blackwaterstout

What kind of rates and plans do you currently have with Sprint? Are you sure there aren't better deals out there? Plans rates among all providers have dropped substantially in the last 6 months. Don't stick with slow sprint 3g just because it's "Unlimited". I think you'll find that even with good 4g lte you will use far less data than you think. Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G870A

Well I can tell you from first hand experience that AT&T has the best service in the Morgantown area. I spent 8 years on sprint here and also 2 concurrent years with a Verizon work phone. 3 months ago I switched to Cricket which uses AT&T LTE network and it has surpassed both Sprint and Verizon here by a wide margin. Granted the LTE is capped at 8mb/sec but that is plenty enough for everything including netflix and hbo go. USCC is also pretty good here in Morgantown and a lot of WV but their drawback is there LTE is small and because I spend a lot of time in PA and pittsburgh they are not really an option. If you intend to stay primarily in Morgantown area I'd rank them ATT, USCC, Verizon, then Sprint. Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G870A

What I don't understand is why people in Morgantown even chose sprint at all. For years I had sprint in Morgantown. Prior to lte the service was comparable to the other carriers. I remained with them simply because my Sero plan could not be touched in terms of price. But rates are as low as they've been in years! I finally saw the light and couldnt be happier and with no end in site to ntelos users it's like beating yourself in the head repeatedly. Slow speeds and prices that are no longer that competetive. Sure it's unlimited but when your speeds max out at .50mb it would take you 3 months to hit the 3Gb, 5 GB , or 10GB plans that are available. Hell, Verizon now is offering 10GB shared between two lines for $110 now. Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G870A

Haven't kept up much since moving to Cricket but just for giggles I talked to a Sprint rep at the mall in Morgantown. For the first time ever I feel like I wasn't having smoke blown up my butt by a sales rep. I asked him if Sprint will ever get LTE in Morgantown. His response was they during their weekly sales meeting the reps were informed that Morgantown would not have LTE until at least January 2016! He almost seemed embarrassed to even tell me that. For me the Cricket switch has been great. It's not unlimited but it's 10GB per line for $55 each. That's cheaper than my Sero lines were. Unbelievable that Sprint would allow this to happen. If that date is indeed true that means they will be at least 3 years behind ATT, Verizon, and USCC in my area. Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G870A

Surely that's a good sign. Hopefully the ball is finally rolling. Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G870A

I'm having an issue but it's more related to the phone than sensorly. I'm trying to track the extent of LTE in my town. What I've noticed is that all goes well when I drive from an LTE location out toward 3g territory. But once the phone gets on 3g and I drive back toward LTE area it takes forever before the poo hone switches back to LTE. So I'm not really getting the full footprint of LTE coverage. Sometimes the phone will hold onto 3g even when the LTE signal is strong. Has anyone mapped in LTE only mode? There is an app called advanced signal status that allows me to select that option on my s5. I think that would give a true lte footprint. Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G870A

That would be horrible. nTelos can't even get their own LTE network built in a reasonable timeframe. May be an extremely long time before they start taking advantage of Sprints additional spectrum. Upgrades must be in place by 2017. That may be the case. Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G870A

I'm still subscribed to this thread and I still have friends here so I wanted to give an update on my switch to Cricket from Sprint. I'm 1 week into my new service. I switched my 2 $50 Sero 500 lines over to the 10GB $55 Cricket plan. Since this is prepaid I end up saving a few bucks. Anyway, so far I've enjoyed the faster speeds and better coverage. I picked up a Galaxy S5 Active so a lot of the new experience includes a nice new phone so that's also added to the experience. I've been using sensory quite a lot and remapping the same areas I mapped with sprint. Also running a lot of speed tests. I'm lucky enough to have my entire town covered with AT&T LTE so my data speeds are consistently around 8mb down (capped by cricket) and 8mb-16mb up. So I'm very happy with that. It's not blazing fast t-mobile speeds but plenty enough for everything I do. In comparison my sprint throughput had turned dismall. <0.5mb both directions. Call quality is vastly improved but I'm 100% positive that's due to upgrading to the s5 from an Evo 4G LTE. Porting was zero problem and took all of 2 minutes. I got an email from Sprints new CEO and he wanted to contact me to see why I left. (Automated message of course). I'm pretty happy right now. Kind of weird having my first GSM phone and having the freedom to swap out devices if I want. May pick up a beater phone to take with me when I'm doing dirty nasty field work. But I'm liking the Active right now. I'm sure I'll continue to keep an eye on this thread so I will know when WV finally gets sprint LTE. I things ever progress in nTelos land I'm not against coming back. As long as the network is good and the prices are fair. Right not there is no contest, faster speeds, better coverage, cheaper price. Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G870A

Service will be fine if you are along major roads. You'll just have crappy data speeds. Hopefully you are kidding about being scared about lack of service. You must be a very young pup. You know there was a time not too long ago when everyone was brave and traveled the country without electronics in their pockets. Just a handful of dimes to use at a payphone I need the side of the road. [emoji12] Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G870A

Thanks to both of you for the info. I must've been in an airhead mood because for some reason I overlooked that option. That description makes a lot of sense.

Interesting. I didn't realize you could turn off the maps. Also, unjust looked through the setting and didn't notice anyway to delay reporting until WiFi.

Does anyone know how much data is consumed on Sensorly while mapping a trip? I assume most of the data would be from loading maps as you travel along. Is sensorly working by just logging signal dbf as specific time or distance intervals? The reason I ask is because most other carriers do not offer unlimited data so those on ATT, Verizon, T-Mo, etc may shy away from using sensorly simply because they fear it's a data hog. Whether it's a misconception or not. I've read that a single Oookla Speedtest will consume around 20MB of LTE Data. For reference how much data is consumed by Sensorly in a 1 hour mapping session?

“nTelos Wireless has established an enviable position as an industry leader in an extremely competitive market by delivering the level of service customers want at a reasonable price,” Lol

Well I didn't intend for my post to be a "diatribe". I've been frustrated but not bitter. If I sounded angry I don't really mean to. Prior to the LTE era Sprint served me quite well. The sero plan was great and 3g data speeds were reasonable. Now today's internet, video streaming, audio, mms, etc has created larger data demands that just dont work that well with 3g. I'm sure you are right concerning being a Sprint customer in nTelos territory. Guess it doesn't make a whole lot of sense now-a-days but when I joined sprint they had national plans when nTelos was only offering regional plans. Times have changed. I've chatted with several people here and made a few friends. Just wanted to let them know what my plans were. I wish all of you guys the best and I'm hoping Sprint turns things around.

You are right. That's one aspect I debated and ended up crunching some numbers to justify things. I purchased a galaxy s5 for my wife that was new online last night for $430 and I'm still looking for something for myself. Would like a G3 or s5 active. I seen some good looking used phones in the $425 range. I can probably recoup $100-$125 for my wife's iPhone 4s with accessories. Not sure my 4g LTE has any value. Will probably let my daughter use it as a Netflix player. I will certainly cost me more money for the phones but at least its not $700 per device. Like I said, I'm taking a shot. We'll see how it goes.

I did something last night that I'd been threatening to do for the last year or so. I took the first step toward leaving Sprint. I've got mixed feeling about it because I've been with them for such a long time but the value I was getting from my 2 sero lines were not that great any longer. The service I have been getting in northern WV has slowed to a crawl the last couple of years. I've been averaging about 900MB of data per month simply because its so intorerable now. I kept hoping we would see network improvements and LTE by now but really just blind open promises by both Sprint and nTelos reps. I tried to join someone Framily.....Sprint said no because I was already a customer. I tried to get the $100 family plan and again Sprint said no since I was already a customer. So I did what I felt like I needed to do. Move on. ATT has the best network here. But the price points have been too high to justify switching to them. But they do have MVNOs which includes Cricket. I read a lot of positive things about them lately and a couple of days ago they announced they are offering 10gb/month LTE access for $55 and 3gb plans for $45. What's nice about this is that its prepaid and those prices include all fees and taxes. So transferring my 2 lines will result in either a $90 or $110 bill depending on plan. Those are both cheaper than the $112 I pay now which doesn't even include unlimited voice. So the advantages is that I will be saving money and still getting plenty of data. Ill probably start with the 10gb plan and put my wife on the 3gb plan for total of $100/month. For all of that there are a couple of potential downsides. Crickets LTE is capped at 8mbit speeds (actually that's not really a huge downer considering 8mbit is more than enough for HD streaming of video and 95% of other phone related uses). The other potential issue is that it doesn't include roaming. Again, for me probably not that big of an issue since ATT has thourough coverage here and in a lot of rural areas. Bottom line is we will see how it works out. I really don't have much to lose. Being prepaid I can leave as early as I'd like and if in some miraculous turn of events Sprint gets their network upgraded here I can always come back. I believe the potential is their for Sprint to have a great network but I'm not willing to keep riding it out while my service is so marginal. Hopefully the grass is greener but again I feel like I don't have anything to lose.

Are you on sprint or nTelos? And secondly what part of 77/64? Near beckley?

Sprint does need to shoulder some of the blame here. They allowed this pukey little runt called nTelos to bully them and ruin their reputation in a large portion of the mid Atlantic market. Do you think Verizon or ATT would've put up with that? Heck no....... What they should've done was force nTelos to maintain it's network at the same rate as NV.

Another comment, another letdown

Damn it.....every time this thread gets updated I get a notification from tap-a-talk and each time I click on it hoping I will get some news that crap-telos has opened up LTE. Every time I'm disappointed. Isnt that the definition of insane? Doing the same thing over and over expecting different results...... No wait, maybe that's some other sickness.......

Anything else to report? I suspect not

That's enough to make my butt hurt. I just can't fathom Sprint allowing that to happen. They should be wearing the pants in this relationship. They are providing nTelos customers with an an entire country full of LTE access.

I think some of the nTelos customers themselves have a very low set of standards because the screenshots posted a page back shows a 3g throughput of 0.6 mbps and the user calls it "not too shabby". Personally I think that sucks. Although maybe he was being sarcastic and I didn't pick up on it.

Another thing that is weird about this whole mess is that its almost impossible to find reports from nTelos customers in Beckley, bluefield, Roanoke,etc that give us an indication of how good the network can even be. Ive googled nTelos LTE results, quality, etc and they have almost zero presence out there that can help us gauge what kind of results we can ultimately expect. Unless I'm missing something?

I was kind of thinking the same thing. Why would they actually install their own LTE towers in locations where Sprint currently have LTE installed? Next thing you know nTelos will announce they are turning on LTE in Wheeling. Lol As far as when things get turned on you would think that Sprint allowing nTelos customers access to LTE would coincide with nTelos opening up LTE to Sprint customers.