[JHBThree]

So, my contract with Verizon is ending soon, and I have some decisions to make. If I want to upgrade, my bill will go from $80 a month to $120 a month on Verizon. That, obviously, is a pretty huge jump, and its not one that I think I can swallow. The only way to avoid it is to pay full price on Verizon, which again, is a big pill to swallow. I love Verizon's coverage and service overall, but not at $120 a month.

My other options are AT&T and Sprint, mainly because I can get a discount through my work on both. Sprint's comes out to $60 a month, while AT&T's is $110. Sprint's would obviously be preferable, but I am very wary of them because of their network troubles. I know they've gotten better, but I wanted some real life opinions from you guys. If I went to them, I would either choose the Evo LTE, or the Optimus G. (I like the Evo, but the raw power of the Optimus G is a big draw too)

So, what are your experiences with Sprint, especially in Chicago and the suburbs?

[EndlessDissent]

I'm in the northwest suburbs, and I can say that between Schaumburg and Addison, coverage is very good, and I have 4G everywhere I go.

I haven't been to the city in a few weeks, but the area by State and Cermak had great coverage with a strong LTE signal at the beginning of December. A few weeks before that, I was getting 4G near Wicker Park. It was a weak signal then, but I'd imagine it's gotten much better and filled out across Bucktown by now.

LTE has been rolled out to about half of the towers in the Chicago market so far, and S4GRU projects a completion date for the market in March. Except for a few spots around the city, especially near the Loop, I'd expect pretty good coverage (both LTE and otherwise) at this very moment, and it will only get better for the next 2 to 3 months.

[bearballz72]

Well the Chicagoland area is about 60%-70% completed depending on what you read. Which I believe is the highest completion rate of any metro area in the country for the Sprint Network Vision rollout. I'm in the near west burbs and it's pretty decent especially around Oak Park, Berwyn and the westside of the city. Farther west towards Oak Brook, Downers Grove and Lombard I've noticed a big jump in LTE coverage lately. But there are still areas here in the western burbs that have holes in coverage, and the speeds vary, but overall it's not bad.

My GF lives in Palatine and LTE has gotten better around that area as of late. Arlington Heights is also pretty decent.

Chicago proper is kind of hit and miss since it's the last major expansion of NV. I was on the northside around Lincoln Park and I had LTE, but in Wrigelyville, Bucktown and Wicker Park it was kind of spotty. Southside around US Cellular Field was pretty strong but go a few blocks west and it was back to 3G. Hopefully by Summer LTE will be pretty widespread.

My suggestion is to go on Sprints site and look up the area where you live, work or go to school and see how the coverage is. Also there's a great app called Sensorly that you can download for free in the Play store and it will tell you how the coverage is in your area. There's a feature which allows Sensorly to gather data from your phone about the network you're using and upload it into a database that other sensorly users can use to determine how the coverage is. Very useful app.

Also below is a great site that discusses Sprint's LTE rollout in cities around the country. Lastly, there's a pretty long discussion thread about the Chicago area here on AC. Although nobody has really added anything in several weeks.

[JHBThree]

I'm around Naperville/Plainfield area. The maps on sprints site look like the coverage is better than WiMAX ever was (there was a WiMAX deadspot on my street only), but I'm still a bit cautious.