Hi all!
Happy to report that I've been able to pull fantastically fast speeds in many areas of Des Moines in the past few months. I live & work downtown, and mostly have no problems. This evening I was even able to pull 31mb down/12 up in a speedtest. Awesomely fast.
I do have one annoying issue that has been happening lately -- in my home, I will be using my data for a fairly decent amount of time and then it seems like my connection "resets" even though my signal strength stays at full bars. Try as I might, the only thing I can do to fix this is to reset the data connection by going in and out of airplane mode. My s/o has to do the same thing. It's confusing to me as I'm able to pull such high data speeds in my house, yet can't maintain a consistent connection. It doesn't appear to have anything to do with the activity either - as it can happen anywhere from reading emails to streaming videos and everything in between.
FWIW, I'm on an iPhone 5s, and I don't even use WIFI at home because generally my data speeds are faster (thanks Centurylink) than my internet connection.
Any insight? It's gotten annoying enough that I'm considering testing some alternative carriers, as much as I don't want to have to go that route.