Sigh
I wasn't so sure about going to Sprint but lured in my unlimited data and the fact of being able to buy an iPhone5 without waiting two months i bought in.
I also was going on a cross country trip and figured that would show me a broad overview of what Sprint's network was really like.
First of all if you are a sprint subscriber you can see what your area is REALLY
like before you sign by going to
http://www.sprint.com/network
Then, you can punch in your zip code and you get a map with all the towers near you and how their upgrades were for the past six months.
In my area there is actually a tower I can physically see from my backyard so my speed is decent.
at my workplace I get reasonable speed but I'm usually hopping on their wifi anyway.
So what about my trip? We drove from Minneapolis to Milwaukee, Madison, Chicago, then northeast to Port Huron, MI, then off to Toronto then to central New York, Penssylvania and back thru Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Wisconsin and back to MN.
What did I find out - well first of all: the iPhone5 antenna is a huge improvement on the 4 and 4S. My friend had a Sprint Android and his work cell phone (Blackberry) was out on Verizon I believe.
In remote places where his Droid wouldn't communicate or get a signal at all the iPhone5 would and work well. We would sometimes hop off the highway where it's very obvious that cell towers follow highways and I still did okay.
Secondly, LTE in the Chicago area was a huge slap to the head - it was like my phone woke up and realized its potential. Even mobile I was getting over 30 megabit download speeds and speeds around 10 megabit up.
I'm told my area will get LTE from them in March 2013 but I've also heard Sprint says things to people to keep them hanging on, I guess we'll see.
My workplace has a bigger discount thru Sprint than they do for AT&T, Verizon or T Mobile so we'll see how well this works. I'm kind of doing this as an experiment.
If they can get LTE towers in my area it should be win-win for me. Even now it's not bad. 2-3 megabit download is about what I was getting on AT&T in this area.
Thirdly, there were a few remote areas where reception was iffy - one of the hotels we stayed in was down in a hollow so the cell signals were going above us - even the verizon cell he had with him didn't stay connected very well. we used the hotels wifi and that was saturated with other guests using it because nobody could get good cell service in that hollow.
