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I'm out of town weeks/months at a time on jobs and not all hotels have free WiFi. Novatel U727 member for 19 years, 38 visits, last login: 12.3 years ago updated 15.9 years ago
Before this we had Hughesnet which this is a quite a leap from (as its terrible, 1 stars or below). Speed is anywhere from 5Kb/s- 700Kb/s(not for very long) download and 50Kb/s upload. Lag (ping of about 120ms) is terrible there is no way to play online games with this service.I've tried, I just ruin other players experience and mine as well so I've quit. Before I moved to where I am, I had 10Mbit Cable from insight cable that was a great service although it did drop usually late at night when they figured people weren't using it much. I really wish if anyone from comcast or ATT could somehow hook me up with their service where I'm at, as its not here. member for 16.6 years, 1 visits, last login: 16 years ago updated 16 years ago
Can't say enough about it. Hell I have had a data connection from sprint all the way back to 2000. Rem those those cads with the little tiny antenna ??? ya had one of those too. I use this when on the road and if at my mountain home if DSL goes down/ power,,, The only issue I have is there's no EVDO roaming agreement with VZ so your stuck at 1x if your out of sprint's coverage area. Other than that I have never had an issue that wasn't my own fault. ym member for 23 years, 3353 visits, last login: 11.9 years ago lodged 16.1 years ago
Hello, I've had Sprint Mobile now for little over a month. The connection has been rock solid. I haven't had a outage yet. The modem does turn off every once in a while though. I will update after a few months to see if anything has changed. I recommend to anyone (unless you live by me) that has a cell tower near by to pick it up. member for 23.6 years, 1457 visits, last login: 6.9 years ago lodged 16.2 years ago
member for 16.8 years, 8367 visits, last login: a few hours ago updated 16.4 years ago
Sprint's coverage is great, i my pda to find listings, address's, phone numbers, google maps, i get my email wherever i am. So it's really a need. member for 21.5 years, 346 visits, last login: 13.9 years ago lodged 16.4 years ago
I tested out Sprints wireless data service for my laptop over the last three weeks. I live in Los Angeles, and am in New York for a couple of months for work. I didnt want to pay $14.95/night for the hotels Internet service, so Sprint seemed like a great option. The signup process was easy. I bought the Sierra Wireless USB modem (595U) from my local Sprint store. I selected this one because Im on a Macintosh, and it was the only device they had that supported Mac. It cost $329, less the $120 activation credit, less the $50 main in rebate. Total cost around $159. The Sprint rep at the store told me that although the modem supported Mac, it had to be configured initially on a PC. He offered to do it for me in-store, but I would have to come back later because my new account needed 2-4 hours to get provisioned before he could setup the modem. I opted to take it home and try setting it up with Virtual PC. I was able to activate the modem using the PC wizard on Virtual PC, but when it came time to update the modems firmware and PRL, Virtual PC kept crashing. I guess thats not unexpected. The next day I took it back to the Sprint store, and they had it updated within 20 minutes, using one of their PCs. As it turns out, I probably didnt need to do this it appears they have just released new software for the Mac. It will definitely activate the modem, but I do not know however if the Mac version of the software will update the firmware the instructions are unclear on that. Anyway, when I plugged in the modem and tried to connect with the app I had downloaded from Sprints website (it must be downloaded: it is not included on the disk in the package), the modem kept reporting errors and refused to connect. I repaired my disks permissions; Disk Utility found multiple permission errors on the modem scripts I had just installed. After that fix, it worked like a charm. Connecting to the Internet is easy you can use the Internet Connect utility built into Mac OS X, or the Sierra Wireless Watcher Lite program (downloaded free from sprint.com). The nice thing about the program is that it indicates signal strength, whether youre connected to EVDO, EVDO-A, or 1xRTT. It also tells you how long youve been connected, and how much data you have sent or received. The modem itself is about 2.5 by 1 by .5 thick. You can either plug it directly into a USB port, or it has a docking station and cable, so it can sit away from your computer also. Before I left for New York, I tested the modem in a handful of places in Los Angeles. All locations reported EVDO-A. In the fastest two test sites, the Rx speed clocked in at around 2000kbs. The RX speed was 750kbps one location, 505kbps the other. The other locations were slower, but still very useable. In one location the modem reported only one bar of signal strength, but got speeds comparable to slow DSL. At LAX performance was worse: despite full reception, I got speeds around 350kbps down, 250 kbps up. I guess there is a lot of usage at LAX. A nice surprise was my hotel room in the outskirts of Palm Springs: EVDO-A with slow DSL speed connections. The rep at the Sprint store said the speed can range up to 8Mbps, but I never saw anything close to that. My home turned out to be the most problematic location, though. Despite the fact that I live in the Hollywood Hills (notorious for bad cell reception), my Sprint phone always reports full reception there, and I have no trouble with data services on my phone. The modem was another story. Over the course of a week the modem never achieved a successful connection to the data service. Sprint tech support was stumped. The woman helping me at one point had me remove all account information from my Internet connection setup. I was pretty sure she didnt know what she was doing, and expected this to screw up the modem completely. I was completely surprised though that when I next used the modem, it automatically repopulated the username and password fields with the correct settings! Its preprogrammed to protect against user stupidity!!! In the end, Sprint never was able to figure out why I could not connect at home. They kept saying the tower was reporting itself operable with no trouble. All they could do was initiate a trouble ticket. A week later, when I left for New York, the problem had still not been fixed. The modems speed in New York, on Manhattan, was very disappointing. I tested it in about 7 different locations, and never got speeds faster than around 300kbps. I was really expected that the EVDO-A network in someplace as densely populated as NYC would be really really fast. It wasnt. I will say this though: every place the modem connected, it worked without stalls or major lags in loading pages. I never tried anything but surfing, but it was never interrupted by slowdowns of any sort. Sprints unlimited data plan cost me $59.99/month. With my business discount (Sprint offers discounts for employees of many different companies) it comes in at about $47/month. The real suck thing about it is you have to sign a 2-year contract. Period. No discussion, no exceptions. My plan was to cancel after my travel is over, and the discounts I got on the modem and the rebate will just about offset the $200 early termination fee. But I think Sprint is really missing out though, because if they allowed me to turn it off and on I would never travel without it! (A side note: you can suspend the service for $5/mo, but when you unsuspend it you have to renew your two-year agreement, and suspended service does not count towards your two-year commitment.) Overall, aside from the two-year term, and their inability to quickly locate and fix the problem with the tower that serves my home, I was quite happy in Los Angeles, satisfied though not wow-ed in NY, and extremely pleasantly surprised about how seamlessly it worked with my Mac. The lack of connectivity at home does show that things could go wrong and Sprint may not necessarily be able to pinpoint the problem quickly, much less resolve it. As much as Im paying for the service, thats frustrating. In the end, I canceled the service within 30 days for a full refund. My hotel room ended up coming with free internet, so it wasnt an issue. If it didnt, though, a better solution for me would have been to share my Treos Vision connection over Bluetooth, bump up my data plan while I was away, and just deal with phone calls being bumped to voicemail by the data usage. (Why does data have priority over voice calls anyway? Shouldnt it be the other way around?) The modem, for me, was just too expensive for the performance it provided. member for 17.7 years, 15 visits, last login: 5.2 years ago lodged 16.5 years ago
I live in a small town, I was hoping I could get mobile broadband since we have decent cell service. I signed up for what I thought was a thirty day "risk free" trial to see if the service worked. It did work, but averaged about 50kbps and only got 115kbps in the "best" coverage areas. Not worth $60(two year contract) to $80 a month. I called to cancel the service after a week and got a $135 bill. Sprint signed me up for a two year plan and charged me more than ten times what the phone card was listed for on their website. I had to pay the bill before they would cancel the service. I don't know if the service is good or not because I live in a poor coverage area, but I do know that Sprint is totally dishonest about their "30 day risk free" guarantee. They lied to me and took my money. If I didn't pay, they have my SSN and no doubt they would ruin my credit if I didn't pay. F you Sprint, but you made my choice in cell phones for my family and business a whole lot easier. member for 22.3 years, 117 visits, last login: 14.2 years ago updated 16.6 years ago
Very fast setup and installation, was able to install and use my card as soon as it arrives. The only down side to this service is the price; I wish it was just a bit cheaper for me to stomach a personal card for my personal laptop. member for 19.4 years, 2394 visits, last login: 1.8 years ago lodged 16.7 years ago |