iansltx

Wait, don't the new LTE phones on Sprint *have* to have SIMs for the LTE component? I know that every single Verizon device I've seen with LTE has a SIM.

I won't say straight-up that 5 Mbps down, 1 Mbps up is the point at which I'd stop caring about speed on a mobile network on a phone. Personally that number would be 10 mbps down, 5 Mbps up (for fast photo sharing and quick video uploads/downloads/streaming). But I'm a power user...I bought T-Mobile's first HSPA+ 42 device in addition to having my Epic...and a T-Mobile HSPA+ 21 device. Oh, and I have a 50/15 cable connection at my apartment (Golden, CO). I've seen what VZW's 10x10 LTE network can do when lightly loaded; I have an iPad that hits 25-35 Mbps down, 10 mbps up at my apartment now that VZW has a local gateway for their LTE network. That said, speeds go down to half that downtown, at least from what I've measured. T-Mobile doesn't start out as high (10-20 Mbps down, 2.5 or so Mbps up) bu doesn't take nearly the hit that VZW does (VZ's 3G network isn't as zippy here as I've seen elsewhere, but that's probably because I'm not in a town of 10k sixty miles from anywhere other than a Verizon owned local exchange). Coming back on topic, if Sprint builds their network densely enough (which they can do with 1900 spectrum...Verizon will find it harder with 700), average performance should be comparable, as long as Sprint has enough egress points on the network to allow surfing with decent latency (T-Mobile and now VZW are quite good at this). I'll be headed to Austin late this summer, so I'll be seeing Ericsson's NV rollout there firsthand...hopefully it's zippy enough to let me discontinue my T-Mobile aircard and only use VZW iPad data for regions where Sprint doesn't have LTE yet.