Review by NoahCount 
UPDATED: 1.9 years ago
member for 4.9 years, 76 visits, last login: 1 year ago
 Tucson,Pima,AZ
 $45 per month (12 month contract)
 about 15 days
 "Reliable - only rare outages."
 "Upload speeds"
 "Not good enough for VOIP"
| Install process:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
|
Have been a Sprint BBD customer since Dec 00. At that time they were the only broadband service of any kind available at a reasonable cost.
Tech support has been good. I've had to call them 4 or 5 times in the past 5 years, and usually they have been very helpful in working through the problems. During that time they replaced my Rc/Tx unit once. Generally the problems have been on their end, and my call to tech support alerted them to a problem they had. It was always taken care of in a timely manner.
I run VOIP over Sprint, and occassionally the upload speed will drop low enough that the person I have called gets distorted/choppy reception.
Advertised speeds are 512 Kbps to 1.5 Mbps download, up to 256 Kbps upload. Sprints SpeedTest shows my download speeds are currently around 900Kbps. A check with Wugnet.com just now showed download at 2.23 Mbps and upload at 166 Kbps.
Equipment: AMD Duron 1.8G with 512M ram, running WinME and Linux, Linksys WRT54G with QOS enabled, P8 VOIP, Sprint BBD modem and wireless xcvr with static IP.
I just received an email from Sprint saying they were now accepting new customers again. »www.sprintbroadband.com/
Generally quite pleased with their service, and highly recommend them to anyone looking for a broadband alternative.
-------------------
11-30-07 UPDATE I have been using SBBD for about 7 years now. I was one of the first to sign up when Sprint offered the service in Tucson. It was the only alternative to dial up available in my part of town and was a huge improvement.
The big problem with SBBD is that the upload speed is clamped at about 125Kbps max. When the net is busy, it frequently drops to half of that. That is just not good enough for VOIP, and the people we are talking with complained about the audio being badly broken. This occured with both Packet8 and ViaTalk.
After putting up with this for several years, when another service became available I called it quits. 2 weeks ago I signed up with Wi-Power, a wireless service offered by TransWorldNetwork through our rural electrical company. VOIP has been rock solid, with my upload speeds showing a solid 512Kbps++.
Sprints tech service told me that Sprint does not intend to ever upgrade the system over what it is now, but will continue to offer the service to current customers. It will eventually be discontinued as customers move over to EVDO (Sprint Mobile Broadband) or other services.
Followup comments: | Forums » comments on review of Sprint Broadband Direct |
|
Sprint Broadband Direct
