I was in the Charlotte/University Area, NC yesterday with my mother who has an iPhone 5 with Verizon and I have an iPhone 5 with Sprint, both had 4 bars of signal. I did some speed tests and the average results were as follows:
Sprint Verizon
11.68 mbs down 6.13 mbs down
4.41 mbs up 2.8 mbs up
64.5 ms ping 58.5 ms ping
So it seems to me that the Sprint NV will be well worth it once it all gets finished. Just an observation.