Sprint struggles to replicate iPhone 4S users' speed concern

My data speed was decent in my hometown before the iPhone 4S launch but now data is pretty much unusable at home and still barely usable in the nearest large towns and small cities!! I am very disappointed with Sprint.

The trouble is and always will be that Sprint will never replicate the issue unless they go and visit each and every customer and see the issue in that location.

They have horrible, no horrendous, coverage when it comes to data and almost as bad when it comes to voice.

It might be good for some, great for others but for the great majority that live just a little bit too far away from a freeway it means slow data speeds and terrible voice service.

I was even told by Sprint customer service that unless you live close to a freeway then the cell towers are few and far between. They even let me out of the contract without any penalty because they couldn't communicate with me on the cell phone and had to phone my land line to discuss the matter and I only live 16 miles from one of their towers and was lucky to get any service as at all in most locations.

So I agree with those that believe that Sprint is Stalling. Their network was nowhere near ready. I feel sorry for those that jumped from AT&T and Verizon that had unlimited with restrictions or the 2Gb cap on their service and now they have a 'truly' unlimited that is 'truly' hopeless!

A lot of critical comments here. I have two things to say about Sprint's service quality; one technical, one customer-service-related.

1: EVDO is slow. Unless you're in optimum conditions, you're not going to get "Rev.A" speeds, and 1mbps throughput is kinda the cap for performance. That's the same speeds I saw when tethering my old samsung phone, back in 2006. I paid for tethering service ($1 /day) on my Sprint iPhone 4s to provide service to a WiFi iPad while I was on vacation in Seattle, this weekend. it was reliable, great coverage both in CA and in WA, but the speeds simply were insufficient for streaming more than music and web pages. NetFlix and AirVideo streams suffer. This isn't because of Sprint's lackluster coverage. This is because they have a very dated technology for their 3G, and *next year* I greatly anticipate glorious LTE rollout for the iPhone.

Second thing is I came from AT&T, where--I wear to you--I saw 6mbps downstream performance on my iPhone 3GS. But, the phone consistently dropped data/voice signal in multiple locations in the SF Bay Peninsula, and my bill would be 2x as expensive as my new Sprint plan. I cut my bill in half by moving to Sprint, and understood I would be suffering with Life in the Slow lane. It was worth it to get away from draconian data caps, hourlong customer service calls, and a huge mess of bureacracy. I was with AT&T since 2007, and almost *danced* for joy when I left DeathStar behind.

BTW, calling Sprint to cancel tether? I hit two extensions, and had a human being on the line, in America nonetheless. The whole call was 3 minutes. I don't have that customer service with AT&T, which would reoutinely misroute my call and kick me from the phone tree.

sounds like just a lot of people on the network at one time, causing congestion. I had the problem when the iPhone 4S came out on Verizon. Siri didn't work well the first week. Occasionally i get an issue where it says it doesn't have a network connection, so I flip airplane mode on and off and it fixes it.

I regularly get over 4 mbit/s dl on my iPhone 4 in Tampa and 1.1 mbit up. AT&T seems pretty fast to me.

I'm not sure how it works on Sprint, but on Verizon I can dial *228 and update my roaming capabilities. This updates the PRL, which is the list of towers the phone is able to connect to. I go ahead and update every month or so, even though it probably doesn't update all that often.

Not saying this will fix anything, but Sprint customers who are having issues may want to try updating their PRL if they can. It won't hurt.

The problem is a network that wasn't ready for an iPhone. What they are doing in response is called, "Buying time."

I see the problem. They have Sprint. I have AT&T with my iPhone 4, and I have no problems and fast data speeds (2.4 Mbit down and about 1 Mbit up).

Every day there's tech news which makes me glad I've outgrown my ego needs to be the first to have the latest and greatest from the world of geegaws, gadgets and manufactured complex goods in general.

Enjoy those arrows, pioneers. My geek cred (such as it is) comes from what I've spent years stuffing into my head, not my early posession of the latest toys.....

I've had horrible service with my iPhone for about a weeks time. Then after it slowly improved. Today I am actually quite pleased with my service on the device.

I think all of this hoop-la was due to the fact that 4 million people all decided to jump on their phones on the same day.

It's like complaining to apple on launch day that their damn lines are so long. Then when the crap hits the fan in corporate 3 days later they send their line management techs out to the retail stores and can't understand what the hell everyone is grumbling about.