Virgin Mobile network speeds are TERRIBLE!

[cole2kb]

Not true. Your speeds on Boost or Virgin will be the same speeds you get on Sprint. HOWEVER, keep in mind that Sprint roams on Verizon.

So, let's say you have a Sprint phone in one hand, and it's pulling down 300 kbps. Great. Lucky you.

Then, you get a Virgin phone and stand in the same spot, and it pulls down 120 kbps.

That is because even though you can't tell the difference just looking at your device, if you're on a Sprint contract, which roams on Verizon, you may have a Verizon tower near you with a stronger signal than a Sprint tower, so it connects to the Verizon tower by default. Your Virgin phone, however, will not connect to Verizon towers, only to Sprint, hence the "slower" speeds in the same spots.

 

[Octahedron]

Ok first off to my best understanding if u use boost or virgin Mobile which is a cheaper service with no contract etc isn't the network that u are on actually a 2g or 3g tower that is slower speeds? The service with these services are going to be even worse than sprints service hence why it's cheaper to have.

Sent from my EVO 4G LTE

Noooo, we use Sprint towers. We just have lower bandwidth priority and "no roaming." Also, 2g, to my knowledge, is a GSM thing and Sprint is CDMA.

Sent from my One V using Tapatalk 2

 

[adamhos]

I think this is more than acceptable for $35/ no
View attachment 33964

Sent from my LG-VM670 using Android Central Forums

 

[adamhos]

From what I have read the minimum required speed for 3g is 200kbps

Sent from my LG-VM670 using Android Central Forums

 

[Phatninja55]

Really? Half the time my 3G dosn't go any faster that 200kbps but right now its running 520kbps.

 

[adamhos]

One bar

Sent from my LG-VM670 using Android Central Forums

 

[curtis1973]

im at two bars now and thats dropping out at random with constant data resets. and all the people at virgin mobile can continue to spew at me is the same old take the battery out while we reset you on our network. what a joke. ive bought my last virgin mobile device.

 

[daffy_duck_nj]

No problems here in the New York city metro area. There are a few dead spots but nothing severe. I usually get around 2-4 bars. I also go to a few wifi spots (including my house) so I'm lucky to even use more than 400 KB of data a month. I preload my news apps and the Overdrive library app in wifi most of the time, and use Opera mini to surf in 3g when needed. I was using more 3g before the limits came on last March, but now I've adjusted my usage accordingly. I'm not one of those nervous types that needs to check my Facebook status every five minutes...

 

[emburybrett1]

Not true. Your speeds on Boost or Virgin will be the same speeds you get on Sprint. HOWEVER, keep in mind that Sprint roams on Verizon.

So, let's say you have a Sprint phone in one hand, and it's pulling down 300 kbps. Great. Lucky you.

Then, you get a Virgin phone and stand in the same spot, and it pulls down 120 kbps.

That is because even though you can't tell the difference just looking at your device, if you're on a Sprint contract, which roams on Verizon, you may have a Verizon tower near you with a stronger signal than a Sprint tower, so it connects to the Verizon tower by default. Your Virgin phone, however, will not connect to Verizon towers, only to Sprint, hence the "slower" speeds in the same spots.

I had Sprint before coming back to virgin mobile and you do roam on verizon and US Cellular but dont forget while roaming you ONLY get 1X and that tends to be slower then sprint its self! While roaming on verizon i never got past 75 kb/s and US Cellular never was faster then 50kb/s

 

[niftypixel]

I'm in an area that's slow, but not unusable. The great part is I almost consider it to be 'completely unlimited' as when I run over my limit, and they 'take me down a notch' I never actually see/notice it lol. I burn about 3.5 to 4gb per month avg currently.

 

[kobequintana]

To me that's how they make money they make older phones go slower so people get new phones that go faster

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[curtis1973]

to those i have come to know here and those i do not,i owe you all an apologie for language used in parts of this topic by me. i overreacted and stepped out of bounds. again,i apoligize.

Curtis

 

[economichitman]

Check out this list of sprint MVNO's-
List of United States mobile virtual network operators - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Sprint resells their network to many, many prepaid providers who offer "unlimited" plans for around $50 a month. Some that come to mind in my area are: I-Wireless (Kroger), Straight Talk (Walmart), Net10 (national), Boost Mobile (Sprint subsidiary), Virgin Mobile (Sprint subsidiary).

I work retail and sell a lot of these net10 and i-wireless phones that people buy for unlimited data. And boost/virgin are tremendously more popular! Sprint has the worst backbone infrastructure of all the major providers, many of their towers I've read are T1 lines to the backbone. The tower near my home had a recent upgrade and I still only get 300-600 kbps at home. Luckily I have wifi at home for data. It all comes down to Sprint being behind the times, having blown their opportunity at competing in the 4g markets by building out wimax prematurely.

 

[emburybrett1]

Check out this list of sprint MVNO's-
List of United States mobile virtual network operators - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Sprint resells their network to many, many prepaid providers who offer "unlimited" plans for around $50 a month. Some that come to mind in my area are: I-Wireless (Kroger), Straight Talk (Walmart), Net10 (national), Boost Mobile (Sprint subsidiary), Virgin Mobile (Sprint subsidiary).

I work retail and sell a lot of these net10 and i-wireless phones that people buy for unlimited data. And boost/virgin are tremendously more popular! Sprint has the worst backbone infrastructure of all the major providers, many of their towers I've read are T1 lines to the backbone. The tower near my home had a recent upgrade and I still only get 300-600 kbps at home. Luckily I have wifi at home for data. It all comes down to Sprint being behind the times, having blown their opportunity at competing in the 4g markets by building out wimax prematurely.

This is the main reason are data is so slow they have been OVER selling the unlimited data ever since at&t and verizon stop offering it. When I first came to Virgin Mobile the speeds were not that bad about 800kb/s to 1.2 mb/s download and upload was always about 200 kb/s. Sprint has started to upgrade most towers in my town to make them usable before my tower update i was lucky to pull any more then 150 kb/s down and up of 50kb/s.
This is what speeds im getting now but still not as fast as before

If you ask me I think we should be able to use Sprint LTE network as well because Wimax isnt every where and they stopped setting it up last year.

 

[pbailey212]

If you ask me I think we should be able to use Sprint LTE network as well because Wimax isnt every where and they stopped setting it up last year.

Wimax is way more available than LTE. Where I live there is no plans in the next 2 years to add LTE. and I don't live in a rural area.


sent from my Nokia 5110

 

[curtis1973]

thats what pees me off. virgin mobile KNOWS there is nothing wrong with my original elite nor the two replacements they sent me and wasted my time fiddling with. they KNOW its their network overloaded here to the point users just can't keep a reliable connection. they put me through all that crap with trying out replacements knowing the network has deteriorated. i passed my ov on to a family member and her data connection has begun to drop out frequently and has become unstable. ive got one more round of talks with tier 3 support today. im done with replacement elites. and virgin mobile if this data issue persists past this billing cycle which is the second full month of practically no data reliable enough to use. something has to give.

 

[daffy_duck_nj]

I did this a few minutes ago. I get similar ratings when I'm in the DC area.

 

[dwappo]

Even the speeds on the Evo V are bad (the speeds themselves aren't bad, but the coverage is horrible for 4g).

You know what they say, all toasters toast toast.

 

[curtis1973]

amen dwappo and my toaster is cooking subway subs atm. burning the joint down. zetzero dialup puts this companies current service to shame.

 

[anthonycr]

I average about 500 kbps down and 300 up and honestly the only time it feels slow is when I'm tethering to the computer. Otherwise I'd say those speeds work just fine for mobile since I don't watch YouTube vids very frequently and I have patience to let apps download.