I think Google needs to make faster updates part of the licensing agreement.
I don't hate Sprint because of the slow updates. I've got plenty of other reasons.
When I had the HTC evo, the updates were pretty quick. Obviously it's more to do with the hardware manufacturer. I don't care how good the phone is, I will never own another Samsung phone, on any carrier, because they are slooooooooooooow. It wouldn't be nearly as big of a deal to me, if the current official version wasn't such crap! They made my phone worse with the current update, then take their sweet time about releasing an upgrade, which I would call a "fix", not an update.
Although I've been a computer geek all my life, and always hacked and took everything apart electronic I've ever had, but my phone is just one of those things I want to work, out of the box, keep it official so if they break it, they fix it, and don't want to screw with it. A combination of too little time, too little patience, and a day to day necessity for my job. Otherwise I would go find one of those roms you guys are talking about. I am sooooo tired of waiting. My next phone will be a nexus. I was pissed they didn't make the nexus 4 available on verizon. At this point every phone is fast enough for me ( i don't play games on mine ) and I just want faster updates and an original android OS without all the bloat and bs customization