iansltx

Ya, sounds like you're definitely throttled. When Verizon is expecting users to just use a few GB per month and then one goes way, way beyond that (notice that they don't promise you un-limited speeds), they have to do damage control measures. Like throttling. I'll probably use on the order of 5-10GB per month on my upcoming phone, untethered (tethering, if I did it, would be a tiny, tiny portion of that, maybe 500MB if not less, because I don't want to abuse the system). High-quality Pandora or Amazon CLoud Player while taking a longish run, or realtime photo uploads of some sort or other, would be easily doable via LTE, so I'd use up a fair amount of data with them. The GSIII does 1080p video; I'm not going to upload an hour-long clip over 4G, but if it's something short then sure, I would. From the person who was responsible for STi Mobile's 12MB per week fair usage policy (I P2P'd over a 1x connection while my parents had dialup, racking up a whopping 1.2GB or so over the course of a few days...over 1xRTT!), I know that you can thrash a mobile broadband connection, and I know how. These days, I only thrash a connection if its gear connects a fixed point (via wireless or otherwise) to the Internet...I have no qualms about transferring hundreds of gigabytes over my cable connection, because the cable plant has around 40 Mbps of upload capacity (of which I can use 15) and 150 Mbps of download capacity (of which I can use 50). If I'm shuttling files around non-stop, it doesn't hurt other folks who also use the network. Would I do that if I knew that I was sharing 5 MHz of spectrum in each direction with a hundred other subscribers on the same cell site? Nope. Not unless there were a heck of a lot of bits per Hertz there!

To clear the air a bit, Verizon advertises 5-12 Mbps down, 2-5 Mbps up, for their LTE network. Sprint advertises 6-8 Mbps down for LTE, 3-6 Mbps down for WiMAX. T-Mobile advertises around 10 Mbps down for HSPA+. Of the four networks, T-Mobile's is by far the most loaded...any 3G-enabled T-Mobile phone uses their HSPA+ network in some form or fashion, and every single T-Mobile-branded smartphone uses 3G. Thus, it comes as no surprise that advertised and delivered speeds are comparable in many places on their network, though in others T-Mobile exceeds expectations by 50-100%. This is speaking from experience. Next comes Sprint WiMAX. It's about as loaded as it's ever going to get; prepaid customers will continue to be added, but Sprint postpaid customers will end up on LTE in relatively short order. On the other hand, WiMAX service is poor in some areas where it's deployed. The upshot of all this is that, when you average the lousy speeds (in some areas) the the stellar speeds (in others, e.g. 12 Mbps down and 1.5 up), you get 3-6 Mbps. Then comes Verizon LTE. The network doesn't have very many customers on it right now, since the only devices that use the network are ones that came out in the past year and a half, none of which can be had for free from VZW's website. The result: speeds on the network are well above advertised in many cases. I've seen 25 Mbps down, 10 Mbps up on my iPad. It's wonderful, but don't expect speeds to stay that way as Verizon loads more customers onto its network and doesn't add any more capacity beyond the 10x10 LTE Rel 8 carrier they have now. Remember that every single VZW LTE device on the market at this point can only use upper C block 700MHz for LTE, and while 700MHz is great for coverage, adding capacity to the network on such a low frequency will be a more delicate maneuver (surprise, surprise, Verizon wants more spectrum, at higher frequencies, to alleviate this issue). Finally, you have Sprint LTE (does AT&T post expected speed numbers for its LTE network? If not, it's because 5x5 behaves very differently than 10x10). Sprint's smaller cells (due to higher frequencies) allow it to provide a more consistent experience on LTE than Verizon (6-8 Mbps vs. 5-12) because you're covering a smaller territory (less customers)...with less spectrum (a single 5x5 carrier now...more later). That said, Sprint's network will start off lightning-fast, since as of July they'll only have four high-end phone models (the lowest-end being the Viper) and a couple of mobile broadband devices riding on the network. Eventually speeds will slow down to the 6-8 Mbps that Sprint is talking about, though my bet is it'll happen more slowly than with Verizon since Sprint will be making incremental upgrades to its network (refarming PCS A-F CDMA to LTE, adding LTE to SMR, upgrading to LTE-A) over the next 18-24 months. All that said, if I can get a reliable 6-8 Mbps down and 2-3 Mbps up on my Sprint LTE phone from the time LTE launches until the time my contract is up, that's enough for me. If I ned to download something super-fast, I'll have a 30M down, 5M up cable connection at my apartment for that (or whatever TIme Warner Cable lets me get that has higher upload speeds).

One quick note re: phasing out WiMAX eventually in favor of TD-LTE hot zones: I'd think that Clear would want to maintain their old WiMAX footprint, even if they become more of a carrier's carrier than they are now. Particularly since they need to keep up some sort of presence where their WIMAX protection sites exist now. Also, if Clear phased out WiMAX completely in favor of TD-LTE hot zones, they'd lose the ability to get MVNOs on board, which may or may not be necessary depending on how much money they are able to make off of "cellular offloading" from traditional cellular carriers. My personal guess (and only that) is that Clear will add TD-LTE pretty much everywhere they have WiMAX now. Tower locations may change as they start collocating with Sprint, but coverage overall shouldn't get any worse. Additionally, they'll add sites where carriers tell them they are needed, so they'll end up covering a couple million more people than they do now. I still think (though Clear will probably decide not to do this) that the company could set up its retail arm to serve up fixed wireless (with professional installs and high-gain antennas) for its TD-LTE network, competing with cable and DSL but not its wholesale customers (who all focus on smartphones and, to an extent, tablets and data cards, all in a mobility setting). Fixed wireless customers would tend to be well-behaved (i.e. not hovering on the fringe of serviceability and thus dragging down performance of the whole cell) and, if cell site downtilt isn't too aggressive, could be a few miles from the cell site and still have a good signal (try that with a WiMAX phone!). This use of a 4G network as a home broadband system has been done before (primarily by Verizon via HomeFusion) so, if Clear did it right, it would work. Heck, that's almost the same thing they did pre-WiMAX days, albeit with a self-installed (read: bad idea) modem instead of a professionally-installed, high-gain one.

Purple...magenta...

Can't speculate, since I'm not sure whether Sprint had a buildout requirement for its BRS spectrum.

Necropost, coming up! IMO Sprint + Alltel would've been better than Sprint + Nextel. Yes, Sprint got a 10MHz nationwide block of near-PCS, plus 14MHz of near-nationwide SMR, plus a big block of BRS spectrum (still waiting to see how that stuff gets used...135 million folks covered by a network that will never expand is pitiful for a national carrier). However with Alltel Sprint would have gotten 25MHz of cellular in many areas, some PCS in others, and a customer base that could be very, very easily integrated into their own. Sprint would also have the upper hand on the roaming front (remember, Alltel and Sprint had a reciprocal roaming agreement...including 3G data...when Alltel was independent...Verizon has to keep the agreement up for another few years), since they would have service (via ex-Alltel) where other companies (even Verizon) didn't. Oh, and 12-plus-million customers, none of whom would whine when transitioned to Sprint's network (not that they'd notice the difference, since both networks roamed on each other). And when the time to go 4G came around, Sprint could just deploy on CLR and PCS...no SMR funny business (though their economies of scale mean that SMR LTE phones will exist anyway), adding (and then widening) LTE carriers as they retired CDMA (it's easy to fit a 5x5 LTE carrier into 25MHz in the A or B cellular band). I fully expected Sprint to buy Alltel, back even before the private equity buyout (and I wasn't following the news closely). I was sad when Verizon locked it down...they killed Alltel's unlimited EvDO data cards (yes, they existed, and people used them for home broadband connections when nothing else was available) pretty darned quickly.

I'm with you on that...then again, I've used the Mogul, the Touch Pro and the OG Epic...so the SIII will be a radical departure for me (one reason I returned the OG Evo was the lack of a keyboard).

4ktvs, what modem do you have? Maybe get TWC to swap that...if they haven't already...

Gonna take a wild guess here: RDU area? Is CenturyLink or AT&T the telephone company there (I had family in Hillsborough, where Sprint->Embarq->CenturyLink was the provider)? Are you out of range of their DSL service? Keep in mind that, while AT&T DSL has a cap of 150GB (or more), trying to push that much data over anyone's cellular network (including, unfortunately, Clearwire's) is generally a bad idea.

Sad day. Might be worthwhile to grab a Twitter account, contact TWC on there (I know other ISPs, e.g. Comcast, CenturyLink, Suddenlink, have Twitter accounts for this purpose) and see if they can give you some better support. Dropping them a Smokeping graph (dslreports.com -> Tools) might help your case. At any rate, since Sprint doesn't have a whole lot in the way of spectrum for their first LTE deployments, they won't likely offer unlimited aircard service for awhile, if ever. To give you an idea of their network's capacity, it's about the same as a *single* channel on TWC's cable modem service. In most places, Time Warner has four or more of those channels, serving an area significantly smaller than what a Sprint cell tower would serve, which is why they can generally offer decent, unlimited service over their network.

Yes. At the very least ex-Alltel ones. In areas where Verizon has 850MHz CDMA, DC should have excellent coverage, above and beyond what Sprint has on its own.

blkmiles, who's your ISP? I have a 50M down, 15M up (neither of which are typos) Comcast connection (also not a typo; they ofer decent upload speeds here...for a price). I've pushed hundreds of GBs through the connection in a month (well over their former 250GB cap) and, since I'm paying plenty for my connection I suppose, I haven't been accosted by them asking me to slow down. Of course, it helps that the vast, vast majority of that traffic isn't used to shuttle questionable files around via BitTorrent. All that said, I'm a power user. My parents could probably get by on 20GB per month, as long as I'm not in the house. And, for that demographic, they're heavy Internet users (Netflix a few times per month, YouTube, e-mail, other online video, etc.). But I digress. Complaining to TWC and getting them to give you a solid connection would be more solid/productive than getting home Internet from Clear unless you're in one of their markets that provides good service. Getting a 'net connection from Sprint (Milleniocom, $70, unlimited 3G) would likely be much slower than your TWC.

Highly ironic. To be completely fair, Verizon *does* provide a good deal if you can get Share Everything with absolutely zero data, with non-smartphones. Boom, unlimited talk and text for $30 per line. But I'm pretty sure that's not how it works; the minimum price for two smartphones (including some data) is $130 per month. That's $20 cheaper than Sprint's cheapest family plan, but for that $20 you lose unlimited voice (I personally don't care, because Any Mobile covers 90+% of my daytime calling) and gain unlimited data on each line. If you're matching prices, you can get 4GB spread over two lines...still advantage Sprint unless you call landlines a lot (who does nowadays?).

No kidding. My iPad will stay on Verizon, with a $0-$50 monthly fee for data depending on how much I need LTE for that month (will probably be $20 for 1GB most of the time). My phone is staying Sprint. I had thought about switching to VZW if their shared data plans were reasonable (e.g. $15 or so more per month to add the iPad to a standard individual voice line). I'd only be paying marginally more under the new plan, and would get unlimited voice minutes in return, but I don't need unlimited voice minutes, and my gut feeling says that I'll never actually be on the correct plan data-wise. If Verizon wanted to encourage people to use data on their plans, they'd make the tiers cheaper, with a higher top end (e.g. 20GB instead of 10GB). As it is, they just want to wring more out of the customer for similar services. Too bad it will keep folks like me, who know that they have the best wireless network in the US for the moment, away.

Are those plans also supplanting the individual-line ones? Because that data is freakishly expensive. At that rate, if I'm a single user, I'd go to Page Plus Cellular, get unlimited talk, text and 2GB of data for $55, and buy my phone outright. If my entire family switched to VZW, we would probably need 4GB, maybe 6GB of data, spread over three smartphones and two non-smartphones. Throw my iPad in there and the amount needed rises to 6GB no matter what. I calculate $270 per month in wireless bills. We get more data for less than that now, albeit without unlimited voice... Go Sprint!

The link is relevant. So call now rather than later

...if only Clear had done a decent job in Denver. Indoor coverage is practically nonexistent, and outdoor coverage is spotty. The network seems to work well when you can get service, but it's so incredibly hit-or-miss that the WiMAX radio on my Epic stays off 99.9% of the time.

Glad to see QuickOffice being bought up. I've used their Android app (and I think Palm OS way back...though that may have just been Docs To Go by DataViz) before and been happy with it. I'd load it onto my current phone but ThinkFree Mobile is workable for the little document viewing that I do on my phone. As for Meebo, they've got a good messenger product. Haven't tried their new thing though, whatever it is. But with the kind of track record they have, they should be able to do some excellent stuff with G+.