 Review by sirwoogie 
UPDATED: 265 days ago
member for 7.9 years, 2742 visits, last login: a few hours ago
 Carleton,Monroe,MI
 $60 per month (24 month contract)
 about 3 days
 "Good coverage (Rev. A) in urban and many rural areas. Advertised speeds can be reached with good signal"
 "Latency can fluctuate even with solid signal, but seems to be normal for protocol"
 "Good for the high-speed traveler or as a HSI replacement for those with no other option."
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(ratings above consensus)
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My residence was not serviced by any HSI. Charter cable tap is approximately 600ft from my house across a railroad track. They would require full node deployment to hit my house from the other direction. AT&T CO is 18,500 from my house, thus not far enough away to justify lighting an RT, not close enough to have reliable DSL service. I was relegated to dual-channel ISDN for ~$90/mo ($60/mo line + $30/mo service). Raise in rates for ISDN pushed me to make the effort to switch.
Based on reviews and my situation, the Novatel S720 was the most appropriate card to get. Went to local Sprint store as the online store was flaky and really didn't get me what I wanted. Phone sales kept dumping me to someone that read a script, thus going to a store for wheel-and-deal was the best option. I upgraded all phones on my service and added two new lines. The deal I swung was $50 out the door for the card with 2-year agreement and $60/mo for the service. They can apply all mail-in rebates and credit the activation in-store if you ask them to. You cannot combine the SERO offer (which is $50/mo for service on data) if you currently have an existing plan for phones (needed to stay on the Family Plan).
The card was activated via a call to data services. The store was out of stock on the S720 and had to ship one to my house (came 2nd day FedEx). They supplied a dummy ESN at the store to get the billing and rebates taken care of. Took about 5 minutes to have data provision the card and update the firmware/profile. After that, I was off and running.
Service at my house is fantastic as I have full LOS of two Sprint towers. I get full bars on phones and card inside my house. Typical specs seen:
Signal: -65 to -70 dBm
Latency: 100 - 250 ms
Down: 1000 - 1300 kbps
Up: 175 - 300 kbps
I seem to be getting what most typical "good signal" users can achieve. I would prefer a bit more upload and a more stable latency, but I'm definitely not outside the norm for the service. The connection has been rock-solid for over a week, and I've used plenty of bandwidth (current shows 18G down/6G up). They do filter many incoming ports (most notably 25 and 80), but that's not unexpected for this type of service. Web, Bittorrent, NNTP and other general landline services work like a charm. I use an old laptop with Kerio firewall to provide services to my house computers.
Sprint advertises this as an unlimited service, and based on what I can see thus far, that advertisement is true. I'm very happy with the service thus far, and is definitely a good replacement for those relegated to Dial-up/Satellite if EVDO is in the area.
If you want to dive into the EVDO world, I suggest starting at »www.evdoinfo.com/ and their forums. You can get plenty of ideas for the service offerings, hardware, antenna and speed reviews.
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Update 3/24/2007
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Service still working as originally reviewed. Ping times and upload/download have been consistent. Have transferred over 40G in a month on the line and have no issues with caps or nasty-grams from Sprint. Gaming works, but it's best to pick something as geographically (and subsequently network-wise) near your HA address. I still average about 85ms just from my link to the HA, so anything extra counts against you.
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Update 7/29/2007
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Still going strong. The only real difference is the speed has increased. Seems they either upped the caps, or added more bandwidth to the tower I lock to. Seeing average 1700/700 now with similar power and latency above. Seems we may be some of the first to get WiMax in our area by end of year, thus I'm very excited. The only thing I'm in anticipation of is the latency. The speeds are "good enough" for now. My expectations have lowered somewhat from a wired world. Perhaps I will get the thirst again.
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Update 3/18/2009
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Service is still working as advertised. Fortunately, I have been grandfathered in regarding the service caps. Thus, I routinely go well above the 5GB/mo CAP with no notice from Sprint. I also have a discount via my employer, so perhaps they put that in the "business customer" exception. Speeds are tending to be lower now as I'm assuming there is a larger uptake of users in the area (still the only HSI available for many). Typical speeds are about 1500/512. Latency is still the same obviously because of the rev.A protocol.
As for 4G/WiMax from Sprint/Xohm/Clearwire, that doesn't appear to be in the cards until at least 2010 or later according to the released plans (»www.4ginfo.com/index.php/clearwi···ans.html). I'm somewhat expecting LTE to reach us before WiMax, which is disappointing. However, since 3G/4G is the only options at my dwelling, I don't have much choice in the consumer class of ISP. So at least I might expect >3G service at some point. Charter still has not deployed to this area (and most likely will never due to their debt), AT&T has not deployed an RT and has no plans to offer U-verse in this area for most likely 3-5 years (if ever), and no local WiSP exists.
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