iPhone on Sprint question

[jharvey71884]

I know this board has tried to warn me about switching to Sprint, but my move into my house is complete and I found out the closest Sprint tower is less than a mile away.

I'm wondering, because the tower is so close, if I should see better reception and data because of it?

 

[osofast240sx]

What if you don't get LTE? Will u be on wifi at home? More than likely there is more than one carrier on that tower. The carriers lease space on the towers owned by a third party.

 

[jharvey71884]

What if you don't get LTE? Will u be on wifi at home? More than likely there is more than one carrier on that tower. The carriers lease space on the towers owned by a third party.

I get 50mps at home on WIFI, not worried about home data, just more about calls and reception.

 

[tremlock]

You can always get an Airave

 

[eyoungren]

I know this board has tried to warn me about switching to Sprint, but my move into my house is complete and I found out the closest Sprint tower is less than a mile away.

I'm wondering, because the tower is so close, if I should see better reception and data because of it?

No.

I have two towers less than a mile away. My reception has only improved because Alcatel-Lucent has made NV upgrades (3G first, LTE next). And not by much.

I have an Airave at home just to get the same level (barely) of service I had with my HTC Touch Pro which was 3G only.

There's a third tower I connect to at work that's a bit more than a mile away but the reception is horrible. I'm mainly on WiFi at work and home until they NV upgrades are complete.

Note that there have been plenty of people on Sprint that have reported over at s4gru.com that they get poor reception standing right next to a tower. It's Sprint. Don't buy the hype. The best you can ever expect is adequate, with the exception of call quality which has always been (and still is) excellent. Even LTE is only going to be adequate once built out. Faster than 3G yes, but just adequate for LTE.

 

[jharvey71884]

No.

I have two towers less than a mile away. My reception has only improved because Alcatel-Lucent has made NV upgrades (3G first, LTE next). And not by much.

I have an Airave at home just to get the same level (barely) of service I had with my HTC Touch Pro which was 3G only.

There's a third tower I connect to at work that's a bit more than a mile away but the reception is horrible. I'm mainly on WiFi at work and home until they NV upgrades are complete.

Note that there have been plenty of people on Sprint that have reported over at s4gru.com that they get poor reception standing right next to a tower. It's Sprint. Don't buy the hype. The best you can ever expect is adequate, with the exception of call quality which has always been (and still is) excellent. Even LTE is only going to be adequate once built out. Faster than 3G yes, but just adequate for LTE.

Here is the thing, I'm always on WIFI at home and work (same place). Really in the end, I need data for a little web surfring when I'm out and about and for GPS. Honestly, I average only about 1GB a month, and that comes for maybe a little online radio when I'm in the car.

I'm probably more worried about the reception and calls, which you are saying is still pretty good?

 

[eyoungren]

Here is the thing, I'm always on WIFI at home and work (same place). Really in the end, I need data for a little web surfring when I'm out and about and for GPS. Honestly, I average only about 1GB a month, and that comes for maybe a little online radio when I'm in the car.

I'm probably more worried about the reception and calls, which you are saying is still pretty good?

Calls are still pretty good. That's because voice is handled by the 1xRTT part of the network and not 3G. 3G is just for data.

I used to be 1GB too, plus or minus 500mb per month. That was when 3G was doing fine. Since I've had my iPhone and been forced to stick with WiFi at home/work/Starbucks my data usage is running about 500mb per month.

But here's the thing with me. My phone is on all the time. When I had my old phone I didn't use the wireless at home and did fine. I can't use the Airave for data at home because now that reception is as poor as it is (even with the Airave) the drain on my battery is intense.

I'm expecting this to shake out once LTE comes through so that I can just leave cellular on and not have to worry about WiFi or cellular. I'm not a data hog, I don't download movies over 3G or anything like that so my data usage at home won't be high. And I'm already paying Sprint for tethering in case I want to do that (seldom).

But this was all normal stuff that equated to about 500mb to 1.5GB a month before my iPhone 5. I don't expect it to be much more or less once I can get back strictly on cellular.

Lastly, WiFi is great, but I'm already paying Cox for my WiFi. It irritates me that I'm paying Sprint money to use WiFi that I'm already paying someone else for. Add in the $10 LTE fee (uh sorry, premium data fee) while I don't have LTE and it's a bit of a rant inducer for me.

But if you are mainly using voice, you shouldn't have to worry too much. There have been reports of lots of dropped calls, but to be honest even when Sprint dropped my area to 1xRTT for a week or so about a month back my calls weren't dropping. So, there's that.

 

[coolio93]

Here is the thing, I'm always on WIFI at home and work (same place). Really in the end, I need data for a little web surfring when I'm out and about and for GPS. Honestly, I average only about 1GB a month, and that comes for maybe a little online radio when I'm in the car.

I'm probably more worried about the reception and calls, which you are saying is still pretty good?

I posted to your other thread about switching to sprint and advised you not to switch. I stand by that advice.


However, in answer to your question, I have only had problems with DATA on sprint. Their call service is pretty good and I think I may have had only a max of about 4-5 dropped calls in the 6 months that I had them.

But again, for me in houston WITH LTE, MOST of the time their data was nonfunctional - meaning no browsing, no GPS, no siri, and no imessage. Of course it varied where I was in the city and some places had better data and reception than others, but mostly my experience was terrible.

 

[eyoungren]

…But again, for me in houston WITH LTE, MOST of the time their data was nonfunctional - meaning no browsing, no GPS, no siri, and no imessage. Of course it varied where I was in the city and some places had better data and reception than others, but mostly my experience was terrible.

That's pretty much been the experience I keep hearing. Despite Dan Hesse's claims, NV rollout is slow, 6 months behind schedule and next to WiMiax one of the worst managed.

The Sprint BAW forums are nothing but a PR nightmare with a few clueless people tossed in who wonder why the network stopped working. The Sprint reps have just given up responding to much of anything because there is nothing they can do and posting gets them flamed. s4gru.com doesn't help either as that group is a bunch of Sprint apologists why deny that Sprint has ever done anything wrong and will tell you that you are an abuser/part of the problem if you use more than 1GB month. Make any kind of comment over that that even hints of questioning Sprint and they'll toss you out on your ear.

I stayed away from AT&T when it got the iPhone because of all the problems I heard about. I never imagined I'd be going through my own version of that with this debacle. No one ever learns from anyone else.

 

[CEmajr]

At this rate Sprint will be the last of the 4 to finish their LTE rollout. It's bad enough that they're CDMA, but their 3G data is almost unusable and LTE spotty. They would be my absolute last option for a carrier to use an iPhone on.

 

[ValerieDurden]

I know this board has tried to warn me about switching to Sprint, but my move into my house is complete and I found out the closest Sprint tower is less than a mile away.

I'm wondering, because the tower is so close, if I should see better reception and data because of it?

Once the Nextel portion of Sprint is shutdown (end of June) they will be broadcasting 1x, 3G and LTE over the 800MHz band so coverage and quality will improve significantly, this will obviously only happen in the Network Vision areas so if you're not in an area with NV work being done the wait will be longer. So essentially Sprint will soon have almost the same coverage as Verizon I believe around a 3% difference which you really won't notice.

 

[jharvey71884]

Once the Nextel portion of Sprint is shutdown (end of June) they will be broadcasting 1x, 3G and LTE over the 800MHz band so coverage and quality will improve significantly, this will obviously only happen in the Network Vision areas so if you're not in an area with NV work being done the wait will be longer. So essentially Sprint will soon have almost the same coverage as Verizon I believe around a 3% difference which you really won't notice.

I talked to a former Sprint Manager, who just moved onto a new career last week. He said that he had heard NV wouldn't be in my area until mid-summer (end of July)...so maybe I should stay away.

 

[Apple Trees]

Sprint is like the worst period. You're better off with a prepaid MVNO if you can't afford Verizon or at least AT&T for your iPhone service. You guys MIGHT have nationwide LTE by Q4 2015 waiting on them. Hopefully they get bought out by Softbank and put some much needed upgrades into their network. As of right now they aren't even a viable carrier.

 

[SONiC5]

I have Sprint, and I actually see less dropped calls than I did with AT&T. It's the data speeds that are horrendous as I'm in an area without NV. And I'm not sure how far away I am from whatever tower(s) my phone connects to.

Note that there have been plenty of people on Sprint that have reported over at s4gru.com that they get poor reception standing right next to a tower. It's Sprint. Don't buy the hype. The best you can ever expect is adequate, with the exception of call quality which has always been (and still is) excellent. Even LTE is only going to be adequate once built out. Faster than 3G yes, but just adequate for LTE.

Of course they would, the panels aren't facing the ground. If they'd move a certain distance away, the reception should be very strong. This isn't exclusive to Sprint.

 

[mccjim12]

I'm admittedly pretty clueless about cellular technology but I've had Sprint for almost 3 years and I'd say by and large I've been happy with the service.

I had really poor call reception for about the first year but that, I'm certain, was entirely attributable to living in New Hampshire behind a huge mountain.

Since I got an iPhone in October of '11 I've been pretty pleased with the 3G. I also moved to Connecticut this year and my call reception has been superb.

Still though, it is hard to ignore all of the complaints I hear and my eyes are always open to make a switch when my contract is up in October.

 

[ValerieDurden]

The share plans are the same price. AT&T still offers individual plans though and Verizon does not. They both are expensive compared to Sprint. Sprint offers unlimited data but it's useless when the majority of the people on the network can't get speeds above 1mbps.

Verizon is about on par with Sprint when it comes to 3G speeds at least in my area, luckily I live in one if the biggest cities in the country so network vision is almost complete so I don't have any of the issues others have with Sprint. I switched from AT&T back in Jan and I don't regret it, I actually get service in my house and very rarely drop a call whereas with AT&T I dropped calls several times a day with Sprint I may drop a call once a month. To each their own though.

 

[scaredpoet]

Calls are still pretty good. That's because voice is handled by the 1xRTT part of the network and not 3G. 3G is just for data.

Just a point of clarification here: 1xRTT is, in fact, 3G. It's fundamentally different from the original iS-95 standard that was 2G CDMA, adding an additional traffic layer on the same level of bandwidth, doubling call capacity.

EVDO operates as an additional overlay on the same 3G carrier, combining different multiplexing layers (CDMA with TDMA) to get faster data speeds over straight 1xRTT.

 

[jharvey71884]

Verizon is about on par with Sprint when it comes to 3G speeds at least in my area, luckily I live in one if the biggest cities in the country so network vision is almost complete so I don't have any of the issues others have with Sprint. I switched from AT&T back in Jan and I don't regret it, I actually get service in my house and very rarely drop a call whereas with AT&T I dropped calls several times a day with Sprint I may drop a call once a month. To each their own though.

In my area, Verizon actually only gets about .3 to .5 on my iPhone 4s, which isn't very good to be honest.

I went to three different Sprint stores and shut off their WIFI connections. All of them averaged about .4 to .7. These were without NV upgrades.

At those speeds, I could probably live with it, since it will only by $74.99 a month (business discount).

 

[osofast240sx]

In my area, Verizon actually only gets about .3 to .5 on my iPhone 4s, which isn't very good to be honest.

I went to three different Sprint stores and shut off their WIFI connections. All of them averaged about .4 to .7. These were without NV upgrades.

At those speeds, I could probably live with it, since it will only by $74.99 a month (business discount).

All the carriers are doing tons of work on their network, by the end of the summer you will have a big smile on your face. Just wait it out.

 

[SMDBill]

Here is the thing, I'm always on WIFI at home and work (same place). Really in the end, I need data for a little web surfring when I'm out and about and for GPS. Honestly, I average only about 1GB a month, and that comes for maybe a little online radio when I'm in the car.

I'm probably more worried about the reception and calls, which you are saying is still pretty good?

I heard all of this as well. I used to work for Verizon and even had a 25% discount for years after leaving the company after 10 years working there (core Verizon company, not VZW).

Anyway, Sprint was so much cheaper that I switched. I saved more at Sprint's retail rates than I saved with a 25% discount at VZW. 5 phones, 3 of them iPhones and 2 GS2's. Unlimited data and 1500 shared minutes (of which we use about 200 per month). The service is decent, phone calls are clear and I only have 2 spots where I drive that signal cuts out completely. Each spot is less than 1/4 mile long. Otherwise you can't tell a difference in service from VZW except some of VZW now has LTE while Sprint has not upgraded here yet. We have fast wireless at home and it's not an issue to deal with while out and about.

I don't love Sprint, but it's more of a "meh" situation regarding VZW vs. Sprint for me. Works fine on all phones, clear calls and decent 3G service.

 

[jharvey71884]

I heard all of this as well. I used to work for Verizon and even had a 25% discount for years after leaving the company after 10 years working there (core Verizon company, not VZW).

Anyway, Sprint was so much cheaper that I switched. I saved more at Sprint's retail rates than I saved with a 25% discount at VZW. 5 phones, 3 of them iPhones and 2 GS2's. Unlimited data and 1500 shared minutes (of which we use about 200 per month). The service is decent, phone calls are clear and I only have 2 spots where I drive that signal cuts out completely. Each spot is less than 1/4 mile long. Otherwise you can't tell a difference in service from VZW except some of VZW now has LTE while Sprint has not upgraded here yet. We have fast wireless at home and it's not an issue to deal with while out and about.

I don't love Sprint, but it's more of a "meh" situation regarding VZW vs. Sprint for me. Works fine on all phones, clear calls and decent 3G service.

Yeah, I hear what you are saying. I would save about $30 a month and while I'm pro-Verizon, I'm sort of like "meh" when it comes to Sprint when I can save that much money.

 

[snowtrooper1966]

I've been with Sprint since 4S launch.
While they have indeed been struggling horribly with data speed issues, the light is at the end of the tunnel, for me at least:

Not bad for an experimental LTE signal not yet officially announced as a active market yet.

I'm not by any means a Sprint fanboy, but over the course of the past 18 months, with all I've learned and experienced, I really feel that they are the best option for me.

I also think that while VZN and AT&T are currently at the top of the LTE signal market now, that will change dramatically once nationwide Network Vision is complete. Sprint has rebuilt the infrastructure from the ground up, not just bought the correct frequencies and threw up appropriate panels.
Once VZN and AT&T have saturation, they will be in the same position Sprint was in pre NV, an overburdened network with little hope for relief other than a complete network build out.

I realize that there are many factors, and I've oversimplified some of the above, but for me, I feel comfortable with my decision to stick with Sprint and have a lot of hope for a long, inexpensive and smoking fast LTE future with them.

 

[eyoungren]

I've been with Sprint since 4S launch.
While they have indeed been struggling horribly with data speed issues, the light is at the end of the tunnel, for me at least:

Image
Image

Not bad for an experimental LTE signal not yet officially announced as a active market yet.

I'm not by any means a Sprint fanboy, but over the course of the past 18 months, with all I've learned and experienced, I really feel that they are the best option for me.

I also think that while VZN and AT&T are currently at the top of the LTE signal market now, that will change dramatically once nationwide Network Vision is complete. Sprint has rebuilt the infrastructure from the ground up, not just bought the correct frequencies and threw up appropriate panels.
Once VZN and AT&T have saturation, they will be in the same position Sprint was in pre NV, an overburdened network with little hope for relief other than a complete network build out.

I realize that there are many factors, and I've oversimplified some of the above, but for me, I feel comfortable with my decision to stick with Sprint and have a lot of hope for a long, inexpensive and smoking fast LTE future with them.

I've been with Sprint since 1999. I've stayed with them because of the voice quality. 3G didn't start getting slow until the middle of 2012 here where I am. But my problems with 3G really started when I switched to the iPhone in September, 2012.

Since then I have to stick to WiFi for any reasonable data speed. I'm glad to hear that the SD region is getting LTE. That's been a topic of discussion over on s4gru.com. But Sprint is still ignoring Phoenix, another major metro city. Clearwire dropped us with WiMax and Sprint doesn't have us down as a market to be announced until January 2014. I don't like to think about all the money I'm paying Sprint to use my own WiFi between now and then.

As to Sprint upgrading from the ground up, no offense, but I'm getting really tired of hearing that. Sprint is upgrading from the ground up because they never upgraded to begin with. There are places that Sprint has that are using 15 year old equipment. NOTHING was ever upgraded. Yeah, everyone else is slapping stuff up because the upgrades have already been done. The fiber backhaul was run years ago, X was done years ago so that's all they have to do. But Sprint is upgrading from the ground up because NONE of that stuff was ever done at any time in the past. So now, because the network was neglected for so many years, we are all paying because Sprint is doing it in one go.

Also, I understand that this and other forums are places where we make distinctions in speed. But it doesn't really matter to the average customer that their speed is really 3.5G or something else because it's FASTER than what's currently being offered. The average customer only cares that the network seems to be fast. It's only us that care about HOW fast.

Yeah, I agree, Sprint will be in a good place when done. But the thing is that we should NOT have to have gone through this to begin with. All these problems are because Sprint took our money, but completely neglected the network.

 

[eyoungren]

<sigh> This sucks!

 

[2298754]

Once VZN and AT&T have saturation, they will be in the same position Sprint was in pre NV, an overburdened network with little hope for relief other than a complete network build out.

Let's not get ahead of ourselves. They have already proven to us once they don't care about their network at all, or they wouldn't be rebuilding.

VZW and AT&T have already pledged to made the cell grid denser, add small cells, deploy AWS for high-traffic areas, and not to mention, start getting LTE-A up by the end of the year. Let's also not forget they have twice the spectrum in top markets to deploy LTE on. (2x10 for VZW/AT&T versus 2x5 for Sprint)

Sprint will still be "deploying" their LTE and have constant excuses for the various delays. Even TMobile is deploying LTE at a significantly faster pace, which is pathetic.

The Boston market was supposed to be done by year-end 2012, then it got delayed to Spring, and then it finally launched, yet it STILL isn't done. There are major holes in the coverage all over the city.

----------

<sigh> This sucks!

No reason to wait for NV. It doesn't seem to be helping at all.

http://www.itworld.com/mobile-wirel...otout-sprint-and-verizon-speeds-fade?page=0,3

The other CDMA 3G network in our study, Sprint's network, fared somewhat worse over the past year, despite the carrier's well-publicized "Network Vision" improvement plan. The throughput speeds of the Sprint 3G network declined considerably between our 2011 and 2012 tests, and retreated still more in this year's tests. In our tests this year, Sprint 3G showed dismal average download speeds of roughly 400 kbps (0.40 mbps), and upload speeds of 310 kbps (0.31 mbps).