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Review by Earl_Wallace 
UPDATED: 4.3 years ago
member for 5.6 years, 24 visits, last login: 52 days ago
 Peyton,El Paso,CO
 $49 per month (12 month contract)
 about 5 days
 "Fast Connection, Fast Install"
 "Sometimes can lose connection, but not too often"
 "Great if you can't get DSL or Cable Modem"
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We live on top of a hill in Peyton, Colorado. We have a clear view of the Mountains on the Front Range. In particular, we can see Cheyenne Mountain just fine. This is where Sprint Broadband Direct ("fixed-wireless") has their Wireless Tower. We are about 27 miles from Cheyenne Mountain. The service was installed on July 26, 2005. Had it one day, so I'll need to do an update in about a months I guess 
We are getting an average of 2,543 Kbps (315 kB/s) Download and 134 Kbps (17 kB/s) Upload.
Sprint seems to block pings, so I used traceroute to get an idea of the latency. It shows about 50 ms from our house to the Tower.
The install went pretty quick since they could just place the square dish on the side of the house and run the cable inside the house. From the time they arrived until they left was about an hour.
The equipment inside the house is a "Hybrid Networks" model WBR-60-231B. Has an Ethernet RJ-45 Interface. It uses DHCP to serve up the addresses for your equipment.
We just had a heavy, dense fog this morning and the data rates were just as good as they were last night with cloudy conditions.
They didn't have any "Welcome Kits", Manuals, or anything else to give to me because they were "out". They are supposed to send them to me in the mail when they get more.
We can not get DSL, ISDN, Cable Modem, and the local (small) Wireless ISPs have been unable to get a signal to us. We gave up months ago and just decided to use Modems. When we saw an Ad in the paper where Sprint was taking new customers again, we signed up. So far, we are happy. But we are realistic - we can get some bad weather here being on top of a hill, so it will be interesting to see how well this does in that bad weather.
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Aug 12, 2005 Update (17 days into the service): Using the CCMInfo Utility, I'm getting a Signal Strength of 2.87V, and a Signal Quality of 30.80dB.
Noticed that on weekends (Sat and Sun), between 8:30pm and 9:00pm, the connection seems to fall apart. Weird.
The other day we had some severe thunderstorms and the connection went dead for about 15 minutes. The funny thing is that I was still seeing a "lock" on the Hybrid unit, and was able to do a traceroute to the tower. Because Sprint blocks pings and traceroutes within their system, it's hard to tell where things are falling apart. But it seems I never lose the signal between us and the tower, it's more like the packets drop after they get into the tower. Hard to say for sure. I'll keep monitoring it.
Overall, it has been quite good, and beats the living heck out of Modem Downloads have been excellent (1966 kbps on average), and upload speeds are about 105 kbps on average. Probably wouldn't be a great service for a Web Server.
So, if you live in the Falcon, Peyton, Black Forest areas, you might give them a call if you can't get DSL or High-Speed Cable Modem Internet.
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Review by tdemers
UPDATED: 4.7 years ago
member for 8.8 years, 25 visits, last login: 3.3 years ago
Colorado Springs,El Paso,CO
$49 per month (24 month contract)
about 7 days
"Not much, when it bursts, it rocks"
"Upload speed sucks!"
"Sprint Broadband has been ok for a while"
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2/21/05 - Had an outage this week, on and off for a few days, they performed an updated on their hardware. Had it fixed fairly quick. Had to have the original antenna replaced as they didn't use rubber seals, so it rusted out. That was last year. I guess I cannot complain, except for the amazingly bad upload speeds.
Had it since 10/2000, everything was great for two weeks, then it went into the crapper, called once a week until middle of Feb. Gave up calling as all I got was on hold musak!
Suppose to have upgraded the service, those wonderful micro outages are less frequent, but the upload speed sucks, and download is a little worse than before the "upgrades".
All in all if I could get DSL or a cable modem in my area, I would do it tomorrow, and that is the bottom line!
9/24/01 - Still having problems, mostly with CodeRed and its follow-ons attacking my web server. 90% of the systems that are attacking are within the Sprint network. Sending logs and requesting help does no good.
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Review by davidyoung0
Posted: 5 years ago
member for 5.7 years, 3 visits, last login: 5 years ago
Houston,Harris,TX
$45 per month
about 1 days
"Very reliable"
"Service not available to new customers"
"Great ISP, not accepting new applications right now"
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I had this service starting back in 2000, and cancelled in early 2004 to switch to a cable modem service that will remain unnamed here. After six months, the cable modem service went up in price, so I switched back to Sprint.
Even though Sprint (Broadband Direct) is not accepting new customers currently, I was a returning customer. They reconnected my service free of charge, and my monthly price (about $45) went DOWN from what is was when I was originally a customer ($51).
I have never had any problems with their service in the more than three years I've been a customer. The customer support has always been friendly, and they don't treat you like an idiot (unlike the unnamed cable modem service).
I also have Vonage VoIP phone service, and it works better with Sprint than with my previous ISP, despite the reportedly low upload speed.
Hopefully Sprint will open this service up to new customers again.
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Review by etaadmin
UPDATED: 5.3 years ago
member for 7.8 years, 477 visits, last login: 9 days ago
Liverpool,Brazoria,TX
$1000 per month
about 5 days
"Reliable"
"Expensive"
"Good for business use"
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We had a T1 installed about 6 months ago. Installation went smoothly and fast. The contract included a cisco 1721 router with a T1 CSU/DSU interface.
The service is reliable and trouble free.
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Review by chakotay2
Posted: 5.6 years ago
member for 7.7 years, 686 visits, last login: 9 days ago
South Jordan,Salt Lake,UT
$44 per month
about 14 days
"One of the only things available"
"Wow...too many to list... Sprint is outdated"
"Wish they would go WiMax"
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Sprint has high latency and high packet loss. This service is not for the faint of heart. Sprint has promised it's new XG service for years and nothing yet. Sprint needs to "poop or get off the (broadband) pot."
Maybe WiMax will be adopted to replace MDMS service.
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 Review by quientus
UPDATED: 5.8 years ago
member for 9.3 years, 2929 visits, last login: 186 days ago
San Jose,Santa Clara,CA
$50 per month (24 month contract)
about 7 days
"Installer was very good"
"Unreliable, not for gaming, modem speed, bad for everything, packet loss"
"DON'T WASTE YOUR MONEY ON THIS !@#$"
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== Total Crap ==
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Review by Lighthouse2
Posted: 5.8 years ago
member for 7.8 years, 344 visits, last login: 2 years ago
Campbell,Santa Clara,CA
$56 per month (12 month contract)
about 3 days
"Good Downloads"
"Poor Uploads, No commitment to increased service levels, don't care attitude"
"Sometimes, the only game in town"
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I've had SBBD for over 3 years now. Unfortunately, it was the only broadband access provider I could get when I moved in to my new house (in the middle of Silicon Valley). My initial SLA was for 1.5M/256K. I had great service until about a year or so ago when it was obvious Sprint wasn't going to follow through with their wireless plans. Even though SBBD hasn't been taking new subscribers for quite some time, I found that my upload speed has been gradually reduced and my upload speed gradually increased so now I typically get 3-4M down but my upload speed rarely is more than 100K. Useless for doing anything remotely useful (like VoIP or even web publishing). SBBD removed the ability to do pings and trace last September and of course when you call them on service issues they say everything is perfect (which it isn't at the time).
The biggest problem I have with them is their "don't care attitude." I am convinced they want to get out of the business and their attitude shows. They are friendly but it is more like "take it or leave it."
Today, I received notice that I will be able to get Comcast in 14 days. I am so excited, I can't stand it. I'll probably be trading one set of problems for another but so what?
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 Review by RoguePimp
UPDATED: 5.8 years ago
member for 8.8 years, 1977 visits, last login: a few hours ago
Phoenix,Maricopa,AZ
$49 per month
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I am no longer using these idiots!
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 Review by yeti34
Posted: 5.9 years ago
member for 8.6 years, 2640 visits, last login: 134 days ago
Salt Lake City,Salt Lake,UT
$49 per month (2 month contract)
"Fast downloads"
"Slow uploads"
"Ready for next generation of this system when available!!"
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I had a few issues when I first got it and in fact do not have the original modem or antenna that was first installed. But everything has been fine since. I'm just ready for the next generation of this system to get same speed up as down. Stil chugging along with little to no problems. Could be since most dropped it in my area the service has gotten better in my opinion.
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 Review by vrette
UPDATED: 6.1 years ago
member for 9.3 years, 3327 visits, last login: a few hours ago
Carol Stream,Dupage,IL
$45 per month
about 20 days
"I still have it after they stopped offering service to new customers."
"Packet loss and line speed quality goes from good to bad at a moments notice"
"Still a better alternative to dial up"
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October 8, 2003
SBC installed an RT in area, so I ordered DSL and got it up and running today. Of course as I get ready to dump it, the speeds I'm seeing right now are:
Download = 2.777 Mbps
Upload = 147.95 kbps
However, the packet loss is horrible, and these speeds are unfortunately the exception rather than the rule.
Bah-bye SBBD... It was nice until something more reliable and stable came along.
Friday, August 16, 2002 AM
Well, it has been almost a year since my last update. My contract ended May 2002 but I still have no high speed alternative to SBBD in my area, so I still have it. Once the contract was up, the monthly cost was bumped to $45 a month.
I've had some minor outages, and one that lasted almost a week, but besides that service has been pretty reliable.
I rarely contact tech support, but when I have, the wait times have been minimal and the techs have been helpful.
I am grateful that Sprint didn't pull the plug on existing customers when they stopped offering the service. While it is not as trouble free as I had hoped, and the packet loss and speeds are just plain bad at times, it still beats dial up by a huge margin.
Wednesday, August 29, 2001 PM
The service has been quite good over the last 3 months. No major issues. Download speeds continue to be acceptable in prime time and insanely fast off-peak. Upload speeds are still low, but good enough for my purposes. The best alternative if you can't get DSL/Cable modem and you are stuck with dial-up or satellite.
Friday, May 25, 2001 AM
Besides some small outages, service has been fine. Slow in primetime (but still much faster than dial up) and incredibly fast in non-peak hours...
Tuesday, May 22, 2001 AM
Got two calls yesterday, one at work and one at home confirming that someone was coming out. Repair tech showed up around 6:00. Raised my antenna a couple of feet in order to improve the signal and swapped out the modem. Total time about 30 minutes. I've had it on since last night with no problems. Speeds: Prime time 300-400 down / 30-50 up. This morning 2500 down / 170 up. I had a couple of pages that I had to reload last night but besides that its working. Maybe things are looking up?
Monday, May 21, 2001 AM...
Today is the big day. We'll see... 
Friday, May 18, 2001 9:15 PM CST
I just received a call from Sprint (in AZ according to my caller ID) and guess what, they have to reschedule my repair appointment that was suppose to happen at 7 - 9 AM tomorrow morning due to their computer system crashing and being down for two days, or something like that! UN-F-ING-BELIEVABLE. Once again they wanted to reschedule during work hours next week, to which I said no way. So now they are suppose to come out Monday after 5:30 PM. If they really show up, it will be almost two weeks since they put it in and I haven't had service. If I had another choice beside dial-up I'd tell them to rip it out and shove it...
Tuesday, May 15, 2001
I'm too far away from the CO for DSL and Ameritech isn't going to do much about that anytime soon with Project PRONTO on hold. AT&T cable Internet access won't be an alternative for years either. My alternatives were limited to dial-up at $15-$20 a month, IDSL at $90 a month plus a hefty install/equipment fee, StarBand at $80 a month plus a hefty upfront fee or SBBD. I decided to try SBBD fully aware of the limitations. Besides, I view it as a temporary solution until I can get a cheap DSL or cable based connection unless some new technology allows Sprint to reliably increase the upload speeds and stabilize the speeds in general. I called on May 3rd to order and was told that I could get an install date of Tuesday May 8th or Wednesday May 9th. I scheduled for May 9th between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. I was told that two days before they would do a site survey and leave the results on my door. I also confirmed that if it were determined that I needed a huge pole on the roof that I could take a pass with no penalty. I went with the one-year contract with an equipment cost of $199 with free install. I switched my long distance over to Sprint to drop the monthly charge down to $39.95 a month.
Two days before the install date the site survey was done as promised. The card left on my front door said that all I would need was a short tripod and mast. I'm 25 30 miles from the antenna on the Sears Tower so I'm pleasantly surprised. So far, so good.
The install took almost 5 hours. The tech was very courteous and knowledgeable. He redid the site survey to make sure everything would work. I ended up needing a 5-foot tripod with a 5-foot mast due to the TV antenna, not what I had hoped for but not horrible. It took about 30 minutes to finish up on the inside. He was showing download speeds in excess of 1500 Kbps on his laptop. The connection to my PC would have to wait until I got back from work later that evening. I'm looking forward to "Simply a Better Internet Experience".
This is where it all starts to fall apart
When I returned a couple hours later I tried hooking the Hybrid modem into my Linksys 4 port DSL router. No go using static IP or DHCP. I checked all the connections, tried resetting the router, power cycled the Hybrid and inline power amplifier. Nothing. Next I tried hooking the Hybrid directly to my Win2K machine, still no go. I then tried my Win98 machine with the same result. I had 'raw connectivity to the Internet since the modem was assigning an IP to my computer but nothing beyond that worked.
After messing around for over an hour and getting no where I called tech support. I'm on hold for at least 40 minutes. They confirmed that my modem was there but they couldn't ping it. Apparently it would receive but not transmit. They set me up for a repair visit on Saturday between 11 and 2. Later I found that if I unplugged the modem for several hours, it would work for about an hour and then die which explains why it worked when it was first installed. When it worked I was getting very good download speeds. I downloaded the 101 MB Win2K SP2 file in less than 15 minutes Thursday night during prime time.
Friday night I come home to two messages on my answering machine from Sprint. One saying someone was on the way, the other saying that they were sorry they missed me. WTF? I call and am waiting for 45 minutes before Sprint picks up and confirms the mistake. They had me scheduled for Saturday but for some reason dispatch made it Friday. I was assured that someone would be out the next day between 11 and 2, maybe earlier, to swap the modem out.
Saturday morning I called around 9:30 am to confirm and after being on hold for only 20 minutes was told that I was still on the schedule. About 10:30 am I was washing the car and a Sprint truck rolled by. I assumed it was for me but it turns out my neighbor across the street was having it installed. I asked the installer if I was his next stop. Nope Of course my neighbor was none to happy to hear that my SBBD connection was not functioning.
By 2 pm nobody had showed so I called again. After waiting on hold for 45 minutes I explained the situation. I was informed that the guy across the street couldn't help me out because there are 'install techs and 'repair techs. The guy across the street was an 'install tech. My 'repair tech was running late and would be there in another hour, hour and a half.
By 5 pm, still nobody. I called again. After being on hold for another 35 minutes someone finally answers. I explain the situation once again and that I needed to leave no later than 6. They tell me that nobody will be able to make it before then. I blow up and ask to speak to a supervisor. They put me on hold again and I have to hang up and leave before Sprint picks up again.
Sunday morning I call and get through in a relatively quick 10 minutes and explain the whole thing again (don't these people keep notes in the system?). Sprint seems to think that we are all independently wealthy and can take time off work at any time we please and we are more than happy to wait around for them to arrive in their big white vans to deliver us from the dial up waste land as I'm informed that unbeknownst to me, my repair has been rescheduled for next Wednesday between 2 and 5. I explain that I can't take any more time off of work and they won't schedule repairs after 5 or on Sundays, so I have to wait until next Saturday between 7 and 9 for someone to come out and swap the modem. I get two weeks free for all of my trouble.
So that is where things are up to today. I've spent over 3 hours on hold and my house looks like a miniature NSA building with antennas all over it but data is only flowing in, not out. Fortunately this does not bother my wife which I think is the only good thing that has happened to me so far in this SBBD fiasco.
I will update the review when/if my modem is swapped out.
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