bkrodgers

One store where I've had the experiences (several times) is a repair center, and the other isn't. I would have thought the repair center people would know more, but I've had equally poor treatment and equally misinformed comments. I think your approach is the right one. No, as a salesman you can't completely go negative even if that's the truth, but there's a balance. The problem is that most reps aren't getting good info from Sprint. They give me info that directly contradicts what Robert has here (they've told me techs have been on the towers, installing LTE in St. Louis over the past 6 months). I believe the info here much more than what they tell me. I really appreciate this community, but the gap between what Robert knows and what the people in the store know is far too wide. Sprint's doing themselves a disservice by not using their reps to help manage the situation. As I said earlier, I think it's way too early in the rollout for Sprint to be able to do broad marketing of what's coming, but using their store reps to do that in a more low key way could be effective.

It's been going downhill fast in the last year, and there are parts that are not as bad as others. It also varies with time. But I know a number of other people on Sprint and I don't know of anyone who consistently gets acceptable speeds. I find it hard to believe them when they say they've *never* heard a complaint. My only point is that whether they're lying or not, they're being completely dismissive of problems, even when demonstrated on their state of the art phones in store. I think that's where they could be marketing the future better, rather than trying to dismiss problems and not being provided any accurate information to share. I recently stopped in to check out the Optimus G, and during one of these conversations the rep told me the US Cellular sale meant Sprint had bought USCC's LTE network in STL (which never launched and as far as I know was never built), and Sprint was working on integrating the LTE network hardware he claimed (incorrectly) they bought in the deal into Sprint, and Sprint customers would have access to it very soon. I knew that was wrong (and told him so), but another customer might not. Giving the reps information and training them to handle questions about the network problems would let them help market the upcoming network, rather than pissing people off and misinforming them.

True, but the timing is important. At the time of the commercials, LTE and 4G were new. Getting over 5Mbps on a phone was revolutionary at that point (Sprint WiMax build outs already starting to fizzle at that point). It could be marketed as the future because it was new. But what Sprint is building now will -- again, from a consumer perspective, not a technical one -- only serve to catch them up to what VZW, ATT, and TMo have today. I don't think you can market that until it's much closer to done than it is. NV may position Sprint to lead in the future, but as far as what it will deliver immediately on completion relative to where they are now, it's a catch up move.

My experience here in St. Louis is that multiple people in multiple stores will say the exact thing when I bring up any network problems. I stop by sometimes to look at new phones as they come out and it comes up when they ask why I'm not ready to upgrade even though I'm eligible. First they say I'm the first person they've ever heard complain about data speeds, which I find completely implausible based on what I and everyone I know in St. Louis on Sprint are experiencing. Then they say they use sprint all over town and it works great. I tell them Web pages take over 2 minutes to load and speed tests show under 150 Kbps, and they say "oh, well you should use wifi if you want it to be faster than that." But they'll steadfastly insist they have a great network right now, even as they acknowledge that if you want to watch a video or listen to music you need to find a wifi hot spot you can use. The conversations often include the same basic responses, which is why I suspect that they're being trained to respond this way. I realize their job is to sell, but when the problems are as significant as they are here, they'd do much better to acknowledge and apologize for the current problems, and talk about the future. That's where that could have a benefit.

The problem is that this isn't the type of thing where most people care about what's coming. Sprint's just playing catch up right now, and you can't market that until you have it. Sprint may well be building a network that will be better and more future-proof then their competitors a year from now, but today, there are very few places where they can market what they have. The technical details of why NV will position Sprint's "network of the future" to at least keep up with, if not surpass, the competition are of no interest to the vast, vast, vast majority of consumers. That's why their ads lately have been very vague and pretty much limited to "hey, we have the iPhone and unlimited data," and "you don't have to share your data." There just isn't anything to sell. Any marketing they do in areas that are not significantly complete only will draw attention to their problems. Now, I would like to see them provide more information to store reps and stop training them to lie about never having heard about any problems at all with Sprint's network.

Thanks Robert, that is great information and helps reassure me a bit. I didn't realize that they weren't doing 3G alongside LTE in some sites. I knew about the spectrum constraints too and about the USCC purchase, but as you said, that won't help for awhile. I'm hoping it's more that 3G hasn't been done on the sites in that area. I'll probably go ahead and donate soon to check that out -- do the sponsor maps show the 4G and 3G status of the sites separately? I of course do plan to get an LTE device. In fact I'm beyond frustrated to still be using the Evo. I'm just not willing to sign a new contract with Sprint (or give up WiMax) until I see improvements in the area I'm living. In St. Louis, where I live now, the network is unusable, and I'd been looking to my trip to Chicago (assuming I go through with a move there) to help give me some hope that sticking it out with Sprint is worth doing. But if 4G is further along than 3G, my tests didn't really tell me much. I do know there's a lot of reason for hope for their future. It's just a question of whether I can stick it out (my only motivation to do so being a legacy plan), or whether I go another route for 2 years and evaluate them again in 2015.

I'm a bit concerned by what I experienced in the last week while up visiting my parents on the North Shore (Wilmette and Glenview, mainly). There were small pockets where 3G was pretty good -- 1-1.2 Mbps. But for the most part, speeds were still pretty terrible. Very often under 500 Kbps, and often under 100. And often it'd just outright fail. Today as I left town, driving down the Edens, through the Kennedy, and onto I-55 south, it was hideous the whole way. I would periodically kick off a batch of a few Rootmetrics continuous tests for a few minutes, and I was consistently getting an average of 100-200 Kbps, with only a ~60% success rate. I didn't see over 500 Kbps until I hit Joliet. I did stop by the Sprint store on Willow in Glenview, and in that store my phone (OG Evo) got a solid > 1Mbps, and the Optimus I was playing with had LTE getting about 8Mbps. But half a mile from the store, right before I got there, I was getting 130 Kbps. I'm contemplating a move from St. Louis to Chicago, and the promise of the new network that's 75% complete had me holding out hope that there would be a solid network once I got there. But unless the 25% they haven't done includes most of the north shore, Edens, Kennedy, and I-55 corridors, I'm extremely disappointed. What would explain this?

I'd bet on further deterioration rather than upgrades in progress. And yes, as someone who lives in St. Louis, it's hideous in a huge percentage of the market. Worst part is that they've trained store reps to claim they "go all over St. Louis and get great speeds" and "you're the first person I've ever heard complain about the data speeds." I've heard that from multiple reps, in multiple stores, over a period of time. I refuse to believe it's anything but a bald-faced lie, and coming from so many people, I have to think they're trained to do it. It'd be nice if they'd just be honest, acknowledge there are issues, and talk up Sprint's plans for the new network. There is hope for the future. But things will probably continue to get worse before they get better.

As has been said here, the contract requirement on the Value plans is a deal breaker. In fact, it kind of makes me mad...there is NO justification for requiring that you sign a contract with a $200 ETF if there's no device subsidy. I mean, of course they can require it if people will sign it, but nobody should. I realize Tmo would love to still have us locked in and have us pay for our phones ourselves, but I won't sign a contract without a subsidy. I'm fine going without a subsidy as long as the monthly rate is lower (which it is on tmo) and there's no contract. I do realize they have their monthly 4G plans that don't require a contract. But those have some features removed -- data roaming and call forwarding (so no Google Voice voicemail) among them.

Oh please. People here in St. Louis still call i-64 "highway farty (40)" many decades later. :-)

I think the customers were secondary. The spectrum, especially in Chicago, was what Sprint was interested, from what I've seen posted here and elsewhere. Chicago was a market where Sprint was spectrum constrained. I don't think that is true in downstate IL and St. Louis, which they also bought, but USCC may have just wanted to offload those markets in one transaction. I'm sure they don't mind the customers coming along or a competitor leaving the 3rd largest market in the country, but the spectrum was probably what brought Sprint to the table.

Kind of like the Bears game yesterday...

One of the things that's always bugged me as being borderline dishonest (maybe not even borderline) is to have repeaters in the store that present a completely false impression of what the network is like in a given area. I think all the carriers do it, but with the real state of Sprint's network in many places (like St. Louis), it bothers me in particular. I do realize that it's a somewhat higher concentration of handsets on the network in the store, and I also realize that even without repeaters the network can drop off from one point to another 100 feet away. But it still paints a false picture of the network to potential customers, especially in areas where nowhere within 10 miles of the store has a usable network. Anyway, I'm going to be up in the Chicago burbs later this week (Wilmette, Glenview, and the area), and I was thinking I'd stop by a Sprint store to see what the LTE network is looking like so far. Does anyone know if Sprint's already putting LTE repeaters in the store yet though? Or will I actually be on the real network if I get LTE in the store?

If I had to wager, I don't think any of the answers given are what the OP was really asking. I suspect he's not looking to add additional monthly fees or an external device. So to be clear, the answer to whether the iPhone can directly be connected to the WiMax network is a definitive no.

I'd assume that the metered usage agreement could -- and I'd think would -- be changed as a part of this agreement. If Sprint owns the frequencies and the customers at closing, but will continue to have USCC operate the network for a period of time, I'd think you'd be doing that under terms that are different from a standard roaming agreement. Interesting -- hadn't thought about that, but it makes sense. So is the only way to make something like this work is to go a step further and change the USCC towers to Sprint's SID and push them a new PRL that has Sprint's SID as the home SID? I'd imagine doing that seamlessly would be difficult if not impractical. But I'd think that these kind of issues would have to be resolved somehow for the transition to work for USCC customers though -- assuming Sprint wants to use these frequencies right away and not wait until all customers are off the USCC network (maybe that's not a valid assumption). First, can Sprint even deploy on the frequencies without the USCC equipment being shut down? If not, wouldn't they need to have the old and new towers working seamlessly as one network for the benefit of USCC customers? Or are the complexities/impracticalities of this going to dictate that Sprint can't put these frequencies to use for the Sprint network for a couple years when they can completely shut the USCC network down?

What I'm really hoping happens is that as soon as possible -- ideally even before the deal is closed, but at the very least shortly after -- Sprint adds the impacted USCC network sites to the native list in the PRL. Since USCC will essentially be continuing to operate their current network on Sprint's behalf after the sale is closed until Sprint builds out on the new frequency, it would seem to make sense. Merge the USCC network in STL and Chicago into the native list -- no 300MB limit, no need to force roam or use an "unauthorized" corporate PRL to get 3G roaming. I've used said PRL to roam on USCC's 3G network at times in STL, and their network fills in a lot of the spots where Sprint is lacking in signal strength and/or data capacity. Since Sprint would own the spectrum at that point and would be paying USCC to operate sites for a transitional period, I don't see why they couldn't or wouldn't want to use the PRL to merge the networks right away. It'd help customers on both sides, right?

I wonder how much of a limitation Sprint's financial situation has been on the NV pace, vs other constraints. Using the money to speed up NV would seem like a wise use of their new resources. If Softbank is looking to take on the AT&T/VZW behemoth, they can't even begin to think about that until NV is substantially complete. But even if they decided they did want to throw money at it to speed it up, were Sprint's resource constraints really the holdup? Or do the other factors, such as equipment availability, qualified contractor availability, planning lead times, permits, other local regulatory headaches, and even the damn birds the bigger constraining factors?

I don't think most people would know there's active deployment occurring -- if it even is. It isn't here. I understand it can't happen everywhere all at once, and that they can't do anything to turn back the clock on the time they let their network investments lapse when it needed it most. I do understand your point about your friend on VZW, but he has a much better 3G network to fall back on. Similarly, many people bought the Evo with a future promise for 4G (which in many areas went unfulfilled) because Sprint's 3G network at the time was much better than it is today. The 4G hotspot is something I've considered. The only reason that might make sense for me though is because I'm on SERO-P. Otherwise, the cost of the hotspot plus a smartphone would mean I could get a data bucket on another carrier that was easily large enough to meet my needs, and not have to carry around two devices. And if I were on a normal plan, I'd have no incentive to stay and wait it out -- I'd jump ship for two years, and if Sprint delivers, come back. My *only* incentive to even think about staying with Sprint is because the rate plan I'm on is so good, and I can't get it back if I leave. I have a hard time understanding how anyone here who doesn't have that incentive (i.e., they pay normal rates) could justify signing a new contract with Sprint if they want a new device and care about having a quality network. I'm not trying to complain about the state of things here...like I said, I understand Sprint can't do any more than they're doing to fix things. I just don't understand how Sprint expects to keep customers in areas like STL. There's enough WiMax coverage to get by here, but we can't have a current device and access to a solid, fast network without leaving Sprint. A WiMax/LTE SGSIII and/or Evo would have solved that problem.

Ugh. I've known this was almost certainly true, but it's still sad to see more evidence it's true. St. Louis is a great example of why one more flagship WiMax phone, also with LTE, would have made a whole lot of sense for Sprint. No, WiMax isn't solid here, but it's pretty good in a lot of places, and beats the 3G network. Lots of Evo owners are coming up on upgrades and contract expirations. It seems like there are enough places with 4G that are on the tail end of the NV rollout that you could have justified the added cost of getting Samsung to do a WiMax + LTE SGSIII. I wonder if Sprint's simply planned for the subscriber losses in later markets.

Springfield is actually closer to KC than it is to STL. And for that matter, it's closer to Tulsa, OK and Fayetteville, AK (WalMart) than STL. I don't know how they'll handle it, but I wouldn't take for granted that it will be handled alongside STL.

Is there any sense how long these 2nd tier markets and beyond will take, on average? I realize that will vary by market size, conditions, and specific local legal/zoning issues. But I'm assuming that future markets will go much faster than the initial markets. So if they were to start St. Louis in Sept/Oct, are we talking 3 months to launch? 6?

Thanks Robert. I always try to be civil and rational in such circumstances (with various levels of success). I honestly want to support Sprint and I want to see them succeed. I want them to prove that unlimited data is still viable. And while they aren't miles ahead of the competition in value as they once were, they still represent one of the best values for many people's usage needs -- if they can deliver. Right now, in many areas, they can't. I'd say I'm both a Sprint hater (a calm, rational one most of the time) and a huge advocate of them. I think NV has huge potential and if Sprint executes it right, works hard to earn back the people they've alienated, and survives long enough to do both of those, that they'll be very strong. I've stuck with them for the reasons listed above, an ETF I do not feel I should have to pay for Sprint's faults, and, frankly, because I'm on a very good legacy plan I'll never get back again if I leave. But I cannot and do not recommend them to anyone in St. Louis anymore, as you can no longer buy a modern phone from them and use it on a modern (or in many cases, functional) network. I get no joy in that. I want Sprint to succeed. I'll happily return to advocating them as I have in the past if and when NV is a success. Going back to the OP, I do take issue with that author for misrepresenting the nature of the improvements that Sprint has made in these few cities they just brought live and that they're working on across the country. That's simply inexcusable, as it's misrepresenting facts about the current state in these cities that have NV, and it only serves to feed into the negative opinions people have of Sprint. But I've seen comments on this thread and others here, as well as responses to negative comments on blogs and other sites, that basically dismiss the "Sprint haters" as whiners. Some may be, but I think the two sides need to recognize that both sides are valid and not inconsistent. Advocates are right when they say there's a lot of hope for the future, and detractors are right when they say there have been serious problems for some time with no fixes coming for up to 18 months in some areas. It'd be nice if each side could recognize that the other has valid points that don't negate their own points, and be civil. But I've been participating in Internet discussions long enough to know better, unfortunately.

I don't see those band-aids as throwing money down the drain at all, nor are they something Sprint should get any particular kudos for. They should have been done a year or more ago on many towers. And in markets where NV is still up to 18 months away, they MUST be done if Sprint has any interest in retaining any customers for that time. They simply don't have a product to sell in many areas of their markets right now. Any extent to which the benefits of the expense aren't spread over a longer period of time is Sprint and Ericsson's own fault. They could have gotten 2-3 years out of those expenses if they'd been on top of things. I don't think Carrier IQ has anything to do with it. For one thing, it *was* on most people's phones during the time of neglect we're talking about. The issue is the lack of proactive monitoring on the part of Ericsson. Heck, they don't even reactively monitor it in some cases. I've had network tickets closed not because they disputed what I was reporting, but simply because they said they weren't going to do anything about it until NV. This was 3-4 months ago in a market (St. Louis) that still has no official date for NV and unofficially here might roll out early next year if they're agressive. I also just have to respond to the "All this to satisfy their customers" comment. That's what we're paying them to do. How else do they expect to survive if they don't satisfy their customers? Well, you may well need a vacation...I'm impressed by how much effort you put into this site. I agree fully with you that people need to be reasonable, learn about the plans for improvement, and decide how patient they can be. I'm not excusing people who won't listen. But at the same time, no amount of hope for the future changes the situation now or, for many people, for the next 12-18 months. You're right to a point that nobody is forced to stay, but the ETF is an impediment to many -- even if it's just on principle. Yes, the ETF is related to the subsidy for the cost of the handset, but the handset is sold with the service and the contract is on the service. If the service no longer performs remotely close to the level that it did on the day the contract was signed, the customer should not have to pay an ETF to leave. I know the contract says data service is not guaranteed, but if areas that were fine when the contract was signed now can't support more than 20-100K, I think that's a far more material adverse change on the customer than some 2 cent increase in a regulatory recovery fee, for which they let people out of contracts with no questions asked. My only point here is that while I strongly do feel there's a lot of hope for what Sprint will be in 18 months, Sprint and those who advocate for Sprint need to accept that a lot of people have every right to be unhappy with the way things still are today and still will be for that time. People do still have a responsibility to be civil, and many aren't. I've seen some of the posts you're referring to and I fully agree that it isn't useful or helpful. I have no problem with you clamping down on that. There's a good chunk of people on here, SU.com, community.sprint.com, and the comment sections of blogs that let their emotions about Sprint get out of hand in their posts. But for many Sprint haters, there's a very rational, legitimate basis in fact underneath that.

I think you have to give some of the Sprint haters some slack. The fact is that many complaints against the state of Sprint's network today and for the last year are extremely legitimate. People have a right to be angry. They're not getting what they're paying for. Some might say, well, just leave. But many users are in a situation where they're under contract and would have to pay Sprint for the privilage of leaving for a functional network. Others might say you should have tried the network out first and cancelled during the return policy. But for many users, the network was very good when they signed their contract, and it's collapsed since then. On top of that, most users have no idea about Network Vision or where to get information about it (i.e., here). The GOOD reps in the store and on the phone tell people they don't know when the network will be fixed. Others simply make up information that the upgrade is coming sooner than all indications here would indicate in the hopes it will calm someone down or even worse, close a sale and get them to sign a new agreement. I have the knowledge and resourcefulness to find more information out about what's really going on, which helps me stay more level headed. Many people don't. I'm not saying that the wild ranting is justified or helpful. And I'm not defending people complaining about having perks taken away or prices rising over time in the form of the Premium data fee or similar. But there are a LOT of Sprint customers who have every right to be upset. Sprint's taking their money without delivering the service, the official line is that it may be as much as 18 more months before it's fixed, and no recourse is being given since usable data service speeds are "not guaranteed." Why shouldn't there be a lot of Sprint haters out there?

While I may not need 15Mbps down on my phone, a network that's designed for 15-20Mbps is more likely to still give me 2-3 Mbps or more when I'm on the fringes of a cell, and/or as the network becomes overburdened. Kind of like how Sprint's 3G network is designed for 600K-1.4M, but really only delivers 20-100K to many users today. I'm not suggesting the NV network will get as bad as the legacy 3G network as far as theoretical max vs actual speeds, but I'd still like to see a network that is capable of significantly more speed than I could practically need, because I don't expect to get anywhere near the max speed depending on location and as users in the cell increase.