Sprint Android Data Usage Drops → Usage drops?

I would imagine their usage has dropped because their 3G network has become unusable in most locations. I know several people with their service and numerous types of phones who are fed up. They can't check e-mail, they can't do anything. It's great that Sprint is still offering unlimited service, but it would be nice if the service was usable.

Bingo. Their 3G is fine... till the day gets going, then it grinds to a crawl all day long. When i get tot he office at 7am, 3G is pretty darn good, but my 8:30 or so it grinds down to about 2G speeds for the rest of the day.

Only reason I put up with it is because I am still on SEROP and I mainly use WiFi anyway.

This is definitely the case for me when I am out and about. If there is no wifi available, I am usually going to have a bad time.

Have to agree 100% that Sprint's 3G network is almost unusable during the day for anything other than checking email. I'm in the Philadelphia area and over the last 6 months my satisfaction with Sprint has dropped significantly.

You hit the nail on the head!
Nothing more to it than that.

It's obvious, their network is overblown.

About a year ago I could get 700kbps which was workable for $25/month, but in the last 6-8 months down to edge speed (128kbps) MAX. At that speed streaming is pretty much useless, web pages take 10 seconds or more, GPS takes a minute to boot, etc.

In any case, I took my business to ST for $45, however the LOW is about 2 MBps and in good signal areas 7 Mbps. Even when TMO goes into EDGE (lots of areas in buffalo) it goes down to 180kbps which ironically is faster than a good day on the Sprint 3G network.

Put bluntly, Sprint saturated their network w/ iphones and smartphones on boost/VM/MVNO all over the place, and has been dragging on backhaul upgrades. Result: 1985 network speeds.

I feel bad for contract people, because they are stuck (well ETF ish), and to make matters worse Wimax is dead and they are deploying LTE at a snails pace.

I understand building networks is slow and expensive, however by allowing unlimited without a throttle (like Verizon) is simply KILLING their network. They are like 2 years behind Verizon on the adoption curve. Even VZ only has less than 20% on LTE to this day, so this problem is going to fester for another 2 years.

Add on top of that they are saddled w/ EvDO ( at lest TMO has 4Gish speeds), and the pain will continue.

Sprint's network performance shows that while their unlimited network may be great marketing, their network simply cannot support it. At this point I think most people know the bad rep Sprint's data network has and it's a considerable part of the reason Sprint can't seem to get more customers.

T-mobile's network can at least support unlimited. Sprint needs to either get LTE deployed everywhere FAST, which I don't expect will happen or give up on unlimited.

Sounds about right. LTE is nice where you can get it though. Give it a few months...you'll see a point of inflection on Sprint's data usage again, as LTE (fully) hits major markets.

I'm sure it will speed up once the Nextel network is shut down and reframed.. it could be as to why they are having problems due to the fact that they want to shut it down fully by next year.. but even then with 4g and unlimited I cant see them being able to speed it up.. but with the rumors about them buying clear and Softbank goin around.. they might be able to speed things up within a year or so..

Thanks for doing the dirty work for me.

BINGO!