Sprint Defends New 5GB EVDO Cap

... might as well drive off the remaining hardcore customers you have.

Now the only thing unique that Sprint offers from it's competitors is totally shit customer service. Congrats Sprint, keep digging that hole.

the only reason why I used sprint

I have been a Sprint wireless broadband customer for one year now. Upon reading the rumors of this cap last week I fired up NetLimiter to see what my daily usage is for the three nights/week I am on the road using the Sprint service.

My average daily consumption, thanks to watching a Slingbox for two hours and some typical web browsing, comes in around 500 MB per day. Multiply that by a conservative 12 nights on the road every month and voila... limit exceeded.

Interestingly I chose Sprint due to Verizon's limits.

What happens if someone joins, fully aware of the caps and takes a promotional data card. Then constantly goes over the caps. Do these customers get out ETF free, or is sprint going to try to kill you with an ETF too? Nice going sprint... while I may have SERO, and do tether with it from time to time, you have just shot yourself in the foot. I had considered replacing my home cable connection with a laptop connection card as I have just gotten a laptop, but with sprint introducing this new cap, I don't know where to turn.

Before anyone says to go to Clearwire/Xohm, that's not going to work, as I doubt that will be anywhere in my area very soon. I realistically have the choice of CDMA for data, as GSM service is extremely spotty, and theres not alot of "linksys" isp's where I go... :-/

Hrmm... Sprint Rev. A, Verizon Rev. A, or US Cellular 1X... nah... I give up... I'm staying with cable.

In the past, i have always recommended Sprint to my customers as the best wireless service, because they didn't cap users. I've probably sent 10-20 people their way in the last year (we sell computers).

If this is true (and i don't see why not), i won't be sending anymore people their way. And why? Because i don't want my customers calling me to complain that Sprint cut them off.

BTW Sprint. You might want to re-look at your data and figure out how many people aren't using your service (and still paying for it because they might need it) and drop them from your stats. You might find that the 95% number drops dramatically when all those 0 usage people are not counted.

Idiots!

people using this as their primary broadband at home...

I used Vz at home when I moved from one place to another, and it was "okay", but it was there when I needed it to pay bills. These companies don't realize that people want to do more than simply pay bills, get email, and browse the WWW. They want to stream video, audio, etc... They don't want to be forced to use a proprietary services for this crap. This all sounds like these companies are trying to get people to use their "preferred" services for something barely above the most basic services... **sigh** What kind of issue does that sound like?

So much for my switch back to them... ( I've had everyone... They all really do suck!)

The real "statistical freak" is the user that switches just because they are unsatisfied, unwilling to make a (usually minimal) sacrifice.

Thats the end of the only product Sprint was worth for. Remember Verizon will always have better coverage, same caps too.

Yep how do these companies promotes shit like watching TV on your phone then put in a 5GB cap. And as long as thier cap is the same as at&t and Verzion no reason to switch or stay with Sprint. At least if their cap was 10 GB it'd still be low but they would have SOME advantage. Stupid Sprint.

on the road in a boston hotel, wifi is terribly slow, so I pop in my sprint card..
just over an hour and a half.. nothing but basic surfing and a 5 minute video chat.. I also used about 750mb on the acela on the way up here..

5gb is not enough..

And another thing....

What's the point of charging $60 a month for "casual" use? If I'm paying that much for a secondary connection, I want to be able to use it every day, or be able to do whatever I want to do on it WHEN I decide to use it. Sprint really blew this... I just can't believe it. Oh well....

Sprint overcharged my small (US) company for over $50,000.00. We caught them doing it and now they refuse to refund the over-payments. You can read the full story at »www.sprint-really-sucks.com

I also wrote an open letter to Dan Hesse the Chairman and CEO of Sprint Nextel. It is a good read so please consider reading the letter.

»www.sprint-really-sucks. ··· sse.aspx

For hardcore users, it won't be an issue. They'll just buy 2 cards and swap the every month. Thus avoiding the 2 consecutive month limit. Bazillion gigs one month. Zero the next.

All they did here is basically double the effective cost of their service.

}Davoice

If you have a business account with Sprint they shouldn't care how much you use, since there costs are relatively fixed. Sprint was a PITA when I had them for voice service, and I switched to T-Mobile, been great ever since. No dropped calls, and call quality is amazing.

They should give everyone a 100 GB cap. If you use over that you should pay more.

Even though I dont use the service. No way 5GB/month will be enough for my needs. If this was the only option to be available.

If company A makes a move to restrict service and the others follow how is that competition.

Seems more like competition to rape customers more.

If they would employ network QOS they could ensure customer experience and fully utilize network resources. Now they'll just have idling t1's because they drove customers to wifi.

Assuming they have 50 million subs (including Nextel and MNVO) that would mean 250,000 customers would be affected.

Closer to collusion than competition.

In all reality, the cap is probably enough for most users...99.5 if you believe Sprint's own numbers.

If 99.5% of Sprint's customers aren't impacted by the new cap, why put the cap in place to begin with? Tolerate the .5% and keep the competitive edge...especially since they so desperately need one.

Besides, the .5% of the troublemakers are probably doing more good than harm to Sprint by serving as product evangelists.

What a bone-headed move!

And now, even if Sprint reverses course and goes back to a cap-free model, first, they've already taken the PR hit...second, they would probably encourage a lot many more people to use their connection freely and exceed the 5GB, when previously they weren't.

Sprint has been making a lot of right moves lately...I struggle to see how this one benefits them.

The driving off part seems accurate considering that the only thing Sprint had going for itself with a competitive edge was its unlimited data usage. What will Sprint use now to separate itself from the competition, I wonder. The company's customer service is lackluster and it lacks decent rural coverage like Verizon Wireless. Might as well announce that you'll be merging with one of your competitors to keep the company afloat since Sprint's made clear that they are willing to be just like their competitors in terms of placing a low monthly data cap.

It may be collusion, but it may be simple non-collusive oligopoly.

All major carriers (not sure about T-Mobile) have 5GB caps. Therefore, Sprint may theorize that bandwidth costs can be lowered by instituting their own caps without losing users, since their existing users do not have any uncapped option, and no option will become readily available, since the costs of entering the wireless industry are quite high. To the corporate accountants, this may look profitable.

Note that if "the new" Clearwire offers uncapped services, this may become an incentive to push users off the older EV-DO network and onto the new WiMax network. Though, that WiMax network doesn't exist yet.

I wonder what that would be as a percentage of data users, as opposed to lumping in voice-only users when making the percentage.

I've been a Sprint data card customer for almost 5 years.

Even though I fall well under the 5GB limitation, I went with Sprint because of the unlimited service because it provided my business use a) predictable monthly charge, b) no fear of instant debt, and c) bandwidth when I needed it. This attraction is no longer there. What now differentiates Sprint -- as a previous poster pointed out -- is bad customer service.

To have a 5 gig cap put on after all this time is a slap in the face to long-term customers. It is backward thinking. It is the opposition thinking of retention, where you reward long-term customers, who in turn talk it up to promote Sprint.

Sprint could have at least been innovative with the cap, like rollover bandwidth, a larger cap than the competition.

I just came out of a T-Mobile store and wished they had the data services I need because I would drop Sprint in a heartbeat.

Further, I can't see my usage in my Sprint.com web site account.

Further, Sprint so far hasn't been able to provide the historical data that I would like to have. (Not on the 5 years of paper bills, either.)

Further, Sprint's solution for me to get data usage is to call them up. Today it took 5 mins and 23 seconds on the phone. (Not bad, I suppose, compared to the 1.5 hours this morning trying to hash out some things.)

I have some friends who are also upset about Sprint action.

a) One friend with 3 phones and 1 data card with Sprint cancelled out and went to Verizon.

b) Another friend was wrongly billed $437 for Internet use on her 3 business phones AFTER a block on Internet was put on all three phones. When she pointed out the mistake to Sprint, a long drawn out affair started in which she had to engage an IT professional to fight for her money. When her contract is up, she's leaving Sprint.

c) Another friend is looking for a cell phone. After reading Consumer report reviews about Sprint Customer Service and then hearing from me about the data card fiasco, she is not going with Sprint.

Those are just the people I know about. I'm sure there are many, many other similar stories out there that are driving people away from Sprint.

I'm with another poster: I can no longer recommend Sprint.

Using tethering or data only (laptop cards), I'd probably drop that down to ~ 1/10 of that number or less.
Many can/will use mobile data, but WAP will not easily consume 5GB.
Tethered/laptop can/will.
Eg. assume 5 million data users (laptop/tether), 25,000 would hit the limit. Not a significant number.. just bad press.

Why the fuss.. ATT did the same thing...took away the unlimited option and put the same cap on it.

but what are the numbers that go over 5GB compared to other data card users. 30% of the total users? Don't be playing us for fools.

Why bother lumping handset users in with data users. Pretty skewed and shady.

How can a company change the terms on an agreed contract like this. If the consumer bails, we get hit with a fine. If the company walks from it, they generously give us the option of walking away without fees. Gee thanks What about the hardware we bought? We're SOL.

Damm flea bags.

Really? Are you people nuts?

I have a cell phone, through Sprint.
I switched to Sprint because no other provider would work inside my house (yes, lets argue the lower frequency crap, I can see a Sprint tower and a Verizon tower, only Sprint works in my house).

I never use that much data, that is what my home internet service is for. I use mobile data when I am mobile.

I do not use 5 Gigs at home, let alone mobile.

So I completely agree with Sprint, and I wish every provider of bandwidth did the same thing. Cut off that very small percentage that just eat up the network so I, and 99% of the people can enjoy the internet access that is freed up.

See, that is how business works. Make as many customers as possible happy because you cannot make everyone happy.

Crazy. I just cannot believe what America has become. Cheap, lazy, self-involved mashed potatoes.

Sprint will continue to lose customers. They don't understand how to deliver and market the services they offer.

The fuss is because Sprint touted their service as the fastest and best. This was before RevA launch. They marketed it heavily with TV and web ads. They had a bar chart showing their service speeds way up there and ATT down there.

Now Sprint is a fraud.