Review by hervoyel 
member for 11 years, 8 visits, last login: 10.4 years ago
updated 10.4 years ago
 Conroe,Montgomery,TX
 $119 per month- (24 month contract)
 about 60 days Southwestern Bell- CLEC party: Southwestern Bell
 "These guys did whatever it took to get me connected and happy" "None that I have seen thus far, ok ping time isn't perfect but it's good" "The only way I will go in the future if it's available"
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Ok, I have nothing but a glowing review when it comes to Sprint ION. I contacted them after reading about ION while I was actually looking into Broadband Direct. The usual problems involved in installation that you read about in some of the horror stories here at DSLR did come up but I can positively say that every single problem I ran into originated with SouthWestern Bell.
In my honest opinion that company is probably the root of all evil in this world and clearly should be destroyed for the good of mankind. I don't want to get started on a rant about SWB but I should add that while I don't condone Timothy McVeighs actions in Oklahoma City I do believe that if he was going to do something of that nature he chose the wrong target. Prior to dealing with Sprint I spent a year trying to get DSL from SWB and it was the worst time I have ever had dealing with any company (or individual) about any thing. Now, back to my Sprint review....
The one thing that totally shined about dealing with Sprint was that throughout the process I never once got out of contact with the people at Sprint. None of that "someone will be calling you back shortly" crap happened. In fact most of the time I dealt with only one person who made a point of making sure my order got processed and all of the SWB related problems were overcome. If you get an order going with Sprint for ION and want a guy who will really take care of you and get your order moving you need a guy like Arthur Rimmer. The job he did getting my order processed probably deserves a medal or something.
The problems I had in getting DSL had to do with bad address information at SWB as well as some DSL equipment belonging to IP Communications that had been connected to my line. Did we have DSL with them? No, but as long as it was there no one could touch the thing. After getting the address situation corrected and the equipment removed the problem then turned into trying to get SWB to figure out that the address situation HAD been cleared up and the equipment WAS removed. SWB is so completely mixed up that you can get something done and it can be months (if ever) before the rest of the company knows it's been taken care of. Finally they came out, provisioned the line, and then said it needed to be replaced. Took SWB two weeks to do that and even then they scared the hell out of me. They replaced the line but left it aboveground running across my yard (no big deal) until someone else could come out and bury it but they also left it running across a private drive that runs beside my house. The four people living down that drive spent a few days driving over it before the thing got buried. I was about to just go out and bury it myself the afternoon I came home and found they had finally done it. Then, in doing the job burying the new line they managed to cut the other one buried there and killed my phone for a day or so. Oh, wait...I'm ranting about SWB again. Sorry.
Anyway, back to the ION process. Install took place on the day it was supposed to. Chad who came out to do the work was quick, explained everything completely and did everything asked of him. Chad, if you read this you left your drywall saw at my house and you need to come back and pick that up. Otherwise the rules of tools state I keep it but I'll think of you when I use it.
The service was up and running in an hour or so and it works. It does what it's supposed to do. As I understand it I am at around 12,000 feet and I am getting about 4707 down and 893 up. Also I read much about ping times sucking with ION but the only place I ever run into a problem with that is when I play Quake III and then I still have a ton of servers I can get to in the 40-50 range. Sure there are also a lot of them over 100 but how many servers you gonna play on anyway? I also play Diablo II on Battle.net and I have yet to see it look any slower than a local game so I can't speak for most people but I am satisfied.
Happy customer here and I want everyone to know it. Sprint head honchos reading this need to be aware that Arthur deserves some recognition for this one. I'm talking raise material here. Get busy with the rewarding!
Other people thinking of Sprint ION I can only say if you can get it then get it. I mean that. Great company to deal with. Great service.
I should state that rating of Tech support is a 5 because it's benefit of the doubt. I have had this working for about two weeks and no problems so I can't speak to that part of what they do. Also my time from order to success is an estimate. I have slept several times since I placed my order and the memory isn't what it used to be. Ballpark figure only there. Also Arthur has given me permission to use his name and in Chad's case I am going first name only.
Final note; This week we are getting digital cable installed at the house (getting tired of DirecTV and having to give up watching TV when it rains. Plus it's getting way too expensive for what is offered) and the guy from Charter Cable asked if we were interested in a cable modem.
"I don't think so"
Updated on 09/12/01
Ok, so I have discovered my first downside to this service. The speed remains excellent and I am still overall happy with what I have recieved however I want to point out two things that are becoming nagging problems.
1. The web administration of our accounts is pathetic. On only one occaision since this was set up have I been able to get into the thing and complete a change to one of the user accounts associated with the service. Had I known that I would be seeing this many "The process could not be completed, please try again later" messages I would have surely tried to finish everything up that time because I can't get in there now to save my life. It tells you your password has expired and you need to update it but when you go to update it then it tells you that can't be completed. Once in while you can (for reasons that I cannot understand) log in as the primary account and administrate the other user accounts but then when you try an reset the passwords on those accounts that process "cannot be completed, please try again later". It's insane. I am a Systems Administrator at work and this isn't a lack of understanding of the process folks. This is crap software for trying to keep your accounts straight.
2. The line I had originally is still waiting to be ported and for some odd reason the one Sprint installed just stopped working all of a sudden. All of the jacks that are connected to that line are dead and a little time on the working phone line with tech support revealed nothing. Tomorrow someone is supposed to be out here to look at it and I will tell you how that goes when the time comes.
On the voice side I don't have any expertise so I can only report what I see. The odd way that Sprint and Earthlink piggyback around on each other I suspect is the reason that administrating accounts is such a mess. Time spent on the phone with their tech support people was wasted. She basically did the reset of the user account password and then told me what it was. She left me with instructions to change it to something else as soon as I could but when I went in to do just that guess what I got?
"The process can not be completed at this time, please try again later..."
This is not something I am ready to ditch the service over yet but it's a pain and I ain't seeing any love yet from my buddies at Sprint. I will keep you posted on how this goes.
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