a very few areas, isn't going to be in places AT&T and Verizon aren't. Their 3G speeds were slower than AT&Ts to begin with and they still don't have very much LTE at all despite being the first company to really try and push 4G.

Remember the HTC Evo? 4g!!! Yet they didn't really have it anywhere. My sister got it specifically for the 4G speeds and she never once got them. I remember doing speedtests on my iPhone 3G while she did hers on her Evo and I beat her by a substantial amount, and that was like 4 years ago.

Sprint is the very worst of the major carriers. While acknowledging that none of them are perfect -- it's quite obvious that AT&T and Verizon are the best two, and T-Mobile and Sprint exist for budget customers. I can barely afford my iPhone bill as is rolleyes but it's worth the extra money to be completely satisfied with my network.

 

[TheProFTW]

So I always browse this forum for opinions and stories and finally posting since I don't know too many people with Sprint.

I'm due for an upgrade with Sprint and currently have the 4s where the 3G network is slow I don't even bother doing anything unless I'm on wifi (and actually gotten lost a few times since Maps relies on data). I'm waiting for the 5s to come out and my question is this: is Sprints 4g LTE really that much faster than the 3G? Enough to sign over 2 more years. Or should I jump ship and pay more at a different carrier? Right now I live in Northern California outside SF.

Any advice or experience would be very helpful

T-Mobile's HSPA+ works faster than Sprint's LTE.

That being said, you should expect Sprint's speeds to be on par with AT&T/Verizon/T-Mo LTE when all of them already switch to LTE-A or 5G

 

[LoloBond]

So I always browse this forum for opinions and stories and finally posting since I don't know too many people with Sprint.

I'm due for an upgrade with Sprint and currently have the 4s where the 3G network is slow I don't even bother doing anything unless I'm on wifi (and actually gotten lost a few times since Maps relies on data). I'm waiting for the 5s to come out and my question is this: is Sprints 4g LTE really that much faster than the 3G? Enough to sign over 2 more years. Or should I jump ship and pay more at a different carrier? Right now I live in Northern California outside SF.

Any advice or experience would be very helpful

I was with Sprint for 6 years, I live in Long Island NY and everything worked fine till they release the iPhone, after that Sprint Network went into dial-up mode. I jump to At&t when the iPhone 5 came out and I couldn't be happier. I get LTE in multiple places and at home I get 4G 1-3 mbps. You will pay a little bit more but is completely worth it.

 

[bjb.butler]

Incidentally, T-Mobile has lapped Sprint. Read an article last night that T-Mobile is in 73 of the top 100 metro markets. Sprint is in 22.

I did a quick look at the list, and it's a little misleading. For example, they have separated Boston and Cambridge into separate markets, which no one does. Who knows how many other markets they're doing that for

But as far as Sprint... My I'm kinda stuck with them. I'm a broke college student, so switching to AT&T/VZ is out of the question. Also, I have an employee discount on Sprint, so I'm paying $70 (after taxes) for unlimited everything. Lastly, my contract isn't over until 7/14, so by that time I'm pretty sure we will have LTE here (Inland Empire)

My 3G speeds are acceptable... I web browse and stream pandora without any problems, so I can't really complain

 

[eyoungren]

I did a quick look at the list, and it's a little misleading. For example, they have separated Boston and Cambridge into separate markets, which no one does. Who knows how many other markets they're doing that for

But as far as Sprint... My I'm kinda stuck with them. I'm a broke college student, so switching to AT&T/VZ is out of the question. Also, I have an employee discount on Sprint, so I'm paying $70 (after taxes) for unlimited everything. Lastly, my contract isn't over until 7/14, so by that time I'm pretty sure we will have LTE here (Inland Empire)

My 3G speeds are acceptable... I web browse and stream pandora without any problems, so I can't really complain

As you and SONiC5 indicate things are a bit misleading. I can accept that. Still, it doesn't cast Sprint in a favorable light.

I'm a Sprint customer so I'm in this same boat here. My contract is up on 9/21/14 so I've got a bit more to wait. It'll probably get extended too when I get my wife a new phone at some point.

In any case, for the average user this doesn't look good, whether its misleading or not. And Sprint is either slow to refute things or just ignores it all together.

All I can do is watch this slow moving train wreck to it's ultimate conclusion.

 

[PM-Performance]

Sprint wasn't bad until a few months after announcing the evo4g.
They proved they didn't have the bandwidth to handle all the new traffic with their bs 4g claims and unlimited data claims to get everyone Includinm myself to jump ship.
Now with all the new customers they are showing how poor their network is more and more.
One of my major customers was only sticking with them for push to talk and now are dropping them and looking for other options. They have soooo many mifis to " help" . Those things are more worthless than their unlimited unusable data.

Tmob isn't any better here. I hear the data is great but voice sucks bad here with tons and tons if drops. Simple SMS and mms is piss poor latency too.
Stick with the big two and suck up the extra few bucks for speed and reliability

 

[TheProFTW]

Tmob isn't any better here. I hear the data is great but voice sucks bad here with tons and tons if drops. Simple SMS and mms is piss poor latency too.
Stick with the big two and suck up the extra few bucks for speed and reliability

I'm not sure about that, I've never had a dropped call with T-mo, and had quite a few with AT&T.

Texts work just fine on both.

 

[PM-Performance]

I'm not sure about that, I've never had a dropped call with T-mo, and had quite a few with AT&T.

Texts work just fine on both.

Maybe its just in PA then, cuz everywhere we tried, the service sucked. My GF's son is still on Tmo and sending his texts 15 feet away from me sometimes would take 20-30 mins to get through.

I learned my lesson with trying to cheap out. If I want realiability I spend a little more for better service. If I want cheap and reliability/speed is not a concern, I go with the cheaper service

 

[TheProFTW]

I think T-Mobile works great on suburban sites, somewhat bad on urban and crappy on rural.

AT&T works amazing on all of those, except for the occasional dropped call

 

[cuzo]

I'm debating this heavily because sprint is so slow I can't stream at all unless its over wifi.

Without access to save files I'm wondering whether android is a bit more practical for sprint users who suffer with horrible data speeds. At least you can download and watch it later than struggle streaming dealing with network buffering.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk 2

 

[eyoungren]

I'm debating this heavily because sprint is so slow I can't stream at all unless its over wifi.

Without access to save files I'm wondering whether android is a bit more practical for sprint users who suffer with horrible data speeds. At least you can download and watch it later than struggle streaming dealing with network buffering.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk 2

My Sprint iPhone 5 is jailbroken so I have root file access. Being able to copy files too and from my i5 sure has it's advantages. I don't know about using the phone to download and watch later though, unless your just planning on letting the phone sit for a few hours or so and then transferring the file. You can do that though if you jailbreak, provided you aren't on iOS 6.1.3 or 6.1.4.

 

[TheProFTW]

I'm debating this heavily because sprint is so slow I can't stream at all unless its over wifi.

Without access to save files I'm wondering whether android is a bit more practical for sprint users who suffer with horrible data speeds. At least you can download and watch it later than struggle streaming dealing with network buffering.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk 2

I'm pretty sure you'll get a lot of failed downloads.

The other day I tried a Sprint phone on 3G, and I was saying AT&T's 3G felt slow.. damn!

 

[tremlock]

Here is a reading from a newly updated area. Will it last? Most likely no but for now I'm enjoying it. This is in Sunrise, Florida

 

[eyoungren]

Here's a recent on of mine.

 

[Zaft]

here is a test I did just now. city hall, Manhatten. not bad 3G.

 

[eyoungren]

here is a test I did just now. city hall, Manhatten. not bad 3G.

That's actually pretty good. About the best I get in the places I frequent is about .5 up and .25 down. Usually with a 450-700ms ping time.

 

[tremlock]

here is a test I did just now. city hall, Manhatten. not bad 3G.

For Sprint 3G that's not bad.

 

[rshroff2]

Run away from Sprint as fast as you can! Their LTE is much faster than their 3G but it is hard to get a good, consistent connection to their LTE. I'd go to AT&T, Verizon or T-Mobile instead. Sure you lose unlimited data but as you said you cannot rely on it for anything so it's not worth it. Being a Sprint customer has taught me a very important lesson: quality is more important than quantity.