Time to ante up on Sprint 4G

[CripledCyclone]

Originally Posted by lkillen

How did you get the Airwave? My daughter is going to ABAC and she has to walk to a special place on campus, just to call. Her coverage is horrible.
Do you pay extra for it?

My bad, it's the Airvana Airwave. I think we pay a $5/month fee for it but going from dropping calls to 4bar signal is worth it. It costs to obtain IIRC $100. My company sprint rep sent us one, this is it on sprints site. Might have to call sprint and tell them you need a booster.

[patrascu]

I haven't posted in a while but I had to log in and reply to this post. I have to admit that, like the OP, I had high hopes for 4g. Now I don't even turn it on anymore. Whenever I turn it on, it doesn't seem to work any faster than the 3G (which is also very slow compared to other carriers) AND it drains my battery in a couple hours. It's too bad but I think sprint made a really bad investment with Wimax on this frequency. They should have waited until they turned off the IDEN network and used that spectrum for 4G. I'm afraid the current offering is never going to amount to more than a gimmick.

That said, I've got almost 10 years with Sprint and two SERO Premium plans. I'm probably going to stick with Sprint and continue using WIFI as much as possible for the foreseeable future. Sure wish we had real 4G though.

[lkillen]

Originally Posted by CripledCyclone

My bad, it's the Airvana Airwave. I think we pay a $5/month fee for it but going from dropping calls to 4bar signal is worth it. It costs to obtain IIRC $100. My company sprint rep sent us one, this is it on sprints site. Might have to call sprint and tell them you need a booster.

Thanks guy. Maybe I will make the leap.

[lkillen]

Originally Posted by patrascu

I'm afraid the current offering is never going to amount to more than a gimmick.

That said, I've got almost 10 years with Sprint and two SERO Premium plans. I'm probably going to stick with Sprint and continue using WIFI as much as possible for the foreseeable future. Sure wish we had real 4G though.

I think gimmick is the best description. They touted 4G across the fruited plains, knowing full well that it would never be more than a novelty.

I just crossed the 10 yr mark and I think that makes me a platinum user. I was told I was a white-glove user because I have never had a late payment. I am one of those chumps that stays pretty loyal and probably will stay with sprint.

BUT - we just dropped Charter for ATT. $40/month savings, better bandwidth and more HD stations. So them Sprint people better watch out!!

[duck9191]

airave's are 129.99 upfront, there is no monthly reoccurring charge and there is a 2 years contract. granted if you didn't want it you could just shove it in the closet. some stores have them on hand, all corporate stores can order them for you.

[aaron580]

Originally Posted by lkillen

You are just down the street!!
You know another thing? That unlimited data is only for 4G data!!!! I was snooping around through my plan one day and noticed the fine print. I don't know what the data cap is on 3G ir if it is even published but I distinctly remember seeing the words, "Unlimited 4G Data". Now, if ALL data was not unlimited, why specify 4G. That concerned me because I stream talk radio all day. Even when on teh Harley. I make it a point to switch to WiFi just in case. I don't want to get some freaky $42,000 bill because I left my phone streaming for a month.

before I did the OTA with tethering I racked up an average of 9gb a month with no issues on 3g.

[Riley]

moved to Carrier Discussions. Good thread. Sprint needs to realize that many are frustrated with this.

[KIOWA69]

I called Sprint about how slow my 3G was, I'm pulling like 15kbps down and up, at the end of the call the Sprint rep had the nerve to ask me to give him a good rating on a survery and I told him no I wouldn't because you didn't fix anything and I'm still pushing and pulling the same amount of data he said hold on and talked to his supervisor and they said they would send me an Airvana free of charge, I knew that wasn't going to fix the issue but agreed as it wouldn't of hurt and plus I wasn't going to have to pay for it. The Airvana is supposed to be good for up to 5k feet and it's supposed to be good for data and voice, voice seems to be good with it, but the data still sucks bad.

Our towers in my area are overloaded with to many people and that's the reason the service is slow as hell, they know about the issue and they were supposed to upgrade the towers by the end of June, but the techs that were supposed to do that got pulled because a larger market was having issues, I have had this same issue since February, have called in constantly to complain so there is a record of shitty service, what did suck about this is that I always had to go through the usual b.s. of troubleshooting the phone with them, and this last time I even had to unroot my phone and take it in to a repair center to get looked at before they said they could work with me an further on this issue, so I did that and also when I was at the repair center I had them note in my account that the towers were overloaded and that's whats wrong that it's nothing with my phone.

I finally sent an email to dan@sprint.com and someone got back to me and gave me a nice credit and is also calling me back in regards to when our towers are supposed to be upgraded/fixed and said that he would credit me as long as there was an issue, were not talking a small hick town here we are talking about a couple hundred thousand people in this town. Moral of my story is to call and complain so you have a record of all this because sometimes they don't know about things until people start complaining is what I was told.

[EyeB]

hm, I'm getting 778kbps download (spikes to 1mbps once in a while) and 160 kbps upload on 3G... it's bearable lol

I'm staring at sprint world headquarters in kansas and no 4g

[lkillen]

Originally Posted by eyeb

hm, I'm getting 778kbps download (spikes to 1mbps once in a while) and 160 kbps upload on 3G... it's bearable lol

I'm staring at sprint world headquarters in kansas and no 4g

I hope you have cooling water running through that phone so you don't burn it up!!