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 Review by USAFA82 
UPDATED: 2.3 years ago
member for 2.5 years, 228 visits, last login: 6 days ago
 Colorado Springs,El Paso,CO
 $39 per month (12 month contract)
 "When I first signed up with them in 2001, they were the only ISP to provide broadband to my neighborhood"
 "They have no money to upgrade their equipment. Download speed is inadequate. Upload is very slow. Latency is horrible"
 "You can get more value for your money from another provider"
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I've been experiencing numerous outages and high latency from Sprint Broadband for the past year. I called their tech support most recently on May 2nd. The tech stated that my modem probably would need to be replaced. The company that made the equipment has gone out of business, so all replacement modems are refurbished/used equipment. The tech stated that the architecture is "ancient" and not scheduled to be replaced due to the cost. The tech suggested going with Comcast because that is what he uses at his home and I would be pleased with the lower latency and higher download speeds.
I switched to Comcast the same day (May 2nd) and have been pleased so far. I called Sprint Broadband today (May 7th) to cancel. The Sprint Broadband rep said the billing cycled today and my credit card would be charged anyway. I feel this is very unfair considering I've been a loyal Sprint Broadband customer for six years and have put up with their poor service for the past year.
Stay away from Sprint Broadband if you can!
Update: 6/27/07: After not getting anywhere with the Sprint "supervisor," In early May I filed a complaint with the BBB (who forwarded the complaint to their Kansas City office). I received an email message this morning from the Kansas City BBB that Sprint Broadband would refund the $39.95 and I should be receiving a check within 10 days.
Update: 7/6/07: Received the check and deposited it today!
Followup comments:  orlandvic
join:2001-03-13
Orland Park, IL
 ·Sprint Broadband D..
| SprintBroadband Direct Chicago Il. from aSears tower antenna I have had many outages in the past 6 months thinking its my equipment. The "Techs" are telling me they need to send a tech out to check the hardware. My contract has also ended years ago. To replace anything their will be a $99 charge for each device, modem or antenna or sign up for a year with a contract & they will replace every thing for free. For FREE Sound like a scam after reading others having the same problem with speeds slowing down and many outages. Its funny when things start working and speed up faster at night and or just after you contact the "TECHS" on the phone. When you tell them tests where done using the speed tests in Broadband Reports.com, they do their double talk back at you. Oh we cannot raise the upload speed at all. | |
| 
MadAtSprintBBD
@sprintbbd.net
| Had the same problem with billing... I am preparing to move to a different house...the area has a better, faster service for cheaper price then Sprint. So I called today to cancel and ask for them to credit my account back the money they charged, since they just charged my account today. No luck, they said that they would shut down my service but wouldn't credit the money back to my account. So now I'm going to be charged for a service that I'm not going to be using. When asked why, I was given an answer that "it's out policy".
So I told them that this information is not on the website, and there is no explanation that there is a "no refund" policy.
I have been a loyal user of this service for 7 years...and this is the treatment I get. I never once complained about the outages, and the slow connections that happened at anytime.
I'm done with Sprint Broadband...never again will I use this service nor will I recommend this service to anyone. | |
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Review by lvanheld
Posted: 2.5 years ago
member for 7.8 years, 37 visits, last login: 98 days ago
Aurora,Arapahoe,CO
$44 per month
 about 14 days
"Hardly ever been down in the 6 years I have had the service"
"Latency and slow upload speeds"
"Best that I can get here, considering all other ISPs consider us rural even though we are surrounded by city dwellers"
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The installer gave me a scare when at first he suggested installing a 30' antenna on my roof, but luckily I could do with just a 3 foot tripod on the roof of my house. Download speeds on average have been above what was promised (1.5Mbps), but upload speeds brings tears to your eyes (160K on a good day). Also latency can be annoying with VoIP applications such as Skype. Distance from the transmitter (35 miles) is likely a big factor for the slow uploads and latency. Overall I have been very satisfied with the service and it's reliability. I use it mostly for recreation and for working from home (VPN) and for that is is more than adequate.
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Review by josephisen
Posted: 2.5 years ago
member for 8.4 years, 307 visits, last login: 1.2 years ago
Chicago,Cook,IL
$44 per month
"Generally decent downstream speeds"
"Puny upstream speeds, highly erratic performance"
"Barely competitive in today's broadband landscape"
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I have had Sprint Broadband Direct in Chicago since 2000. Installation required the physical attachment of a receiver dish on the outside of my building, connected to a broadband modem indoors by Coaxial cable.
Downstream speeds are generally fairly good (1500 kbps and above) and occasionally hit 5000 kbps. Upstream speeds are poor (between 100 and 150 kbps). The connection is temperamental. The modem purportedly delivers DHCP but the connection was constantly being hijacked by some mystery device so I configured my computer (a Mac) with a fixed IP address, which works far better (and also supports internet connection sharing in Mac OS 10.4).
On occasion, the connection either fails altogether or delivers both download and upload below dial-up speed.
When I got this service it was the only game in town where I live. I stay with it from sheer inertia (and a small measure of gratitude for being there when others weren't). Several of today's alternatives are considerably better both in performance and value.
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Review by grungie187
Posted: 3.7 years ago
member for 5.1 years, 14 visits, last login: 2.5 years ago
Somerset,Bristol,MA
$59 per month (24 month contract)
about 1 days
"Fast Speed"
"Price a little high"
"Good Service and Fast Speed"
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Just got the sprint wireless broadband service, it’s great. Lightning fast speed for a wireless connection. about 800KB to 1100KB in my local area and abroad. Product was easy to install and activate. I got the PC-5740 sprint connection card it was $84 with TAX. The wireless card started to work about an hour after activation. The Rep told me it would take about 4 hours. The sprint wireless manager is a small program and does not use much system resources. Also it does not install any kind of junk or huge unnecessary software packages. Its a little high priced at $59.99 a month with a phone line. Also if you have NEXTEL you have to ask but they will do it for $59.99 to. I know because I have NEXTEL. The service is $79.99 a month with only data. I would recommend this product to any IT mobile professional looking for some serious wireless broadband speed.
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Review by NHLavalanche
Posted: 3.8 years ago
member for 7.3 years, 7 visits, last login: 2.5 years ago
Bloomingdale,Dupage,IL
$45 per month
"Great download speed... (When it actually works)"
"Goes down very often, bad tech support, costly, horrible upload speed"
"Along with everyone else, it was great when they weren't accepting new customers, now it's pretty horrible"
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I've had Sprint Broadband for a few years now and about a month after getting it they stopped accepting new customers. That time was great, beautiful download speeds, bearable upload speeds, never had to contact tech support, it was great. Then recently they started aquiring new customers and service has been horrible. I'm currently in the process of switching to a better company that doesn't lose service on a daily/every other day basis. For the past few weeks our connection has been going offline in the late evenings for about 30 minutes but sometimes up to a few hours (even days in a recent case).
Stay away until they get their act together.
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Review by Done_Posting
Posted: 3.9 years ago
member for 6.2 years, 1185 visits, last login: 349 days ago
Sylvania,Lucas,OH
$70 per month (12 month contract)
about 1 days
"Nationwide wireless for my tablet, with high speed in many spots!"
"Price obviously, low upstream bandwidth, horrible customer service so far..."
"The service is still in its infancy, but I love it so far!"
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Well, I finally bit the bullet and decided to purchase Sprint's new EVDO service as a Christmas present to myself.
I've only had the service for a week, but I will update this review if my opinion changes. So far, every time I've logged on I've had absolutely no problem getting a solid connection. I have ran speed tests from multiple locations, with speeds averaging around 650kbps downstream and right around 100kbps upstream. Yeah, the upstream is pretty weak, but it's better than the usual 10 to 1 ratio that most ISPs stick to (the one I work for being no exception).
I won't go into the voice service I picked because that's irrelevent here, but the data plan I picked has a maximum monthly charge of $70 + tax, which gets me "unlimited" use. I haven't had any excessive use complaints yet, but again -- I'm only in the first week of service. For my modem, I'm actually using the new Samsung A900 phone with the "Phone as a modem" option, which allows me to tether it to my tablet PC using either USB or a Bluetooth connection. So far I've only used USB, but I will be getting a USB Bluetooth adapter for my tablet soon. On a side note, I absolutely LOVE this Samsung A900. This isn't a phone review, so I'll leave it at that.
I'm sure everyone is fully aware that signal quality is the key to fast transfer speeds. With three signal bars in my house, I'm able to achieve the same 650kbps downstream speeds as I can at my office with full bars. Most of the tests I have ran show pretty good consistency, so it looks like Sprint has done a good job with the towers here in the Toledo area. In fact, the coverage for this area is surprisingly large; I was 45 minutes south of my home the other day and still had EVDO available. If you do wander outside the EVDO coverage area, the phone automatically scales back to Sprint's regular "Vision" network, which I believe has peak speeds in the area of 144kbps (though I haven't gotten to try this out yet).
The only two factors that I feel are somewhat negative about the service itself (aside from steep price -- but that's to be expected with a brand new service), are the fairly low upstream speeds and latency. Average latency is between 100 and 350ms, but I have seen a very few occasions where latency spiked up to 2000ms. I've read other reviews elsewhere saying that this service is okay for gaming, but since I haven't tried it myself yet I can't comment.
So, that's pretty much it for now. I'm a cable ISP technician, so wireless is somewhat new territory for me, but I've read that the EVDO spec is being revised and a new version could increase the maximum transfer rates (currently a little over 2Mbps burst). I'm really looking forward to putting this connection to the test, and I'll be sure to check back with any new developments.
PS -- On one last note, I'd like to take a moment to say that Sprint customer service has been horrible so far. When I purchased the phone in person, I asked for the Power Vision "Phone as a modem" package so I could tether to my tablet. Instead, I received the unlimited TV and browsing via phone "Ultimate" package. I had to go through four different customer service agents before I finally got one that knew what I was talking about and corrected the mistake. It was incredibly frustrating, but patience prevailed. I thought I'd inlcude this in case anyone else finds good customer service a deal breaker. You may want to look elsewhere, because chances are Sprint won't deliver. Just a heads up!
- Tate
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 Review by winrip
UPDATED: 3.9 years ago
member for 9.7 years, 557 visits, last login: 249 days ago
Denver,Adams,CO
$45 per month (24 month contract)
about 7 days
"FAST.... Static IP, Still connected"
"HOA will probably have a fit"
"I like it.. I would recommend it.."
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Update 12-11-2005:
It's been almost five years with this service and for the most part it's been acceptable. During the time that sprint was not accepting new customers the connection and speed were absolutely outstanding. Recently they have begun accepting new customers and the outages have started just like they were in the beginning.
Most outages aren't long but when you have work to do and trying to VPN into work it's a real hassle. I normally don't see an outage late at night or even overnight. They usually seem to come late in the afternoon to evening between 3pm and 7pm. Most of the time they only last about 20 minutes but every once in a while they take an hour or two.
They haven't hassled me at all save for once. I'm normally downloading about 5-10 gigs of cd ISOs per week and haven't heard a peep. Upstream speeds on the other hand, suck. There's no other word to describe it. It just sucks.
If you have no other alternatives this isn't a bad deal at all. Static IP, downloads are still plenty fast. Outages only once in a while.
So I'm changing my ratings a little bit after all this time.
Pre sales stays the same.
As does Install Co-ordination.
Connection stays the same. It would have made a 5 but with the recent outages I'll leave it alone.
Tech Support remains unrated since I've never called them.
Services gets down graded to a 3. After all this time I think they should have added some other services/ freebees.
Value for the money gets upgraded to a 5 from a 4 because overall I'm satisfied with Sprint BBD after all these years.
Ordered in 04-03-01, installed 04-10-01.
Installer showed up at about 8:15 and did a site survey, 5 minutes later he came back and said he could get line of site and a good signal. He installed a 3 foot tripod and 5 foot mast, when he told me what he was going to use, I sh**. Anyway the mast is all the way down to the peak of the roof so I only have a 5 foot monstrosity instead os 8 foot... He finished everything up at about 10:30 so it went fairly fast.
I give them a four for presales, I would've liked to know a little more, but...
Install co-ordination gets a 5, they where here within a few minutes of the oppointment.
Connection gets 4, I haven't had it long enough to get a 5....
Tech support stays un-rated since I haven't used them yet.
Mail DNS and NEWs get a 4 simply because changing a username via the earthlink page is a little slow...
Value a 4, So far I am very pleased and with the run-around I've got from anyone trying to push their DSL, this will probably get updated to a 5....
Oh and a real world test, had a 635MB cdrom iso download this morning in 3 hours and 47 minutes.... not bad not bad at all.
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Review by Pro_D
Posted: 4.1 years ago
member for 6.4 years, 33 visits, last login: 1.3 years ago
Tucson,Pima,AZ
$47 per month (24 month contract)
"In it's hayday was awesome and has potential but..."
"has severe ups in downs in various areas of quality."
"Might be a good pick in a while (under a new manager)."
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Our experience with spring has had good and bad, more recently very bad. I am no longer a sprint customer and here is why: Poor quality service, poor quality and rude customer service and tech support people, and in particularly an overly broad interpretation of our contract by the new general manager here in Tucson which had us shut down without notice.
In general latency on online gaming has always been such that games show a latency (or ping) of 5000ms and has never improoved (though recently there have been claims to the contrary). The main thing the service WAS good for was downloading with massive amounts of bandwidth to be had at night, well beyond the 1 megabit speed. Instead of going with accounts having a cap they instead went with a load balanced approach so when usage is high bandwidth is low and vise versa.
Recently the service has been going downhill with frequent outages making it difficult to even surf the web let alone download anything. They have been updating the service as late and performing general maintenence which is fine for a month, this went on for about 3 months.
Customer support and tech support reps were quite kind and service outage information was plentiful and accurate. Now they have been causing outages themselves and then steering customers into thinking that it is the customers fault. Also tech reps appear to be poorly trained compaired with the hayday of SBD. Lastly most (not all) people we have spoke with have been either mildly rude and unhelpfull to just plain rude.
At first the service cost about 30 dolars a month, and the service was great, now the service is going downhill fast and costs $47 a month.
The straw that broke the cammels back (and caused me to cease being an SBD customer) was about a week agoe we talked to another person about how the service was performing badly with outages, it came up (again) that our firewall has been showing active attempts at hacking of late and this rep (one of the few decent ones of late) took a heavy interest in this and we setup plans to help them track down these hackers or virus spreaders. Then 2 days agoe the internet connection stops, completely down. We all thought that it was yet another outage and opted to wait it out. About 3 hours into this outage we finaly get a phone call from a sprint rep who rudely informs us that we are on 24 hour probation and no previous warnings had been sent. We are told that the new general manager instituded this temporary baning on about a dozen people for violation of their contract stating that we were detrimental to the service. The secton of the contract in question deals with malicious acts agains the service such as hacking or spreading of virus, we were engaged in nither activity and were in fact trying to help them on that score.
After a couple long conversations we found out that the service was being modified with frequent outages and that they were not informing their customer base of this and in fact (from our experience) leading customers to believe that it was their equipment or computer at fault. Also the new general manager, for whatever reason, decided that bandwidth usage above average constituded malicious acts against their system. This has negated all the things we liked about sprint to this point such as friendly and helpfull support and massive overnight bandwidth (sometimes).
In closing, given recent experience, I would HEAVILY recomend going elsewhere, at least until customer complaints have piled up to have a change in management, which I doupt will happen. In conversations, attempting to politely both figure out what was going on and find a solution, customer service reps claimed that they couldn't make a record of the complaint so this will have to do. If you are considering a switch either to or from this service wait a week for a comparison of this service with comcast (our new ISP).
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Review by KellyAdmirer
Posted: 4.1 years ago
member for 7.8 years, 131 visits, last login: 198 days ago
Colorado Springs,El Paso,CO
$50 per month (24 month contract)
about 7 days
"Good, reliable broadband"
"Upload Speed, two-year commitment to avoid install charges"
"Great Value"
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Sprint Broadband has a history here in Colorado Springs. It stopped accepting customers a few years ago. I had Adelphia cable back then at another location here in the Springs. I then moved within the city to a place without cable (and Adelphia didn't respond to my requests for information the possibility of providing the service in my area). I am 19800 feet from the nearest Qwest central office, so could not get good dsl service. So, I was out of luck and barely surviving on dial-up.
Then, in early August 2005, I noticed a full-page ad in the local paper that said Sprint was accepting new customers. So, I called up and scheduled an appointment. I have a clear line of sight to their tower on Cheyenne Mountain and am roughly ten miles away. All went smoothly, though I wasn't home at the installation (my gf was). They put the diamond-shaped antenna on my porch outside and everything seemed fine. They mentioned something about a "card" to my gf, who isn't a computer person.
Anyway, I got home and could not connect. I called up Sprint while at work, and the guy tried to convince me that I simply hadn't plugged the cable into the back of the computer. I'm not a dummy, but I went home and verified that the modem was plugged in. So, I called back, and this tech correctly surmised that my onboard ethernet conection wasn't compatible. So, I slipped in a new card and the connection popped right up. Dynamic IP, good download speeds, it acts just like my old cable service did. I have a wireless home network and it works great.
Anyway, so I have had the connection for about two months now. I get occasional periods when the service seems to pause for a while, but those periods haven't lasted longer than a minute or two. My upload speed is close to the 128kbps cap, and my download has tested around 1500 kbps. That is good enough for me, about as good as I was getting with Adelphia, and I seem to have fewer outages than I had with Adelphia. People talk about the latency of wireless, but I don't play a lot of games and haven't noticed any problems with that. I live in an area the local insurance adjuster calls "hail alley," so we get some weather here, but so far no problems from the weather. I'll update if anything goes wrong.
I asked the sales guy if the service had been improved in the several years since the service had last been offered to new customers in the Springs, and he rather bluntly said no, though he made vague comments about plans to upgrade at some future time. A friend's house had the same service a few years ago, and he had kept the modem, and I notice it is the same as the one I received when I signed up. So, this is the same service as in the past, with the same equipment and everything else. The only difference is that it is accepting new customers again.
I recommend the service. You have to commit to two years of service to avoid the $200 installation charge, but since Adelphi showed no interest in our area anyway (five minutes from Academy and I-25, we aren't exactly in the boondocks), and functional 3G and WiMax and all the other exotic technologies on the horizon seem to keep receding further and further into the future, this is a great solution for right now. Anyone who needs wireless and lives in a region served by this service, especially those who can't get DSL or cable, really should consider Sprint Broadband Direct.
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Review by aaacis
Posted: 4.2 years ago
member for 9.3 years, 650 visits, last login: 65 days ago
Tucson,Pima,AZ
$69 per month (12 month contract)
about 25 days
"Great When It Works - Which has become more problematic."
"Inept Technical Support, Close Tech Support on Weekends and Evenings, Blocking Self Diagnostics, Overselling Market"
"Only Use this One is it is the ONLY Choice."
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After a Complete disaster with COVAD, 5 Years ago, [Qwest and Covad were a very bad pair for SDSL especially in Tucson, AZ], I ordered Sprint Broadband. It was delivered and installed in about 30 days.
There were the numerous outages and high latency as Sprint Broadband, added more clients to their service base and disconnected The Huges TV network that was purchased to roll into their new wireless service.
Trouble Tickets averaged every 1.5 weeks causing extreme stress and poor /unacceptable performance.
I was a pretty smooth ride after the 1st year and a half of pain, service was better, better speed, however the higher than normal latency (for wireless) was and still remains an issue and makes the service inconsistent.
Beginning this year 2005 in April or so, Sprint Started selling more clients, ever since that the service has become impossible, with outages occurring daily at peak periods, performace has dropped to less than dialup during these periods, on site service takes about a week to respond.
For a speed review checkout the most recent activity at dslreports.com
Please let me know if you are in the Tucson Area or are having similar issues with Sprint Broadband.
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