Returning strictly due to Sprint's horrible data speeds

[John P. Smith]

Sprint network upgrade should be completed in 2nd Q 2012 to bad you couldn't stick around for it

Kindly direct us to your source for that timing. I know there is no official confirmation as of now. The most optimistic speculation I've seen doesn't have the upgrades completed until sometime in 2013. We can hope for a better schedule to be announced on Oct. 7, so I'm not taking any action before then.

 

[John P. Smith]

Sprint LTE has a major bump in the road due to Lightsquare spectrum.
I don't think Government is going to allow them to use it.

If Sprint upgraded their entire 3G footprint to EVDO Rev B, which can be done relatively easily and offers 3-9 mb/s speeds as well as greatly increased network capacity, they could take their sweet time with LTE and most people would be satisfied. There is some rumor that this is part of the Oct. 7 announcement. It would be a very smart interim strategy but I'm not holding my breath.

 

[Slingbox]

Kindly direct us to your source for that timing. I know there is no official confirmation as of now. The most optimistic speculation I've seen doesn't have the upgrades completed until sometime in 2013. We can hope for a better schedule to be announced on Oct. 7, so I'm not taking any action before then.

I got the info from tech at Sprint corp store....that was 5 months ago and what to do you know 2 months later my data speed increased so I think he was a reliable source ,
Sprint Oct announcement should be the official word

 

[Nrbelex]

I can hit 4Mb/s down and 1.5 up in NYC on 4G. 3G speeds aren't much worse. I expect both to improve gradually, but that's more than fast enough for 90% of my needs.

 

[John P. Smith]

I got the info from tech at Sprint corp store....that was 5 months ago and what to do you know 2 months later my data speed increased so I think he was a reliable source ,
Sprint Oct announcement should be the official word

Forgive me if I don't consider a corporate store tech to be a credible source. Every Sprint employee has an opinion about everything and 90% of the time it ends up being BS. It's great that your speeds have improved, but we know this is an ongoing in-progress initiative so it stands to reason that over time various markets will improve, this is far from confirmation that the entire project will be completed shortly.

I really hope you are right, but as I said I'm not holding my breath. October 7 will tell....

 

[Slingbox]

Forgive me if I don't consider a corporate store tech to be a credible source. Every Sprint employee has an opinion about everything and 90% of the time it ends up being BS. It's great that your speeds have improved, but we know this is an ongoing in-progress initiative so it stands to reason that over time various markets will improve, this is far from confirmation that the entire project will be completed shortly.

I really hope you are right, but as I said I'm not holding my breath. October 7 will tell....

na hes a credible source been dealing with him for a couple years. If hes wasn't I wouldn't post what he conveyed to me.
His word was mid 2012 network would be tight.

I must add that I hate my local Sprint stores 99.9 of of CS stinks to high heaven I dread going into them lol

 

[madmax2k1]

The OP is right, Sprint 3G speeds are equivalent to AT&T Edge speed, and Sprint 4G speeds are equivalent to AT&T 3G speeds.

If you rely on 3G speeds a lot, you're better off going to AT&T or T-Mobile. Verizon 3G speeds are not that great either.

 

[paco22]

Around a month ago when i still had my Evo 3d, i was able to get around 6-10 down and around 1-3 up on 4G. That was inside my school. Shouldve taken a screenshot...

 

[androidpirate]

Living in the Chicago_burbs, I agree 110% with everything you wrote. I average 3G speeds of 200k/sec, totally unacceptable.

If the October 7th announcement from Sprint, is just them getting the iPhone5, and BS talk about future network upgrades/fixes, I am gone to Verizon for the Nexus-Prime.

the sad reality is those are actually good data speeds for sprint in chicago. in downtown, during weekday hours of 8am to 5pm, the average 3G data speed i've gotten is less than 50kbps (more like 5-15kbps) basically making it unusable. 4G speeds are better around 3mbps to 5mbps. at other times, the 3G data speeds average 450kbps.

a lot of people tout sprint has unlimited data speeds but at these speeds, there's no way you'll use more than 2GB a month and there's no reason to throttle data speeds when they are this slow. With ATT/tmobile/verizon, at least you can use the 2GB they allot for you.

I like sprint but that doesn't mean i don't have to acknowledge reality.

 

[John P. Smith]

Around a month ago when i still had my Evo 3d, i was able to get around 6-10 down and around 1-3 up on 4G. That was inside my school. Shouldve taken a screenshot...

Sprint's data network really is in serious flux right now, stuff is happening day to day to change performance in different locations for better or worse, so it is hard to compare the data performance of two phones unless you are using them in the exact same place at the exact same time (or at least nearly simultaneously). I.e. something could posslbly be occurring in your area on the Sprint side that wasn't happening when you had your 3D. No way to know for sure, which is frustrating.

 

[kpazzo6]

Speed may not be consistent from what I experienced but good enough for what I'm paying.... I'm in nw chicago suburbs and this is my speed now while laying on my couch at home..

 

[Grebnehtor]

Speed may not be consistent from what I experienced but good enough for what I'm paying.... I'm in nw chicago suburbs and this is my speed now while laying on my couch at home..

That's pretty poor for 4G...

 

[bhavi_jp]

the sad reality is those are actually good data speeds for sprint in chicago. in downtown, during weekday hours of 8am to 5pm, the average 3G data speed i've gotten is less than 50kbps (more like 5-15kbps) basically making it unusable. 4G speeds are better around 3mbps to 5mbps. at other times, the 3G data speeds average 450kbps.

a lot of people tout sprint has unlimited data speeds but at these speeds, there's no way you'll use more than 2GB a month and there's no reason to throttle data speeds when they are this slow. With ATT/tmobile/verizon, at least you can use the 2GB they allot for you.

I like sprint but that doesn't mean i don't have to acknowledge reality.

+1 on this. No wonder sprint offers unlimited data. You are not likely to hit the limits with everyday usage with that speed.

 

[kpazzo6]

That's pretty poor for 4G...

Whats it suppose to be?

 

[sndplace]

Sprint Newsroom | Sprint Network Vision Information Center

heres some info for you guys about Sprints plan

 

[sndplace]

Speed may not be consistent from what I experienced but good enough for what I'm paying.... I'm in nw chicago suburbs and this is my speed now while laying on my couch at home..

Looks light you only got 1 bar so that goods. I get 4 to 7 tops with full bars but average more like 3 to 4 mbs

 

[eagle63]

If Sprint upgraded their entire 3G footprint to EVDO Rev B, which can be done relatively easily and offers 3-9 mb/s speeds as well as greatly increased network capacity, they could take their sweet time with LTE and most people would be satisfied. There is some rumor that this is part of the Oct. 7 announcement. It would be a very smart interim strategy but I'm not holding my breath.

What is involved (from sprint's side) if they moved to Rev B? Is this just a software upgrade at the cell sites, or is this new hardware (antennas, etc)? Also, I assume phones would need a different radio to handle Rev B?

If all that's true, then I just can't imagine Sprint would dump that kind of money/effort into an interim solution.

 

[sfhub]

The OP is right, Sprint 3G speeds are equivalent to AT&T Edge speed, and Sprint 4G speeds are equivalent to AT&T 3G speeds.

If you rely on 3G speeds a lot, you're better off going to AT&T or T-Mobile. Verizon 3G speeds are not that great either.

With Sprint, you cannot use your own experience to project to anybody else. It is just inconsistent. You have people saying Sprint is really slow and other saying Sprint is fine. They are both right, for their areas. Michigan in general is very bad. In my area, at the local mall I get 1.7M/850k. At my home I get 350-550k/250-450k. Roaming on VZ at my home I get 2.2M/950k. This is all with the same phone. So is it really slow? yes, is it reasonably fast? yes.

All that you really care is how it performs for your own situation. If it is slow everywhere you use it, then you should return it. It could take many months before it improves and there are no guarantees. However don't make the assumption the network performs that slow everywhere as there are areas where it works fine.

As to PRL, if you are talking native Sprint, it is highly doubtful it will make any difference. The Sprint native portions of the PRL haven't changed in ages, only the roaming partners.

As to signal strength, it can make a big difference if you have low signal strength when you are testing. I know a coupld of people who upgraded from Evo to Evo Shift and Evo 3d who are getting slower speeds than there Evo due to signal strength as tested with side-by-side comparisons. However, if that is the primary location you use your phone and you can't move around, then it doesn't matter if at the window you can get acceptable speeds. Don't expect the signal strength to improve until they finish their network vision upgrades and even then, there are no guarantees. Go with what you know, rather than what you are promised. Once again, if it doesn't work for you, return it. If it turns out the Epic Touch has poor radio performance, you might want to try out a Photon, which has the best signal performance of any Sprint phone right now. Of course, if that isn't a phone you want, once gain, Sprint doesn't work for you, so get out.

As to 4g, people were getting 6-12Mbps when it was first released, but now that more people are using it, it is often down to 2-5Mbps. There is always the potential for this to happen to any carrier as more people use the network and the backhaul is exhausted. WiMax is clearly capable of handling faster speeds so the bottleneck is somewhere else. Again, if you have slow speeds in your area making it unusable, return and get out.

Sprint changed their return policy from 30 days to 14 days starting with purchases 9/16/2011 so if you want to return it, do it soon, don't dither around trying to give them a chance.

Having said all that, there are many areas that Sprint works ok. so it doesn't help trying to convince those folks that Sprint is unusable. It just isn't true for them even though it might be true for you.

 

[John P. Smith]

What is involved (from sprint's side) if they moved to Rev B? Is this just a software upgrade at the cell sites, or is this new hardware (antennas, etc)? Also, I assume phones would need a different radio to handle Rev B?

If all that's true, then I just can't imagine Sprint would dump that kind of money/effort into an interim solution.

Towers require new software and (I think) new modems. Sprint's recent smartphones, from at least the EVO 4G onward, already support Rev B.

The reason Sprint might go this way is that they have minimal Wimax footprint and will take several years to get significant LTE footprint. Rev B would allow them to provide a good high speed data experience (better than what AT&T has been marketing as "4G" for the past few years) in all markets well ahead of when they could possibly achieve this with LTE. Time is of the essence since they botched Wimax -- they can't provide competitive high speed data in a huge part of their coverage area and they are going to lose customers rapidly if they don't fix this fast. Rev B is the fastest way to remedy this. There was actually lots of talk about Rev B happening back in the mid-2000s, but at some point Sprint got the brilliant idea to jump on Wimax and stop working on deployment of further updates to EVDO. With 20/20 hindsight, they would have been better off passing on Wimax, fully exploiting Rev B then moving directly to LTE.

 

[maverick96]

This is my typical 3G average everywhere from downtown Chicago to the northwest suburbs

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