Sprint data

[GlennWest]

Just saw a commercial on Sprint. Claimed to be within 1% of others. I was curious and went to Verizon, AT&T, Sprint and look at coverage maps. Surprisingly Verizon had most gaps. Sprint looked the best. Is the market changing? Had Sprint about 8 years ago and it was awful.

[budeneighe]

I have had Sprint for at least 16 years. I have watched all the hype and tripe from the top 4 providers and what comes around goes around.

 

Although we have been on the road since mid 2011, we have never been anywhere that SPrint did not work. Yes, some places it was not as good as Verizon. In others, not as good as AT*T but one also has to regard the sources.

 

As for coverage maps, they all lie and are only simulated estimates. The realities can be quite different.

 

Having said that, My phone is SPrint Galaxy note 4. Thoroughly happy with the phone and the service but here, in Evergreen SKP park in Chimacum, WA, it is eHRPD, which, if I understand it, is an LTE bridging for CDMA across 3G services. My tests show it to be about half the speed of LTE in the same area.

 

But, I always have a connection, even in this dead zone but the local wifi (also a dead zone) is where I am connected most of the time.

 

I got Merrily a FI Project Nexus 6P (Google). It automatically connects to: wifi, Sprint, T-Mobile or US Cellular, depending on which has a better connect at the moment. More important is that it seamlessly switches as it needs to, even while a conversation or hotspot connection is in progress. You really can't tell it happens in most cases.

FI is adding more networks as it grows. Tethering is included in the $20/month fee. Gigabytes are paid at 1gb increments for $10@. At the end of the billing cycle whatever gb you did not use gets credited back to your account towards the next month. I set her up with a 2gb plan (@$20/month_) but so far, she has not used 1gb/month so each month she has gotten credit for what she didn't use. Much better than rollovers.

 

All in all, I am impressed with Google's FI Project. However, the Nexus 6P on the plan,maybe not quite as much but I like access to details and deeper technical info and the 6p is pretty much pure Google Android so not much bloatware or built-ins.

 

Their coverage maps are here: https://fi.google.com/coverage?u=0

[GlennWest]

We are heavy data users. We currently have 40 gig with At&T. We have come close to it but never over.

[ToddandHeather]

I've had a Sprint account since 1998 and have experienced very few issues with respect to coverage - irrespective of location. However, we currently find ourselves in The Black Hills of South Dakota. Certain areas here have no coverage - period - by any provider. In Spearfish, No Sprint Towers (or Stores) for hundreds of miles, but Verizen has Towers. We've been in 'Roam Mode' for six weeks. No problems.

 

We have one of those 'All Inclusive / Unlimited Everything' Plans.

[GlennWest]

Wow, when we had Sprint back in 2008 and it was awful. At least around greater Houston area. In Houston fine. We soon got rid of them. I did some more research and they are a lot better but not good nationwide coverage. Shows T Mobile actually one of the fastest data but coverage not up with Verizon or AT&T. Looking a changing from AT&T and so far Verizon looks the best still.

[Randyretired]

We have Sprint and we still find some areas where Verizon has service but Sprint doesn't. There probably are areas where Verizon doesn't cover but we dont see that. The Sprint coverage at our home deteriorated the point last year that it rivaled our old dial up. This year it was updated to LTE and it is fine now. To the areas we frequent the Sprint service is fine and it is the only Internet we have.

[budeneighe]

So far, the places we have been (like the Outer Banks in NC) that have no Sprint service on the map, have still been fine and though "roaming", there was never any charges. In that place, the only service was a Verizon tower about 200 yards up the road. I was getting better than 20mbps DL speeds and that was 6 years ago in 2010.

 

My typical data dependency is around 40 - 80gb per month - no streaming but all the household is included. I am not sure Verizon counts the same way, though. I did a trial with 5gb incl for 30 days and racked up all 5 the first 4 days just doing my normal stuff. My Sprint data records don't show nearly that kind of volume when everything is going through it and neither does my Wifi as Wan router.

 

Just saying, not all bytes seem to be counted the same way. The past 2 winters we have been tethered exclusively on a Verizon Jetpack for 7 months each time. Their data accounting on an unlimited plan would never show me what they thought I actually had used so I had to trust my wifi as wan router statistics to give me a clue. The numbers were no where near to what Verizon had been telling me, previously, but i was also doing some streaming. Go figure.

[JRP]

That specific ad referencing the within 1% ,is a claim about "reliability" based on a national Nielson survey. Which sounds like its a collection of opinions, not hard facts. But in this day& age, when all the network monitoring is automated and backup paths are programmed in, I would expect nothing less than 99% reliability from any major carrier.

 

When I look specifically at the 4G LTE "data" coverage map for Sprint, there are still wide open spaces out west in the Rocky Mountain states, which is where I spend most of my time. So it still differs significantly based on location.

 

Glenn West, on 25 Jun 2016 - 2:29 PM, said:

Just saw a commercial on Sprint. Claimed to be within 1% of others. I was curious and went to Verizon, AT&T, Sprint and look at coverage maps. Surprisingly Verizon had most gaps. Sprint looked the best. Is the market changing? Had Sprint about 8 years ago and it was awful.

[SpaceNorman]

Last summer - I have the opportunity to do a "side by side" comparison between Sprint and Verizon while travelling throughout the east side of Michigan's northern lower peninsula. At the time - our cell phone coverage was with Sprint - and the company issued Jetpack I was using for work as a "pilot" to see if working from my coach was feasible - was on the Verizon network

 

In no less than 4 different campgrounds - I had 4 bars of service on the Verizon jetpack - and was able to work without any user noticable performance impact. Meanwhile, my cell phone which was sitting in the same location reported that it had the maddening "1x" connectivity with 1 bar of signal strength.

 

We ultimately made the decision to move our cellphone coverage to Verizon - and provision our cellular router on the Verizon network as well - and have yet to find ourselves without connectivity on the Verizon network. Obviously everybody's experience in this regard is unique so I can't speak for anybody else ... but my experience has been that Verizon has covered everywhere we've been so far!

[mptjelgin]

Due to a combination of work-related and personal accounts, I had Verizon, AT&T and Sprint data devices back in 2012. Sprint was, without a doubt, a poor third at that time. Coverage in much of the mountain west was non-existent.

 

I still have Verizon and AT&T coverage but dropped Sprint several years ago. Like Jim we spend much of our time in the west, and specifically in the Rocky Mountains. It would be interesting to know how much Sprint has closed the gap in those areas.

[pugsly]

Sprint is great for the more populated parts of the US... but pretty near useless for the rest. I have Sprint phones but a Verizon hotspot. For a lot of our boondocking out west the only way I can make calls is over the hotspot using the wifi calling feature on the phones.

 

The only reason I hang onto the Sprint is the unlimited data that we have on them (which I believe is NLA). If I could get Verizon unlimited data I would do so.

[Technomadia]

We travel with all four carriers, and go in and out of urban and rural areas - testing the carriers at each stop. Quite often we don't have usable Sprint signal, but any of the other three work great.

 

But, for those sticking to major areas and along interstates, they can be a decent solution.

 

For our comparison of the four carriers for RVer use: http://www.rvmobileinternet.com/four-carriers

[Biker56]

I have the $60 a month Sprint unlimited data(on iPhone), voice, text with 3GB hot spot.

I also have a Straight Talk hot spot that uses Verizon.

 

Back in May I was at a area for a week that my Sprint data wouldn't work neither would my Verizon hot spot.

AT&T data would work there. I went to a AT&T shop but they wanted $150 just for a hot spot device not including any data service.

So I passed on it and went to town at McDonald's when I needed any WiFi that week.

 

Campground I'm at now has fast(can do streaming) FREE WiFi so haven't needed to use my Sprint hot spot that does work here.