3G Anomaly

[steelerfan791]

So I just switched to Sprint to get the Evo LTE. I'm in a 3G only market (Philly, hopefully the rumors are true and LTE will be live here before the end of the year). Much has been made about how Sprint's terrible 3G speeds. If I run speed test the numbers are absolutely appalling. However, I'm actually having a decent usage experience. I've been able to browse the web, play words, stream sirius, and even use youtube with not much lag, certainly not what I would expect with speed test results under .25 mbps. I will condition this by saying that Netflix isn't really usable on 3G and i wouldn't dare download a large file. However, the things I use day to day are just fine. Has anyone else experienced this? All in all for me, 3G will be serviceable until LTE is lit up.

 

[punksburgh11]

In my area, I might as well not even have 3g. I can sometimes load web pages but I can never stream music and facebook is barely useable. I noticed on a trip to Maryland last year that the 3g speed down there was nearly as fast as my WiFi.

I guess it just depends on where you are. On the outskirts of Youngstown, Ohio I doubt we'll even have reliable 3g for another year....

 

[meyerweb#CB]

I've always kind of wondered about the complaints about Sprint's 3G. Living in the Washington, DC area I've always found it pretty fast. Not as fast a WiFi, but usable. But I've made several trips to Chicago recently, and Sprint 3G there is horrible. Awful latency and slow downloads. I'm surprised their network varies that much from place to place.

 

[IAmSixNine]

Ive had times where the speedtest.net app has not given me accurate results.
Sometimes by changing servers i will get completely different results.. Anytime i run a test and the results are really bad, i change the server and re-run the test. 9 times out of 10 that actually gets me better results..