Sprint data coverage truly sucks

[Premium1]

I use Verizon for a reason you pay out the *** wireless and my Fios has gone up but in 4 years I never had any service issues so spending the extra for the reliability is the trade off.


Sent from my VS980 4G using Tapatalk

Agree. Not to mention with all my travels I always have signal with verizon and 95% of the time it is lte, so I am fine paying more to have coverage. Now if tmo expanded outside of major cities I would gladly switch to save money and also be able to get whatever phone I wanted.

 

[Relgoshan]

For the last 4 years that I have had sprint with the 2 htc Evos I've had. ( the 4g wimax and the lte), I've always had to toggle airplane mode to get on 4g. I've had this Samsung Galaxy S5 over a month the last several days I've been having to toggle airplane mode again. So it's not htc or Samsungs issue it's the crappy sprint service. I shouldn't have to update my prl every day and the last few times I tried to update profile I got an error. Sigh*

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I had a 3G Kyocera Echo until recently. Fantastic phone on Sprint and pulled tens of gigs a month through it with bittorrent, games and remote desktop.

Now I have a Flex, which is one of the Spark phones. I have NEVER had to toggle Airplane mode to get LTE back, it's one of the most resilient devices in terms of band hopping and tower hopping on Sprint. And you can pull a trollface and go GSM-only if you need to.

It really is important to do some research on carrier specific issues before selecting a phone, a couple years ago my brother had a T Mobile phone that was missing a critical GSM band for some reason...

 

[dpham00]

I think Sprint knows there only trump card is the fact they are the only company that has truly unlimited internet. My bill is at $150 for 3 phones and other carriers cant even come close to that. I travel country wide and use an average of 30-40 gigs a month of data. If it wasn't for all of that I would be long gone from sprint. I agree it is very frustrating.

But Sprint can throttle if you are in the top 5 %. So for heavy users in heavily loaded towers, it could be slower .

The only company that has truly unlimited data imo is Verizon, with their legacy unlimited unthrottled 4GLTE plan. It can be used in tablets and hotspot for unlimited data, and smartphones can be officially tethered using an unlimited amount of 4GLTE data. Neither tmobile or Sprint offers that on any plan, current or legacy.

Now if you say truly unlimited, but on a smartphone device only and excluding hotspot then tmobile would be the only one.

Now if you were to say truly unlimited, but on smartphone only and excluding hotspot, and can be throttled then Sprint and a number of others offer it.

dpham00, Android Central Moderator
Sent from my Verizon Samsung Galaxy Note 3

 

[Almeuit]

The only company that has truly unlimited data imo is Verizon, with their legacy unlimited unthrottled 4GLTE plan.

dpham00, Android Central Moderator
Sent from my Verizon Samsung Galaxy Note 3

I disagree. With T-Mobile I've had unlimited without issue. If you're talking multiple devices such as tablets and tethering sure.. But as for phone data I have never run into an issue with slower speeds ever with T-Mobile.

Sent from my T-Mobile Note 3 using AC Forums.

 

[holyjesusjuice]

Sprint is absolutely horrible. I have both them and tmobile. Once I get my G2 paid off I will be leaving them and going to At&t. Tmobile I get LTE everywhere, sprint I can barely get 3g in my house.

 

[dpham00]

I disagree. With T-Mobile I've had unlimited without issue. If you're talking multiple devices such as tablets and tethering sure.. But as for phone data I have never run into an issue with slower speeds ever with T-Mobile.

Sent from my T-Mobile Note 3 using AC Forums.

No argument there. That is essentially what I said in the third paragraph. Just depends on what you mean by truly unlimited.

dpham00, Android Central Moderator
Sent from my Verizon Samsung Galaxy Note 3

 

[Relgoshan]

But Sprint can throttle if you are in the top 5 %. So for heavy users in heavily loaded towers, it could be slower .

The only company that has truly unlimited data imo is Verizon, with their legacy unlimited unthrottled 4GLTE plan. It can be used in tablets and hotspot for unlimited data, and smartphones can be officially tethered using an unlimited amount of 4GLTE data. Neither tmobile or Sprint offers that on any plan, current or legacy.

Now if you say truly unlimited, but on a smartphone device only and excluding hotspot then tmobile would be the only one.

Now if you were to say truly unlimited, but on smartphone only and excluding hotspot, and can be throttled then Sprint and a number of others offer it.

dpham00, Android Central Moderator
Sent from my Verizon Samsung Galaxy Note 3

From reports I have heard of Sprint towers dying under load just like ATT used to right after the iPhone debut, so if throttling people who torrent from their desk at work will improve the situation for others....at the least I use a lot of data and have not noticed my speeds being reduced in my area.

VZW is trying very hard to squeeze and eliminate the last truly unlimited legacy plans, and to even get one you must buy someone else's number and active contract. And you must own the phone that you attach to the contract. It hardly counts as an offering in the general market.

Good luck on unlimited tablets or tethering, as to unlimited phone data it seems T-Mo has higher speed but Sprint has more coverage/IP stability and a VZW roaming treaty. That doesn't mean ubiquitous LTE on the road, but my new Flex has never dropped a call anywhere in *months* on Sprint. But if the local Sprint core is bad, by all means jump ship. It's very bad to roam all the time even if you can...

Sprint is absolutely horrible. I have both them and tmobile. Once I get my G2 paid off I will be leaving them and going to At&t. Tmobile I get LTE everywhere, sprint I can barely get 3g in my house.

See above. Also, if T-Mo is great why would you ever subject yourself to the mercies of ATT?

 

[Almeuit]

From reports I have heard of Sprint towers dying under load just like ATT used to right after the iPhone debut, so if throttling people who torrent from their desk at work will improve the situation for others....at the least I use a lot of data and have not noticed my speeds being reduced in my area.

VZW is trying very hard to squeeze and eliminate the last truly unlimited legacy plans, and to even get one you must buy someone else's number and active contract. And you must own the phone that you attach to the contract. It hardly counts as an offering in the general market.

Good luck on unlimited tablets or tethering, as to unlimited phone data it seems T-Mo has higher speed but Sprint has more coverage/IP stability and a VZW roaming treaty. That doesn't mean ubiquitous LTE on the road, but my new Flex has never dropped a call anywhere in *months* on Sprint. But if the local Sprint core is bad, by all means jump ship. It's very bad to roam all the time even if you can...



See above. Also, if T-Mo is great why would you ever subject yourself to the mercies of ATT?

Saying Sprint is more stable is definitely an opinion. I've never been anywhere with T-Mobile where I couldn't call or text anyone... That has never been an issue.

Also you say you use lots of data... How much do you use? Sprint only throttles if you use a good amount but regardless it could be annoying for some. Also their Framily plans throttle videos to 3g if they want (says it in the fine print but only for framily plans).

Sent from my T-Mobile Note 3 using AC Forums.

 

[Relgoshan]

Saying Sprint is more stable is definitely an opinion. I've never been anywhere with T-Mobile where I couldn't call or text anyone... That has never been an issue.

Also you say you use lots of data... How much do you use? Sprint only throttles if you use a good amount but regardless it could be annoying for some. Also their Framily plans throttle videos to 3g if they want (says it in the fine print but only for framily plans).

Sent from my T-Mobile Note 3 using AC Forums.

Sorry yeah, in terms of stability I meant when the phone is sitting stationary downloading a large file over a long period of time. T-Mobile despite its higher max speed always seems to cut out and break large file transfers. When I investigated it seemed like the IP address kept changing.

I use tens of gigs of data in many months. A lot of it on file downloads but some fair amount on video too. Thus far they have not throttled me insofar as I can tell, but maybe if I left it on Netflix 24/7 like a tiny TV they would do something about it...

 

[Almeuit]

Sorry yeah, in terms of stability I meant when the phone is sitting stationary downloading a large file over a long period of time. T-Mobile despite its higher max speed always seems to cut out and break large file transfers. When I investigated it seemed like the IP address kept changing.

I use tens of gigs of data in many months. A lot of it on file downloads but some fair amount on video too. Thus far they have not throttled me insofar as I can tell, but maybe if I left it on Netflix 24/7 like a tiny TV they would do something about it...

Ah weird. I download big files all day on T-Mobile and it goes without a hiccup at all... And usually will let my coworker tether for me at the same time since he is on a limited data plan.

Below is me downloading from YouTube this morning. Next is my usage so far... I average anywhere from 40-80 GB a month usually but sometimes spike into 100 +.. Bill resets on the 6th. Never been slowed down yet either.

Sent from my T-Mobile Note 3 using AC Forums.

 

[dpham00]

I haven't gotten any errors on tmobile hotspot, though I have only used it for a few days.

dpham00, Android Central Moderator
Sent from my Verizon Samsung Galaxy Note 3

 

[Cnorris92]

Yeah macmov, there are days when there are no issues on the spark network and being unlimited is great.

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How do you're on the spark network?

Posted via Android Central App

 

[Relgoshan]

Ah weird. I download big files all day on T-Mobile and it goes without a hiccup at all... And usually will let my coworker tether for me at the same time since he is on a limited data plan.

Below is me downloading from YouTube this morning. Next is my usage so far... I average anywhere from 40-80 GB a month usually but sometimes spike into 100 +.. Bill resets on the 6th. Never been slowed down yet either.

Sent from my T-Mobile Note 3 using AC Forums.

I haven't gotten any errors on tmobile hotspot, though I have only used it for a few days.

dpham00, Android Central Moderator
Sent from my Verizon Samsung Galaxy Note 3

Thanks to both of you for your testimony. I mostly do torrents and a few sites with host-limited bandwidth, and the latter would bug out if the download took more than two hours. It looks like the network in your area is great though. I have 100mbit uncapped at home, but the phone still sees mere tens of gigs additional. Sprint is mostly still giving me less than 20mbit even on Spark, so if you really need hundreds of gigs of transfer T-Mo is probably the better bet.

.....I know that corporate mergers tend to be ugly messes riddled with poor decisions, but I would sorely love a phone which can do T-Mo for downstream and Sprint for upstream at the same time with two antennas. Just two wideband unicast channels, hang the cost.

 

[Ali Jirde]

Agree with you 100percent

 

[Almeuit]

Thanks to both of you for your testimony. I mostly do torrents and a few sites with host-limited bandwidth, and the latter would bug out if the download took more than two hours. It looks like the network in your area is great though. I have 100mbit uncapped at home, but the phone still sees mere tens of gigs additional. Sprint is mostly still giving me less than 20mbit even on Spark, so if you really need hundreds of gigs of transfer T-Mo is probably the better bet.

.....I know that corporate mergers tend to be ugly messes riddled with poor decisions, but I would sorely love a phone which can do T-Mo for downstream and Sprint for upstream at the same time with two antennas. Just two wideband unicast channels, hang the cost.

Oh I definitely don't need insane speed on the phone... It's just nice to have. The test I showed is outside... Once inside Sprint usually dropped to 3g and I was on 0.3 Mbps... Which to me is highly unacceptable since I could barley even stream music... So for me it was mainly I'm paying for the service and it was unusable.

Sent from my T-Mobile Note 3 using AC Forums.

 

[Relgoshan]

Oh I definitely don't need insane speed on the phone... It's just nice to have. The test I showed is outside... Once inside Sprint usually dropped to 3g and I was on 0.3 Mbps... Which to me is highly unacceptable since I could barley even stream music... So for me it was mainly I'm paying for the service and it was unusable.

Sent from my T-Mobile Note 3 using AC Forums.

Yeah, 4G took a while in my area then they pretty much went direct into Spark on the non 4G and now almost finished converting 4G to Spark too. Lucky~~ I went direct from 3G/HSDPA+ to a Spark phone. I have traveled through areas that are still only 3G but didn't seem to find any 2G remaining on my last trip. Drove more than 700 miles each way, mostly interstate without losing Shoutcast stream so their continuous data is better than on my old phone.

I should try to get some new stability info for the other carriers in my area, just to be fair since they've probably improved too.