EVDO vs EVDO Rev A

Looking at getting a PC Card to use in the Baltimore, MD area. Anyone
have experiences there?

Sprint is offering a plan through a corporate discount... which ends up
going through the bluefish.net site. The plan is unlimited data for
$49.99 (which sounds like a SERO) but I would also receive the NVP of
25% on that so it would take the plan down to $37.49. Not too bad IMO.

My dilemma is... knowing that Rev A is coming out soon... and not
knowing when the offer for this plan is going to end... would you go
for the current plan without a Rev A card... or wait it out and end up
paying more per month for the plan with a faster speed? Typical net
usage is surfing, email, some music streaming videos from Yahoo!...
nothing out of the ordinary.

Thoughts on the card to get as well? It seems that people say they
prefer the Sierra Wirelesss card, but looking at actual speeds
clocked... it seems that one of the other two may be a better choice?

Before you make any decision, be sure that you will get the NVP
discount. I highly doubt that you will. It was promised to me when I
signed up, and needless to say it did not appear on the first bill so I
called. I was told that NVP can not be applied to data plans!!!!

There was a recent thread on sprintusers.com about this, and it seems to
hold true. You can how ever get most of the other discounts, they did
apply my 20% loyalty discount.

So double check on the NVP before you make any deal.

Jim

jrr(at)nycap.rr.com

dna0603@yahoo.com wrote:
> Looking at getting a PC Card to use in the Baltimore, MD area. Anyone
> have experiences there?
>
> Sprint is offering a plan through a corporate discount... which ends up
> going through the bluefish.net site. The plan is unlimited data for
> $49.99 (which sounds like a SERO) but I would also receive the NVP of
> 25% on that so it would take the plan down to $37.49. Not too bad IMO.
>
> My dilemma is... knowing that Rev A is coming out soon... and not
> knowing when the offer for this plan is going to end... would you go
> for the current plan without a Rev A card... or wait it out and end up
> paying more per month for the plan with a faster speed? Typical net
> usage is surfing, email, some music streaming videos from Yahoo!...
> nothing out of the ordinary.
>
> Thoughts on the card to get as well? It seems that people say they
> prefer the Sierra Wirelesss card, but looking at actual speeds
> clocked... it seems that one of the other two may be a better choice?
>

Sorry about the info not being in columns... but it seems to be
applying the NVP already right on the site... even before you check
out.

What card do/did you use? What area are you in? Speeds?

Thanks for your suggestion!


Sprint Data Plans for EVDO Cards
Retail Cost Your Cost Data Allowed Additional Data / Charges
Agreement

$80.00 $60.00 Unlimited Additional $0.20/minute charge for calls
made on PCS Connection Cards' with voice capability 1 Year



$60.00 $45.00 40 MB $.02 per kilobyte charge over 40 MB limit;
Additional $0.20/minute charge for calls made on PCS Connection Cards'
with voice capability 1 Year



$40.00 $30.00 20 MB $.02 per kilobyte charge over 20 MB limit;
Additional $0.20/minute charge for calls made on PCS Connection Cards'
with voice capability 1 Year



$49.99 $37.49 Unlimited Additional $0.20/minute charge for calls
made on PCS Connection Cards' with voice capability 1 Year



Jim wrote:
> Before you make any decision, be sure that you will get the NVP
> discount. I highly doubt that you will. It was promised to me when I
> signed up, and needless to say it did not appear on the first bill so I
> called. I was told that NVP can not be applied to data plans!!!!
>
> There was a recent thread on sprintusers.com about this, and it seems to
> hold true. You can how ever get most of the other discounts, they did
> apply my 20% loyalty discount.
>
> So double check on the NVP before you make any deal.
>
> Jim
>
> jrr(at)nycap.rr.com
>
> dna0603@yahoo.com wrote:
> > Looking at getting a PC Card to use in the Baltimore, MD area. Anyone
> > have experiences there?
> >
> > Sprint is offering a plan through a corporate discount... which ends up
> > going through the bluefish.net site. The plan is unlimited data for
> > $49.99 (which sounds like a SERO) but I would also receive the NVP of
> > 25% on that so it would take the plan down to $37.49. Not too bad IMO.
> >
> > My dilemma is... knowing that Rev A is coming out soon... and not
> > knowing when the offer for this plan is going to end... would you go
> > for the current plan without a Rev A card... or wait it out and end up
> > paying more per month for the plan with a faster speed? Typical net
> > usage is surfing, email, some music streaming videos from Yahoo!...
> > nothing out of the ordinary.
> >
> > Thoughts on the card to get as well? It seems that people say they
> > prefer the Sierra Wirelesss card, but looking at actual speeds
> > clocked... it seems that one of the other two may be a better choice?
> >

What site were you on?

I'm using the Sierra 580 aircard. I'm in the Albany, NY area and we
don't have the EV-DO,,,,,,YET. I'm still waiting. SPCS sold me the
service, then told me after I received the card that it's not available
in this area yet.



dna0603@yahoo.com wrote:

> Sorry about the info not being in columns... but it seems to be
> applying the NVP already right on the site... even before you check
> out.
>
> What card do/did you use? What area are you in? Speeds?
>
> Thanks for your suggestion!
>
>
> Sprint Data Plans for EVDO Cards
> Retail Cost Your Cost Data Allowed Additional Data / Charges
> Agreement
>
> $80.00 $60.00 Unlimited Additional $0.20/minute charge for calls
> made on PCS Connection Cards' with voice capability 1 Year
>
>
>
> $60.00 $45.00 40 MB $.02 per kilobyte charge over 40 MB limit;
> Additional $0.20/minute charge for calls made on PCS Connection Cards'
> with voice capability 1 Year
>
>
>
> $40.00 $30.00 20 MB $.02 per kilobyte charge over 20 MB limit;
> Additional $0.20/minute charge for calls made on PCS Connection Cards'
> with voice capability 1 Year
>
>
>
> $49.99 $37.49 Unlimited Additional $0.20/minute charge for calls
> made on PCS Connection Cards' with voice capability 1 Year
>
>
>
> Jim wrote:
>
>>Before you make any decision, be sure that you will get the NVP
>>discount. I highly doubt that you will. It was promised to me when I
>>signed up, and needless to say it did not appear on the first bill so I
>>called. I was told that NVP can not be applied to data plans!!!!
>>
>>There was a recent thread on sprintusers.com about this, and it seems to
>>hold true. You can how ever get most of the other discounts, they did
>>apply my 20% loyalty discount.
>>
>>So double check on the NVP before you make any deal.
>>
>>Jim
>>
>>jrr(at)nycap.rr.com
>>
>>dna0603@yahoo.com wrote:
>>
>>>Looking at getting a PC Card to use in the Baltimore, MD area. Anyone
>>>have experiences there?
>>>
>>>Sprint is offering a plan through a corporate discount... which ends up
>>>going through the bluefish.net site. The plan is unlimited data for
>>>$49.99 (which sounds like a SERO) but I would also receive the NVP of
>>>25% on that so it would take the plan down to $37.49. Not too bad IMO.
>>>
>>>My dilemma is... knowing that Rev A is coming out soon... and not
>>>knowing when the offer for this plan is going to end... would you go
>>>for the current plan without a Rev A card... or wait it out and end up
>>>paying more per month for the plan with a faster speed? Typical net
>>>usage is surfing, email, some music streaming videos from Yahoo!...
>>>nothing out of the ordinary.
>>>
>>>Thoughts on the card to get as well? It seems that people say they
>>>prefer the Sierra Wirelesss card, but looking at actual speeds
>>>clocked... it seems that one of the other two may be a better choice?
>>>
>
>

>> Looking at getting a PC Card to use in the Baltimore, MD area. Anyone
>> have experiences there?
>>
>> My dilemma is... knowing that Rev A is coming out soon... and not
>> knowing when the offer for this plan is going to end... would you go
>> for the current plan without a Rev A card... or wait it out and end up
>> paying more per month for the plan with a faster speed? Typical net
>> usage is surfing, email, some music streaming videos from Yahoo!...
>> nothing out of the ordinary.

I'd agree with the previous comments about not waiting for faster speed
from rev A. You should realize that the speed you experience will
depend strongly upon how many other users there are on the same
tower/segment/carrier. This will also be true for rev A when it appears.

In my region there are a large number of 1xRTT (voice) towers but
perhaps only 10% of them (total of 3 in fact) also have EV-D0. Each of
those presently only has 1 carrier/sector, as far as I can tell. Unlike
1xRTT, for downstream EV-DO each carrier is totally dedicated to a
single user. Multiple users must time share the resource. This means
that while I see as high as 1.15 Mbps down and 130 kbps for upstream
data, as soon as another user comes on the same sector, my download
speed drops to half or less so things can get quite choppy or even come
to a temporary standstill.

>> Thoughts on the card to get as well? It seems that people say they
>> prefer the Sierra Wirelesss card, but looking at actual speeds
>> clocked... it seems that one of the other two may be a better choice?

The measurements I made were with a Novatel S620 in my laptop and with a
spectrum analyzer for monitoring the tower. While according to
DSLReports, where I logged the tests, my result was among the highest
performance for Sprint servers, and while I performed it with an
external antenna on the card (an advantage of the Novatel, BTW)
guaranteeing good or excellent signal strength (as high as -55 dBm), it
is likely that the fact that I was careful to measure at low usage times
when there was no one else trying to use the same sector and carrier
probably trumped any differences I might have seen by using different
cards or PAM/computer combinations.

Overall I'm fairly impressed with Sprint EV-DO performance and plans,
enough so that I just added a Treo 700P to my toybox. I hope that my
writing this doesn't encourage too many people in my area to add Power
Vision before Sprint can add enough EV-DO carriers and towers to keep it
up! (:>)

Glenn