Sprint is slow where I'm at but rarely am I in any area where I see 5 bars so it's an issue of coverage. In Cali I found many areas with solid coverage and Sprint was just fine.
Sprint isn't really competition. I usually test my AT&T 3G and I'm getting 6-8mbps with AT&T 3G. My brother has Sprint with the 4G WiMax and he can get a max of 3-4mbps. If he goes to 3G he gets .20kbps.
I think this is good news. I rarely do any intense web browsing on my phone anyway. The 3g is really slow at times but my daughter probably uses 2gb a month on who knows what.