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Sprint Denies Widespread Issues with Slow iPhone Data Speeds
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Poor Performance in Portions of Sacramento, CA
I'm new to Sprint and I've been seeing absolutely TERRIBLE performance since launch day in the portions of Sacramento, CA that I'm active.
I rarely get coverage at my house even though their map says it's Sprint 3G and gets "Good" (3 bars or more) voice coverage. They're sending me a booster free of charge to see if that helps. They told me you have to be with them for 90 days before they'll send the free booster. I complained that that exceeded my 14 days to try their service, so the manager overrode that.
I work in the Tahoe Park area (East Sacramento) and have been getting 3 to 4 bars of voice coverage but awful 3G performance. The phone reports I'm on Sprint 3G, but I'm averaging about 20 kbps (yes, kbps, not kB/s)! Coverage map says "Good" voice coverage and Sprint 3G data.
That is very, very bad. I called and went to the J Street store last night. They said they have three towers down in Sacramento now and that the one in Taho Park is meant to be working by 2 PM PST today.
I'm waiting until Friday to see if the tower lies they're telling pan out. ;-)
At I street I did get 1.5 Mbps at around 6 PM, which is awesome for Sprint. In the store I got 671kbps and ~309kbps for two tests at around 6:30 PM.
I'm new to Sprint and I've been seeing absolutely TERRIBLE performance since launch day in the portions of Sacramento, CA that I'm active.
I rarely get coverage at my house even though their map says it's Sprint 3G and gets "Good" (3 bars or more) voice coverage. They're sending me a booster free of charge to see if that helps. They told me you have to be with them for 90 days before they'll send the free booster. I complained that that exceeded my 14 days to try their service, so the manager overrode that.
I work in the Tahoe Park area (East Sacramento) and have been getting 3 to 4 bars of voice coverage but awful 3G performance. The phone reports I'm on Sprint 3G, but I'm averaging about 20 kbps (yes, kbps, not kB/s)! Coverage map says "Good" voice coverage and Sprint 3G data.
That is very, very bad. I called and went to the J Street store last night. They said they have three towers down in Sacramento now and that the one in Taho Park is meant to be working by 2 PM PST today.
I'm waiting until Friday to see if the tower lies they're telling pan out. ;-)
At I street I did get 1.5 Mbps at around 6 PM, which is awesome for Sprint. In the store I got 671kbps and ~309kbps for two tests at around 6:30 PM.
As long as other Sprint 3G phones in your area post similar results to yours, I think they can legitimately say there's nothing wrong. At least nothing specifically wrong with their iPhones.
As a layperson when it comes to technology, I feel like my 4s on sprint is working great. I'm in Knoxville, TN. Then again, it's my first smartphone...so I wouldn't know a difference.
How do you know how "fast" it is working? (upload and download speed?)
How do you know how "fast" it is working? (upload and download speed?)
Here in San Francisco, my Sprint speed tests vary from 90 kbps to 1200 kbps. But like others have mentioned, real world experience is fine. Right after a slow test, I can stream pandora, watch YouTube, do Yelp searches, etc and it is more than acceptable. In fact, it feels pretty much instant to me.
Yesterday, I had a 90 min call. Not only did I not drop, but the voice quality was excellent. That was impossible on my AT&T 3GS.
I also have a strong signal in parts of the city where I had little to no signal with AT&T. And while my 3GS would get better speed test numbers, there were many times where I simply could not pull in data, despite having 3+ bars.
Speed tests are flawed. I can test up to 85Mb/sec on my comcast cable modem, yet when I download files it will max out at 50 Mb/sec, which is what I pay for. There's a huge difference between peak and actual sustained bandwidth.
Ultimately, it's all about where you live. Sprint was crap in NYC, at least it was 10 years ago. And really, all the carriers suck.
Yesterday, I had a 90 min call. Not only did I not drop, but the voice quality was excellent. That was impossible on my AT&T 3GS.
I also have a strong signal in parts of the city where I had little to no signal with AT&T. And while my 3GS would get better speed test numbers, there were many times where I simply could not pull in data, despite having 3+ bars.
Speed tests are flawed. I can test up to 85Mb/sec on my comcast cable modem, yet when I download files it will max out at 50 Mb/sec, which is what I pay for. There's a huge difference between peak and actual sustained bandwidth.
Ultimately, it's all about where you live. Sprint was crap in NYC, at least it was 10 years ago. And really, all the carriers suck.
Not too thrilled
to hear that Sprint is pretty lousy on data speed. I just got a job selling Sprint and I kind of have a problem selling a product I don't believe in. On one hand it's great that I can sell the iPhones and offer great plans but if the data is really that slow then it absolutely brings the value down. If the speeds were just a little slower I wouldn't mind but from what I'm hearing they are not.
Hopefully a lot of my customers are near wifi.
to hear that Sprint is pretty lousy on data speed. I just got a job selling Sprint and I kind of have a problem selling a product I don't believe in. On one hand it's great that I can sell the iPhones and offer great plans but if the data is really that slow then it absolutely brings the value down. If the speeds were just a little slower I wouldn't mind but from what I'm hearing they are not.
Hopefully a lot of my customers are near wifi.
Considering how many people don't know the difference between Kbps and KBps I don't know from looking at these posts what people are getting. I saw one post write kBps.
There needs to be a seperate thread for a survey with people showing 2 screen shots of speedtest - one for busy time of day, one for late evening.
There needs to be a seperate thread for a survey with people showing 2 screen shots of speedtest - one for busy time of day, one for late evening.
returned my Sprint 4S yesterday. definitely depended on what area i'm in - but i'm in no small city, coverage should not be an issue here. even when coverage was at more of a 'peak' ,it still failed in comparison to my at&t iPhone. could see improvements but wasn't worth it for me to wait it out. couldn't even load the app store half the time. i only use maybe 100 minutes a month but use 5 GB of data - so personally i couldn't deal with it. better to pay an extra $20 a month and have good coverage.
Agreed. I just switched from AT&T to Verizon. I was expecting to switch to Sprint, but the uncertain call quality & network drove me to Verizon. I left AT&T due to inconsistent data speeds (from awesome to unavailable) & dropped calls.
Root Metrics uses the term "goodput" rather than "throughput" to distinguish their speed tests that measure the data you actually care about, not just http headers, maybe tcp packet overhead, whatever. I'm wondering if anyone else has noticed the wide discrepancies between the SpeedTest & Root Metrics apps.
For example, from right here in my office with the phone near the window (on the 'bad side' of the building apparently from a Verizon standpoint).
This example was actually pretty close on download. Using the Root app was actually somewhat depressing, because the Speedtest numbers are always better.
At any rate, data rate varies by the carrier, location, and minute. Still, some carriers in a certain location work even better.
This is a pretty cool map, since it's not from the carriers, it's from a third party & app users:
http://www.rootmetrics.com/map/
I left Sprint 3 years ago because they sucked ass - 
Now, 3 years later, they STILL suck ass, validating my move to AT&T -
Now, 3 years later, they STILL suck ass, validating my move to AT&T -
Since Sprint bought Nextel, has Sprint completely upgraded Nextel's old towers, or are there places in Sprint's network that still relies on Nextel's old infrastructure? Could that be the problem for some users?
Sprint in Denver, Colorado - so far, so good
EDIT / UPDATE: The speeds posted below appear to have been the best I got while using the iPhone. I posted updated speeds later in the thread. (There are cell repeaters on top of the apartment towers I live in, hence the higher speed in this post.) Around town, I was getting a consistent 0.01-0.4 MBPS, which resulted in very poor performance. I will be returning the phone soon and will be crawling back to AT&T with my tail tucked between my legs.
</EDIT>
My iPhone 4S arrived today. I have been lurking in these threads on Macrumors and on the Sprint forums and have been wondering what my results would be. So far, I'm very happy. Siri doesn't lag in responding, web pages show no noticeable difference from my previous iPhone 4 on AT&T. Here are the results of my Speed Test:
My past data usage on AT&T varied greatly from month-to-month, but always clocked in at lowest usage just over 2GB. (Constant radio streaming, using apps like GPS drive which streams maps, social networking.) Considering the fact that the data usage trend will only grow as apps like Spotify emerge, I think it's important to support a carrier that still offers unlimited data. Let's hope it lasts.
Guys and gals in other parts of the country that are experiencing slow data on Sprint - I feel for ya! Hope it gets better, or at the very least that Sprint will communicate with its customers about the issue.
The real test for me will come during a large event at Invesco field / Coors field. During Broncos games, I could hardly get a single call out on AT&T ... when I did it would be dropped.
I will update this thread (and others I've been lurking) if the speed seems to drop off.
EDIT / UPDATE: The speeds posted below appear to have been the best I got while using the iPhone. I posted updated speeds later in the thread. (There are cell repeaters on top of the apartment towers I live in, hence the higher speed in this post.) Around town, I was getting a consistent 0.01-0.4 MBPS, which resulted in very poor performance. I will be returning the phone soon and will be crawling back to AT&T with my tail tucked between my legs.
</EDIT>
My iPhone 4S arrived today. I have been lurking in these threads on Macrumors and on the Sprint forums and have been wondering what my results would be. So far, I'm very happy. Siri doesn't lag in responding, web pages show no noticeable difference from my previous iPhone 4 on AT&T. Here are the results of my Speed Test:
My past data usage on AT&T varied greatly from month-to-month, but always clocked in at lowest usage just over 2GB. (Constant radio streaming, using apps like GPS drive which streams maps, social networking.) Considering the fact that the data usage trend will only grow as apps like Spotify emerge, I think it's important to support a carrier that still offers unlimited data. Let's hope it lasts.
Guys and gals in other parts of the country that are experiencing slow data on Sprint - I feel for ya! Hope it gets better, or at the very least that Sprint will communicate with its customers about the issue.
The real test for me will come during a large event at Invesco field / Coors field. During Broncos games, I could hardly get a single call out on AT&T ... when I did it would be dropped.
I will update this thread (and others I've been lurking) if the speed seems to drop off.
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I haven't had any issues yet. and I've been using it for a few days now. Yes, it was sluggish on launch day, but that seems to be expected. I've been very happy with sprint so far. Unlimited data is awesome
I've been very happy with sprint so far. Unlimited data is awesome 
I left Sprint 3 years ago because they sucked ass -
Now, 3 years later, they STILL suck ass, validating my move to AT&T -
Weird, my friends who got 4s from using 3g and 3gs are reporting dramatically better service on AT&T now with their new 4s. I wonder if the 4/4s antenna has helped ?
40kpbs? lawl... I've gotten around 400-800kbps, and that's not bad at all... Sprint may not be the fastest, but it is the best plan cost-wise.
Maybe I should switch to sprint. I wish i had results like that. Downtown Chicago and i'm getting .18 up and .09 down on ATT.
I get that high late at night/early AM, but it tanks around 830-900am to under 200kbps.
