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Happydude32
Premium Member
join:2005-07-16

Happydude32

Premium Member

Tired of waiting for LTE

As a company, I like Sprint. As a company I hate Verizon Wireless. But Saturday after 9 years of being with Nextel & Sprint, I switched over to Verizon. And boy did it hurt!

What good is Unlimited Data when average speeds on 3G are not much faster than dial up? On Thursdays for work, I'm in a small rural town with no Sprint service. I would roam on to Verizon’s 1X network and at -85 dB pull in faster speeds then having a perfect signal on Sprints own native EVDO network when I’m back to civilization. Tell me that isn’t fucked up. I could deal with not having LTE coverage for another year, but when it takes 10 minutes to load a stupid YouTube clip, that was enough. Sprint has announced no plans to upgrade either Buffalo or Rochester, NY to LTE. Although as of two weeks ago, progress was being made as Sprints EVDO Network now registers as EHRPD which is a prelude to LTE. Speeds got slightly better, but nothing to write home about.

Verizon’s LTE speeds are a tad bid disappointing around here. I’ve been averaging 8-13 Mb Down and about 3-5Mb Up. When I had a wimax phone on Sprint, in Rochester I would get the same download and 1.5-2.0Mb on the upload. When Sprint launches LTE in Upstate NY and has a significant portion of the area covered, I may switch back. Contracts and ETFs don’t scare me. I just bought the Evo 4G LTE in June and less than 6 months later I moved on.

LightS
Premium Member
join:2005-12-17
Greenville, TX

1 edit

LightS

Premium Member

Wait.... if I may ask, why is 8-13mb down so bad? My Verizon Galaxy Nexus gets good LTE speeds. I've seen around 30mbps for both my Galaxy Nexus on LTE & Sprint's LTE.

Sprint iPhone 5

Verizon Galaxy Nexus


I would take a new Verizon LTE test but I haven't lived in that area for months & no LTE here.

edit: while I agree, 8-13mbps is nothing compared to what I posted above... do you honestly need that speed? If your area is congested with LTE phones, I think that's pretty darn respectable. I'd love to get 30mbps all of the time, but honestly, for the majority of the stuff I do on a phone etc even 5mbps is enough... while you may be different, I don't see how you can need that much lol
Beans5
join:2005-07-16
united state

Beans5

Member

Simple if your teathered to your laptop, download a large file, yes I want 30 Mbps all the time, but for everything else, Nope.
Happydude32
Premium Member
join:2005-07-16

Happydude32 to LightS

Premium Member

to LightS
It’s not really bad, just disappointing. After reading on sites like this how shitty wimax is and how much better LTE is, I was expecting more.

Here’s my personal best on Sprint 4G Wimax:


Here’s my personal best on Verizon 4G LTE:

LightS
Premium Member
join:2005-12-17
Greenville, TX

LightS to Beans5

Premium Member

to Beans5
You want 30mbps all of the time? Not happening unless you're on a lone tower with nobody else using data.
Terabit
join:2008-12-19

Terabit to Happydude32

Member

to Happydude32
Those WIMAX and LTE speeds are not the norm and certainly nowhere near the best for LTE or average for WIMAX.

Not to mention, handsets also make a difference. I'm seeing well over 30MB/s DL and 8mb/s UL with 3 bars LTE on an iPad.

LightS
Premium Member
join:2005-12-17
Greenville, TX

LightS to Happydude32

Premium Member

to Happydude32
That's not bad, but not great. This is my first personal LTE phone with Sprint (well, it's a work phone) and I'm not sure if their upload is just naturally slower or what, but I've gotten 15+ mbps upstream with Verizon.

Either way, I don't blame you for expecting more.. it should be better!
NiteSn0w
join:2010-12-24

NiteSn0w

Member

Upload on Sprint's LTE wont be the best until the network is completely upgraded in your area or you have full signal. If you have full LTE signal you should see 18 Megabit/s up MAX. Sprint uses a 5x5 MHz LTE carrier. 5 MHz for downstream and 5 MHz for upstream resulting in 37 Megabit/s down and 18 Megabit/s up per carrier, per sector.

Ctrl Alt Del
Premium Member
join:2002-02-18

Ctrl Alt Del to Happydude32

Premium Member

to Happydude32
Sprint's 4G LTE is apparently not much better than their Wimax. Here's Ellicott City MD:

»/r0/do ··· /LTE.png
Happydude32
Premium Member
join:2005-07-16

Happydude32 to LightS

Premium Member

to LightS
And it only continues to get better



Yesterday’s result was from the suburbs. This is what I got when I was in the heart of downtown Buffalo earlier this morning, a few minutes before 7AM. And this was the second fastest result today. The fastest was 6.86 Mb Down but that was at 5AM.

The question posed, why do you need these insane speeds on a cell phone. Well I don’t, but like I said, after reading posts on this site for the past three years bashing Sprint, bashing their wimax network and every one bowing down to suck the dick of Verizon and their ‘awesome’ LTE network has me scratching my head. What many people don’t realize is that Sprint and/or Clear unofficially launched a ton of wimax ‘markets’ and I use that term very loosely, in order to keep their licenses. I’ve been to some smaller towns in the middle of nowhere, where there are pockets of wimax coverage, the signal is not as strong is in official markets, and I was still able to achieve 6-10Mb down. While I wasn’t expecting 30Mb plus around the clock with Verizon, I can’t achieve speeds faster than 15Mb down, which is on par with what I was getting with Sprint when I was in Rochester using wimax.

LightS
Premium Member
join:2005-12-17
Greenville, TX

LightS

Premium Member

True - I suppose it was more of a question. lol.

I suppose we get good luck with both networks.

Here are all of the tests I've done today on my iPhone 5 - most with about 2-3 bars, the 25+mbps being at full signal.

iansltx
join:2007-02-19
Austin, TX

iansltx to LightS

Member

to LightS
Give T-Mobile a year and a half. They'll have 20MHz FD LTE carriers capable of giving a consistent 30 Mbps, up and down. Maybe even double that for downloads.

Sprint will also be able to hit that once they get Clearwire TD-LTE online.
iansltx

iansltx to Ctrl Alt Del

Member

to Ctrl Alt Del
Give it a week or two. They probably don't have the tower tuned right at this point.
NiteSn0w
join:2010-12-24

NiteSn0w

Member

Well... He also doesn't have full signal. 17/5 Mbit/s is pretty good but not up to par for his signal strength. Still much better than WiMAX.