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criggs
join:2000-07-14
New York, NY

criggs

Member

Sprint 3G versus Time Warner 3G

Hi there,

I posted this message already three days ago in the Wireless Users Chat forum, but there have been no responses, so I figure perhaps my odds of getting useful feedback might be better in this forum, since a central part of my message involves the Sprint Mobile Broadband service. Here goes.

I live in Manhattan, New York City. Since July of 2009 my Sprint 3G EVDO Rev A Mobile Broadband unlimited service has functioned very well, with an average download speed of 900k and an average upload speed of 600k. I've been paying a flat rate of $60 a month.

Since Tuesday, September 28th, the service has become unusable, with download speeds averaging between 300 and 400 bps, yes, that's bps, NOT kbps!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sprint Technical Support has been unable, or unwilling, to do anything about it going on five weeks now, so I'm in the market for another 3G/4G or LTE service.

I download an average of 14 gigs a month, which makes me ineligible for all of the 5gig plans out there.

Just this past week Time Warner released an unlimited 3G/4G plan. The cheapest possible version is 49.95 a month.

But there's a catch: You need to buy AT LEAST ONE other Time Warner service.

The cheapest additional service they offer is RoadRunner for 29.99.

I only have the one computer, this laptop, and I take this laptop with me a lot. So I've never needed more than the one Internet service (the Sprint Mobile Broadband).

So does it make sense for me to allow Time Warner to extort the $29.99 a month from me in exchange for the 3G/4G plan, in your opinion? That would wind up costing me 79.94 per month, an increase in my Internet costs per month of 19.94.

What I'm really looking for from you is 1) an indication as to whether I'm jumping the gun in giving up on my cheaper Sprint service and 2) what your sense is of the value, or lack thereof, of the new Time Warner 3G/4G plan?

Obviously there is also the risk that the Time Warner 3G/4G plan may be as unreliable and useless as the Sprint plan. Again, I would need to learn that from folks who are already using the service; hopefully someone here is in that category. They have already indicated that they will NOT let me try the service on a trial basis, like one week or whatever.

One interesting aspect to the Time Warner 3G/4G service (4G is unavailable so far in my neighborhood, both where Sprint and TW is concerned): their 3G specs are worse than Sprint's:

Sprint's minimum spec is 600k per second average download speed, 350k per second average upload speed.

TW's minimum is 300k per second average download speed, 350k per second average upload speed, according to the phone rep to whom I spoke.

In other words, they actually warn of a potentially SLOWER download speed than upload speed.

Obviously 300kb download speed is better by a factor of 10 than my current 300b download speed!!!!!! Still, is that TW's way of warning that the 3G service is extraordinarily unreliable and spotty? Or are those reasonably reliable specs based on how they've configured their network? Meaning is the TW network perfectly reliable and steady but simply not as fast as Sprint's?

Well, I think that's enough to ponder for one message! Thanks for any feedback.

Cheers,

Charles