Savannah GA speeds WOW !!!

[frankt3]

On vacation here in the historic distric of Savannah. Not paying $9.99 a day for the hotel wi-fi. I checked the network.vision weg site before i left home to see that many band-aid fixes have already been complete here. I am getting consistant 2.5 dpwn and 1.0 up. I have never seen speeds on my data plan like this. This is amazing and i can't wait for them to finish this at home. I'll post a speed test in a bit when the system gets a full load on it.

[twospirits]

Nice

[frankt3]

Almost 1pm. Still great speed. Lots of tourist and people using their phones. Ping rate a little high but love those speeds.

[JeffDTD]

I was in Savannah from June 29-July 3rd. I agree, the network was great there. Downtown, I had strong signal and very fast speeds.

 

I stayed with a friend that lives on the edge of the city in new development. His apartment is an RF nightmare for his ATT phone, but my phone held on at about -101dbm and data was a breeze. I only speed tested once (when I first got there and realized I had a signal where he didn't) and pulled about 1.5mb.

 

No complaints. Also, drove to Charleston, SC one of those days... only roamed for about 15 minutes in one spot... streamed data much of the trip.

 

Sprint's network isn't perfect, but my experiences continue to contrast with the people who claim 3G is all rubbish.

[4ginnc]

...

 

Sprint's network isn't perfect, but my experiences continue to contrast with the people who claim 3G is all rubbish.

 

Then you've been very lucky. Here in my part of NC, 3G speeds have been horrible. Had another call into Sprint last night because my downloads were around 109Kb/s and uploads around 45kb/s. Barely usable. There is one tower I've connected ot in Oxford, NC where I do get speeds above 1Mb/s but nowhere else that I've found yet in the Raleigh area either.

 

Also, last week I was down on the Mississippi Gulf Coast visiting family and the few tests I ran was never able to get above 300-400kb/s down. Don't know how Hattiesburg is, haven't been there in years. I would have thought the Coast would be in better shape with all the work that had to be done after Katrina, but I guess not.

[theDrizzle]

Yeah I can vouch for the Raleigh / Durham market being complete shit. hardly get of 30 kilobits per second. Changed my prl to cricket, who buys their 3g from sprint and it at least lets me stream google music. Could the drop me for roaming? I'm not sure how they can claim I'm really roaming. They're getting paid twice for the same bandwidth (once by me once by cricket). But I'm sure they actually CAN drop me....Hopefully they won't and they'll get LTE up soon!

[frankt3]

Yeah i'm from Charlotte and the speeds are nowhere like it is here in Savannah. I thought thing were getting better but like here.

[chong67]

3G speed at 4G speed. That is pretty good.

[iansltx]

...Changed my prl to cricket, who buys their 3g from sprint and...

 

Correction: if CricKet has towers in a given area (i.e. they sell unlimited-minute plans) then they're using their own network rather than Sprint's. This can be a good thing or a bad thing depending on the area. Just thought I'd clear that up, since if I recall correctly RDU does have Cricket native service.

[theDrizzle]

Welp! I stand corrected. However... netmon says its owned by Sprint but no carrier. The phone also thinks its connected to Sprint. Could be wrong. It still shows as roaming data on my bill. Either way I think they might have a better agreement with cricket on roaming than, say, verizon. Regardless. I really CANNOT use sprint's network here. Impossible. I upgraded my rom to jellybean at work and didnt switch back to the cricket prl and i started streaming 1 song when I left work. Realized it was on sprint. Let it keep going, switched to CD for myself. When I was 2 mins from home (15min commute) google voice finally gave up on the 1 song and said "Cannot play file" It di make it 80% through it though! Anyway if they drop me, I think I know who I'm going to then

[iansltx]

Just checked and looks like CricKet has native coverage in your area...not sure why NetMonitor says it's Sprint. Maybe the PRL telling the phone that it's not roaming gives NetMonitor the wrong idea?

 

At any rate, keep in mind that, if you do switch to CricKet, they'll throttle you beyond 2.5GB per month of data usage, on their $55 per month smartphone plan. It's better than 300MB, sure, but it's not unlimited.

 

Then again, neither is what I think is the best option in that area: VZW. 20 Mbps symmetric speeds on my iPad while I was in Chapel Hill were lovely.

[S4GRU]

Cricket service is highly variable. Here in Northern New Mexico, Sprint has 1Mbps+ EVDO speeds in most places. Cricket is a dog with 200k - 300k speeds. Fortunately, Cricket has a smaller footprint than Sprint here and I only roam on Cricket when the Sprint network goes down or force roam on a standard PRL.

 

Robert

[pyroscott]

3G speed at 4G speed. That is pretty good.

 

?

[S4GRU]

?

 

I was baffled too.

 

Robert

[theDrizzle]

Then again, neither is what I think is the best option in that area: VZW. 20 Mbps symmetric speeds on my iPad while I was in Chapel Hill were lovely.

 

Yeah I actually have a verizon 4g hotspot I had for a month (borrowed it from a friend in DC so I could do work why my gf drove us back to Cary). All-in-all verizon has a great network here. Just hate the data caps.

[theDrizzle]

Cricket is a dog with 200k - 300k speeds.

 

That's what I get here (when I switch prls to cricket) and why I love it! Wow.... is sprint's 3g network in RDU THAT messed up?

[JeffDTD]

Also, last week I was down on the Mississippi Gulf Coast visiting family and the few tests I ran was never able to get above 300-400kb/s down. Don't know how Hattiesburg is, haven't been there in years. I would have thought the Coast would be in better shape with all the work that had to be done after Katrina, but I guess not.

 

Eh, this is off topic for the thread, but we were on Alltel native roaming here until early 2010, most of the state. That usually averaged 400-600k. When we finally got 3G , it was admirably fast most everyone but quickly fell flat on it's face. The coast is an interesting place for sprint... Its included in a market that's scheduled to get full NV treatment well before I am here in Hattiesburg, but its always been managed a little different than I am up here (given the different market, I suppose). Anyways, my family lives in Biloxi and Pascagoula and I can tell you there are places where it works flawlessly and there are places where it hiccups. I have noticed much improved speeds in the last few months and the coverage update tool continues to show plenty of upgrades scheduled for the area. The oddest thing about the coast , however, is how understated the native network is down there. If you look at the network maps down there, it leads you to believe you will lose a native signal several times over just driving on Interstate 10 from one side of the state to the other.. thats anything but true. Last weekend, I drove on a new highway bypass created between highway 49 south of Wiggins and Biloxi.. had sprint signal all but for about 10 minutes... according to Sprint, they have no coverage there. Oh wait we're talking 3G speed... Spring 2011 , the 3G speeds became unusable at my workplace and at home for about 3 months. Then last summer, upgrades occurred. I average anywhere from about 600k-1.9k at home and anywhere from 400k-1.5mb at work. There is one area in town where the 3G drops out almost completely, ironically at a very busy intersection surrounded by towers.. but in any regard, we seem to be somewhat fortunate in the areas I travel in comparison to the reports from many other markets. Of course, our native network is painfully small as Gulf Coast Wireless was a laggard and Sprint has been cash strapped, but 3G roaming is still available in most places here.

 

Aside, the most used carrier in these parts in C-Spire... And let me tell you, Sprint shats all over their 3G even at 400k. Cspire is grappling with a ton of smartphone users who don't even have an ISP... they had historically sold a $120 2 line "all you can eat" smartphone plan. While they don't anymore, the majority of their users are smartphone carriers and expect to be able to stream Pandora or Youtube all the time and their network can't keep up. Cell shrinkage also seems to be an issue with the increased usage, as many of my friends complain places where they once had 1 bar and could talk are now dead zones.

 

I also am a proponent of more advanced data compression on many of these streaming apps. It seems that your paid apps tend to have better data compression while many the free ones depend on a high speed connection. My point? I subscribe to spotify. I do not let it download songs to my phone. I've been able to stream it for hours on end and use only a fraction of the data that pandora or slacker would use in that time. Also, it will stream perfectly at very low speeds with good sound quality. I'm not justifying slow networks, but my app functionality is usually what leads me to do a speed test, not the other way around. If my connection works reasonably well, I couldn't care less if I'm getting 400k or 600k.

 

All in all, what I pay+ what I get+ fact its mississippi (historically neglected by telcos)= all good.