Morningside78

wow, '96. old school. here's my basic beef with this whole roll out thing, and perhaps one of the experts here can address it since I'm by no means an expert on Sprint's network. the more threads I read here discussing NV, the more I start seeing built-in excuses for why this either won't work particularly well in places like the NYC metro area, or why it'll be a hell of a long time before we're seeing consistent service here anywhere near the level Sprint claims it'll be. my concern has to do primarily with the sheer amount of work required to guarantee a high level of service beyond those who are right next to NV towers at an optimal time of day. Sprint, in my experience with them since data demands have soared, has not been even competent when it comes to providing service at the level of its competitors for a consistent period of time. Apart from the few outliers who report very high network speeds, the majority of people in this area don't get even good data speeds from Sprint with any reliability. Now, I fully understand that Sprint has come up against certain technological limitations and that's the reason for its network overhaul. But is it reasonable to assume that the same poor decisions that resulted in WiMax and shoddy tech support for several years will do a complete 180 just because they've said so?

just to follow up on Sunday night's excellent speeds, I've run speed tests on Tuesday and Wednesday and it's back to the usual slow transfer rates and high pings. I guess the slight blip in improvement was the result of this neighborhood being empty for the Labor Day holiday after all.

my post was in no way directed at you, so please reserve your flaming for someone else. my skepticism stems from having run countless speed tests on multiple Sprint devices in Manhattan, Bronx and Brooklyn and never consistently achieving 4G speeds like the ones the person I was speaking to reported. while I don't believe he lied, my experience with Sprint has been that an isolated test conducted at an optimum moment can yield skewed results. these results yield an outlier with an extremely high value and one that's not capable of being reproduced over time. that was the source of my skepticism, which again, had nothing to do with you. this evening (just before 8pm), however, I noticed the fastest 3G speeds I've ever been able to achieve in my neighborhood. running three tests in the span of a couple of minutes, the slowest download was 1.11 Mbps with a max of 1.26. pings ranged from 99 to 140. upstream was still pretty mediocre (0.43-0.76) but those download speeds are literally supersonic when compared to what one can normally pull up here. I'm going to keep running tests over the next few days to see whether this was a fluke from an abnormal small number of people being around because of Labor Day or if some improvement really did occur.

understood but I'm not really referring to the capabilities of WiMax but to the kind of speeds I've seen in the last several years here. overall, speeds in Brooklyn are nowhere near the speeds in Manhattan, and the speeds in Manhattan don't come particularly close to 16 Mbps either. it seems very strange that the area of Brooklyn he's referring to (Flatlands) would have WiMax service that strong.

<p> 16 Mbps on WiMax in Brooklyn? Sorry, but I'm not buying that. The fastest WiMax in the city is somewhere around around 8 Mbps and in Brooklyn it's generally nowhere near that. And the app works fine if you use it the right way.

honestly, (most of) your figures are blazing fast compared to what I can pull routinely down here. the better speeds shown in your 3G tests are pretty much identical to what I get when connected to 4G in this neighborhood.

alright, I drove 17 north on Thursday evening (8:20pm) and ran some speed tests. between the Paramus Ikea(where I enter 17 from 4) and the Linwood Avenue exit, I pulled the following speeds (in Mbps): 0.85 Down. 0.72 Up. Ping: 98ms 1.37 Down. 0.65 Up. Ping: 115ms 1.11 Down. 0.80 Up. Ping: 89ms not as fast as what was reported earlier in this thread, but still fairly decent. things began to drop off considerably as I moved north of Ho-Ho-Kus.

Ran a few speed tests around 57th and Broadway on Sunday and topped out a 1.16 Mbps down and 0.89 up. I honestly have no idea if that has anything to do with Vision or not; 3G speeds even in areas with the strongest coverage can be pretty variable from one day to the next. I did notice that speeds dropped off sharply as I traveled west on 55th st. I've not as of yet noted any change in Morningside Heights. Speed tests run on Sunday morning produced between 0.12 and 0.23 down and between 0.12 and 0.14 up with very high pings.

as I said, the poor data started south of Ramsey - basically not long after I entered 17 near the Paramus Ikea; it did get progressively worse as I drove north. I will be passing there again on Thursday, so I'll run some more tests.

I drive route 17 weekly and usually make a stop for gas at a Valero near the Saddle River exit. On Friday evening, my wife and I were driving north on 17 streaming music via Spotify and noticed that the music started getting exceedingly choppy just north of Paramus. By the time we were near Ho-ho-kus, the stream stopped working entirely. At that point I a few speed tests just to make sure it was Sprint and not Spotify. These were done at about 10:00 pm on Friday night starting when I was at that Valero station and ending around the time I passed the Smash Burger in Ramsay. Down: 0.12 Mbps. Up: 0.14 Mbps. Ping: 741 ms. Down: 0.07 Mbps. Up: 0.55 Mbps. Ping: 361 ms. Down: 0.09 Mbps. Up: 0.38 Mbps. Ping: 422 ms.

where exactly in the Bronx did you get 3G speeds of 1.9 Mbps? around Yankee Stadium, 3G downstream tops out around 0.2 Mbps with upstream between 0.02 and 0.10 on average.

As I mentioned earlier, I was told flat out that this would not be the case in my neighborhood and that to an extent, data service will always be poor. Is there any reason to believe that NV will not impact my part of New York City?

who would you suggest I talk to? I'm all for identifying helpful Sprint personnel. and as I stated in the post that was deleted, I can seldom crack 0.3 Mbps in my neighborhood. more often than not, 3G speeds range from 0.03-0.2 with pings in the 400s and 500s.

I thought my post was pretty rational and logically constructed. At no point did I state anything that wasn't true, nor was I drawing on experiences other than any I've had directly in my roughly 10 years as a Sprint customer. I think it's unfair to label something that presents a less than rosy picture as a "negative rant" when the information was presented for the sake of offering a more complete picture; specifically, why I believe Sprint's claims need to be met with some skepticism. I should also add that a technical support rep told me point blank a few days ago that I should expect no improvement in my neighborhood at all and that any upgrades would simply bring the quality of service to somewhere around 0.5 Mbps per second. This was somewhat surprising since many previous calls to tech support wound up with someone telling me that NV would mean dramatic improvement in 3G speed; that this most recent call ended with a far more sobering promise is probably worth knowing.

I'm most likely going to wait it out. At this point, I'm already committed for the duration of my current contract, so I'll probably give Sprint until the end of that period to show me something. I certainly won't be buying an LTE device until it's actually functional, though. I need to see NV active with my own eyes before I'm going to invest in anything newer than my Epic. Also, what happened to my post? I see you quoted it but my original doesn't seem to be here.

I'd like to thank you for your excellent posts in this thread, ones I feel were needed to throw a little bit of cold water. Someone earlier suggested that longtime Sprint customers like myself are angry because we're not getting as much stuff for free anymore? Does anger over a lack of functional data service in my neighborhood considered a perk now? Should I be so thrilled that Sprint's decided to accept my money that any service provide, irrespective of quality, is worthy of my praise? I would assume any rational person realizes that for many customers, Sprint's downward spiral has left us drained, both emotionally and financially. I've paid Sprint somewhere around $20,000 over the last 10 years, and in that time I've gone from someone who never uttered a complaint to a weekly caller to Account Services demanding compensation. And why the change in tack? Simply, Sprint's service was once very good and is now very, very bad. I've posted on here before about my 3G data speeds that on a good day top out a 0.3 Mbps and 4G that's as fast as the 3G speeds Sprint "promises" and about as reliable as a string between two cans. But what makes this most frustrating is not the horrendous data service but the majority of personnel Sprint employs (purportedly) to attend to the needs of their customers. Personnel are not only rude, but largely uninformed and hide behind boiler plate when confronted with factual data. And again, this isn't even the sticking point for me - I'm somewhat used to dealing with incompetence - but it's the lying I've endured: promises about fixes that never happen; being told months later that the problems were fixed and that the problem must be with my device; having some personnel tell me that there's nothing wrong in the area while others say there is something wrong; having service credits promised to me with transaction ids, not seeing the credit appear on my account and then calling in to find out the person promised a credit and never actually applied one; etc., etc., etc. It's the tidal wave of dishonesty (and believe me, I've only barely scratched the surface with this post) that makes me highly skeptical about Sprint's promises for the future, no matter how innovative they claim to be. So, yeah, while it may sound overly dramatic, my trust has been violated. I will own up to my own stupidity in renewing my contract last year and my own gullibility when an Account Services rep told me that the horrible data speeds would be fixed within a month (most people would probably consider that a con, but I'll take it on the chin) and I wanted to get my wife a new device. The problem is that Sprint has done nothing to try to earn my trust other than to tell me to keep paying them until things get better. I'm sorry, but it's damn near impossible to believe anything they claim anymore. I wanted to leave Sprint several months ago when I was completely fed up with the laughable quality of their service. Thanks to the number of lines on my account, it would have cost me over $800 to go elsewhere. If you don't understand why that's a deterrent, I'm not sure what else to tell you.

This would certainly appear to be the case in NYC. While data has been pretty poor in my part of the city, 3G data overall was markedly faster before October of last year. Since then, I've obtained steadily worse 3G data throughout the city. Bear in mind that Sprint's 3G has never been as good as its competitors (based on my observations), but in plenty of the busiest areas, you could pull in upwards of 1 Mbps with some regularity; that's simply not possible anymore. Near the Empire State Building, an area where I could once pull anywhere from 0.8-1.2 Mbps, the range is from 0.3-0.8, with 90% of the test results coming in between 0.3 and 0.5. I've experienced similar issues in the Upper West Side, SoHo, Union Square, Chelsea, etc., all areas that once boasted strong data speeds. This "increase" in poor performance coincided with the launch of the iPhone. Now whether it's simply a coincidence and Sprint began Network Vision upgrades around the time of the iPhone launch I obviously can't say, but there's every indication that an already saturated network simply got oversaturated.

http://s4gru.com/ind...edule-update/ As you can see, there's not a whole lot in the way of news regarding LTE for the NY metro area. The folks I've spoken with Sprint have said that while they're pretty confident about 3G EVDO being ready this fall, they have no confidence in setting a date for an LTE launch. In all likelihood, as stated in what I linked you, LTE will follow shortly after 3G is ready.

well I'd say yes; calls and texts are still possible when connected to wifi as long as you're within range of Sprint voice coverage. for as terrible as my data is up here, I've always got Sprint voice service...unfortunately, I use about 400 minutes of talk time a year.

glad to know someone else has been up here and dealt with it. I've got theories about why data is so much worse up here than it is in other parts of the city, but I'll withhold them for now ;-)I've considered the mobile hot spot option and I do know people who've had success with them, but two questions come to mind: 1) There's no way Sprint supplies those to customers free of charge, right? 2) How do they actually work? If Sprint's coverage is poor up here anyway, what would the hot spot do? Would I need a hot spot from another carrier?

I'd like to thank you guys for your input on this. As it stands now, I'm not paying for the Airvana, and haven't been for quite some time - Sprint didn't really put up much of a fight when I said, "I can't use phone or data service in my home." Perhaps the most frustrating aspect of all of this has been dealing with Sprint account services personnel who've claimed numerous times that there's nothing wrong in this neighborhood when Sprint tech support personnel have stated plainly that there is. I'm aware that they don't all have access to the same information, but it's massively annoying that in the last year or so, I've spent literally hundreds of hours on the phone with Sprint trying to convince them of something they finally admitted has been "broken" for a very long time. My experience with Sprint had been more or less positive until the last few years - this basically coincides with decreases in data quality and customer service reps who often exhibit zero interest in customer satisfaction. I'm willing to stick it out for a few more months in the hopes that there will be some improvement. If NV is available this fall and works well, that would definitely go a long way to keeping me with the company.

thanks for the info. honestly, if you were in my position, what would you do? I'm not eager to change carriers and I'm hopeful that NV will offer significant improvements, but it's been so hard to justify the checks I've written to Sprint over the past few years.

is there any indication of when customers can expect the service to be available here? the woman I spoke with in Sprint tech support - who seemed about as competent as anyone I've spoken to at Sprint - said October was likely but it's hard to know whether she was just being optimistic.

hey folks, I'm a new poster here though I have lurked for a while. once I saw this thread, I really had to (finally) register and respond. I've been a Sprint customer since 2003, living in New York City for most of that time. Sprint's voice coverage has always been fine in metro areas and it's in far less densely populated regions where (not surprisingly) voice coverage is poor. This, however, is not the reason I'm on the verge of leaving Sprint. Since buying the Palm Pre on release day, my Sprint usage has overwhelmingly been for data. I seldom use more than 100-150 minutes of talk time per month. My data, on the other hand, was commonly from 1-1.5 GB. In the past year or so, Sprint's data coverage in my neighborhood, Morningside Heights, has become a total disaster. My 3G speeds are typically beween 0.1-0.4 Mbps up and down. 4G barely ever connects and when it does it's slow and usually drops out after a few minutes. I've literally plagued Sprint with phone calls about this for the past 12 months and it took about 10 months before Sprint dropped the pat response of, "I'm looking at the map and you're in a great coverage area!" They finally admitted that they're woefully over capacity up here and that there simply isn't adequate data for customers. What bothers me is that Sprint consistently tells me the problem is "being fixed" and provides expected completion dates. Not surprisingly, these dates come and go with no improvement whatsoever. In fact, data has only worsened in the last few months. Friends of mine who are Verizon and AT&T customers come into this neighborhood and can pull 3G download speeds in excess of 1.5-2 Mbps. If any of my Sprint friends are here, their speeds top out at 0.3-0.4. For those of us with Sprint, our 4G speeds in the neighborhood are actually slower than the other carrier's 3G service. Obviously, other parts of the city have considerably better data than we get up here, but I've been pretty carefully monitoring 3G and 4G in most of the city for the last year and in that time speeds have consistently diminished. In the Union Square area, I could hit 0.8-1.1 Mbps consistently with 3G. Now, I'm hard-pressed to get 0.5 with any regularity. There are pockets all over the city where 3G drops out entirely and only 1X is available. Anyway, I'm of the opinion that Sprint has received more than enough of money in the past 10 years. A somewhat competent person at Sprint has said that LTE should be available in NYC by October of this year. They're getting until then to show some improvement or I'm gone. I'm tired of having a smartphone that I can't use where I live.