Sprint Mobile Broadband vs. Verizon BroadbandAccess

Does anyone have experiences regarding the real-world performance/
coverage differences between Sprint Mobile Broadband and Verizon
Broadband Access?
Thanks

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› See More: Sprint Mobile Broadband vs. Verizon BroadbandAccess

In article <[email protected]>,
<[email protected]> wrote:

> Does anyone have experiences regarding the real-world performance/
> coverage differences between Sprint Mobile Broadband and Verizon
> Broadband Access?
> Thanks
>
All I will say is you can't seriously be considering starting a
contract with Verison. Their customer service is the worst of the
worst.

<[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> Does anyone have experiences regarding the real-world performance/
> coverage differences between Sprint Mobile Broadband and Verizon
> Broadband Access?
> Thanks
>

Maybe not completely representative, but worth a look:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=zJAYfGqcUOc

[email protected] wrote:
> Does anyone have experiences regarding the real-world performance/
> coverage differences between Sprint Mobile Broadband and Verizon
> Broadband Access?
> Thanks
>
Dunno if this is relevant or not:

Durham, NC about 2-3 miles from I-40 -

1. Sprint EVDO Aircard from my employer for laptop picks up data
connections fine "most of the time" in my house, which is rather
"rf-resistant" (FM radio, over-the-air TV, most cell phones).

2. I bought a Verizon model XV6700 on Ebay, and when I turned it on and
activated the cell radio, it barely registered any bars with EVDO
icon. I figured maybe it needed the *228 PRL (?) update with
activation, did the acivation, and lost the signal several times
including when I tried calling back *611 to get the number switched back
to my Nokia 6236i.

I still activate the cell radio once in a while in case it was a bad
sunspot/solar flare *****, but no improvement - the bars come and go,
but are mostly gone. Nice wifi PDA anyway (Plan "B" in case this was
how it turned out ;-)

Real world, but dunno how realistic.

ROC

rocxspam wrote:
> [email protected] wrote:
>> Does anyone have experiences regarding the real-world performance/
>> coverage differences between Sprint Mobile Broadband and Verizon
>> Broadband Access?
>> Thanks
>>
> Dunno if this is relevant or not:
>
> Durham, NC about 2-3 miles from I-40 -
>
> 1. Sprint EVDO Aircard from my employer for laptop picks up data
> connections fine "most of the time" in my house, which is rather
> "rf-resistant" (FM radio, over-the-air TV, most cell phones).
>
> 2. I bought a Verizon model XV6700 on Ebay, and when I turned it on and
> activated the cell radio, it barely registered any bars with EVDO
> icon. I figured maybe it needed the *228 PRL (?) update with
> activation, did the acivation, and lost the signal several times
> including when I tried calling back *611 to get the number switched back
> to my Nokia 6236i.

Does it work anywhere else? Maybe there was a reason it was on ebay?


>
> I still activate the cell radio once in a while in case it was a bad
> sunspot/solar flare *****, but no improvement - the bars come and go,
> but are mostly gone. Nice wifi PDA anyway (Plan "B" in case this was
> how it turned out ;-)
>
> Real world, but dunno how realistic.
>
> ROC

On 1 May 2007 11:59:21 -0700, [email protected] <[email protected]> wrote:
> Does anyone have experiences regarding the real-world performance/
> coverage differences between Sprint Mobile Broadband and Verizon
> Broadband Access?

Like any radio service, it depends on where you're talking about. I've been
on Verizon for a couple of years, and they have excellent EVDO service at
my house. Sprint is all but unusable. 9 miles away at my office, Verizon
EVDO was unusable, and Sprint was excellent. The coverage maps for both
services were pretty accurate in regards to the dead spots.

It really just boils down to checking the coverage maps, and picking the
company that covers the areas you'll spend most of your time in.

- Rich


--
Catapultam habeo. Nisi pecuniam omnem mihi dabis, ad caput tuum saxum immane mittam.

If you have a Sprint Card it will roam on Verizon. You can force it to
roaming mode from the menu. I have done this and it works well. It will roam
at 1x on Verizon, but at least you can have access to data.

"user" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> On 1 May 2007 11:59:21 -0700, [email protected]
> <[email protected]> wrote:
>> Does anyone have experiences regarding the real-world performance/
>> coverage differences between Sprint Mobile Broadband and Verizon
>> Broadband Access?
>
> Like any radio service, it depends on where you're talking about. I've
> been
> on Verizon for a couple of years, and they have excellent EVDO service at
> my house. Sprint is all but unusable. 9 miles away at my office, Verizon
> EVDO was unusable, and Sprint was excellent. The coverage maps for both
> services were pretty accurate in regards to the dead spots.
>
> It really just boils down to checking the coverage maps, and picking the
> company that covers the areas you'll spend most of your time in.
>
> - Rich
>
>
> --
> Catapultam habeo. Nisi pecuniam omnem mihi dabis, ad caput tuum saxum
> immane mittam.
>

Coverage varies significantly by location. You should look at the coverage
maps on the respective sites to determine how you'll do where you will be
using it.

Assuming you will have adequate coverage with either carrier, your most
important consideration should be data policies. Verizon advertises
"unlimited" but will in fact cut you off it you use "too much" and they
specifically prohibit doing anything but web browsing, email, and connecting
to corporate systems. They are notorious for enforcing this.

Sprint does not have these limitations. Search Google for lengthy
discussions on this topic (I don't want to rehash it here), and read the
"terms of service" for each carrier carefully.

Personally, I wouldn't consider Verizon data for a second.

<[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> Does anyone have experiences regarding the real-world performance/
> coverage differences between Sprint Mobile Broadband and Verizon
> Broadband Access?
> Thanks
>

George wrote:
> rocxspam wrote:
>
>> [email protected] wrote:
>>
>>> Does anyone have experiences regarding the real-world performance/
>>> coverage differences between Sprint Mobile Broadband and Verizon
>>> Broadband Access?
>>> Thanks
>>>
>> Dunno if this is relevant or not:
>>
>> Durham, NC about 2-3 miles from I-40 -
>>
>> 1. Sprint EVDO Aircard from my employer for laptop picks up data
>> connections fine "most of the time" in my house, which is rather
>> "rf-resistant" (FM radio, over-the-air TV, most cell phones).
>>
>> 2. I bought a Verizon model XV6700 on Ebay, and when I turned it on
>> and activated the cell radio, it barely registered any bars with EVDO
>> icon. I figured maybe it needed the *228 PRL (?) update with
>> activation, did the acivation, and lost the signal several times
>> including when I tried calling back *611 to get the number switched
>> back to my Nokia 6236i.
>
>
> Does it work anywhere else? Maybe there was a reason it was on ebay?
Well, it does show full strength when I am at the mall by I-40, but all
Vzw phones show that since that spot is a prime cell area. I am not
going to experiment with how the 6700 does in a "prime cell area" with
an activation/de-activation test since my house is the make-or-break
test, and it broke.

Weak phones of any type just do not do well in my house - it's fine as a
PDA (as much as any PPC can be - Palm PIM functions still beat the heck
out of PPC's IMO, but the other PPC functions like IE and email in
conjunction with the built-in wifi make up for that for my purposes ;-)

Maybe some future AKU can improve receptivity by some miracle of PPC
programming...

ROC

>
>
>>
>> I still activate the cell radio once in a while in case it was a bad
>> sunspot/solar flare *****, but no improvement - the bars come and go,
>> but are mostly gone. Nice wifi PDA anyway (Plan "B" in case this was
>> how it turned out ;-)
>>
>> Real world, but dunno how realistic.
>>
>> ROC

On 2007-05-03, Bill Marriott <[email protected]> wrote:
> Assuming you will have adequate coverage with either carrier, your most
> important consideration should be data policies. Verizon advertises
> "unlimited" but will in fact cut you off it you use "too much" and they
> specifically prohibit doing anything but web browsing, email, and connecting
> to corporate systems. They are notorious for enforcing this.

To be clear, what they seem to strictly enforce is the 5 GB/month
limit, and Sprint might be worth while just to avoid this. Verizon
doesn't, however, appear to actually do anything about the application
restrictions; I've used mine for a bunch of stuff not in their
permitted list without any difficulty or complaint.

I'd note that the Verizon data service where I live has in the past
been a bit flaky, particularly in the afternoon. It would go numb
for 10 or 30 or 40 seconds, delivering no packets, and then suddenly
deliver everthing. Here's what a 40 second pause looks like from
ping's point-of-view.

64 bytes from 66.1.1.1: icmp_seq=50 ttl=236 time=216.143 ms
64 bytes from 66.1.1.1: icmp_seq=51 ttl=236 time=39988.390 ms
64 bytes from 66.1.1.1: icmp_seq=51 ttl=236 time=40041.284 ms (DUP!)
64 bytes from 66.1.1.1: icmp_seq=52 ttl=236 time=38042.056 ms
64 bytes from 66.1.1.1: icmp_seq=53 ttl=236 time=36042.944 ms
[...]
64 bytes from 66.1.1.1: icmp_seq=70 ttl=236 time=2075.783 ms
64 bytes from 66.1.1.1: icmp_seq=71 ttl=236 time=187.830 ms
64 bytes from 66.1.1.1: icmp_seq=72 ttl=236 time=196.765 ms

I don't know how it duplicates packets, but it seems to do
that a lot. Here's one where it went dead for 12 seconds (pings
sent once every 2 seconds) and then delivered a copy of a
packet previously received 4 minutes earlier:

64 bytes from 66.1.1.1: icmp_seq=314 ttl=235 time=191.644 ms
64 bytes from 66.1.1.1: icmp_seq=193 ttl=235 time=250118.502 ms (DUP!)
64 bytes from 66.1.1.1: icmp_seq=320 ttl=235 time=177.113 ms

Of course the reason I have all this ping data is that the service
would drop the connection after being idle for an annoyingly small
number of minutes, so I now run the ping in the background to keep
it up. I've also had the connection go dead, requiring a
disconnect/reconnect to fix, after connect times suspiciously close
to exactly an hour, though I haven't had this happen recently.

To be fair, a lot of this has gotten better recently. And I live
in Silicon Valley where Verizon has a lot of customers but less
spectrum than other places, so it is possible some of this was
due to load problems which wouldn't occur elsewhere. I have
a friend with the Sprint service who hasn't seen as many problems,
though he also has leaner coverage and also may not watch for
brokenness as carefully as I do.

If I had the choice over again I think I might try the Sprint service
instead. Recently the Verizon service has been better, though,
so I'm hoping the problems might have been temporary. If they come
back, however, I guess I can always have my contract terminated
by exceeding the 5 GB/month limit, so that can sometimes be an
advantage.

Dennis Ferguson

Dennis,

Hey, that's a great post, what with the detailed ping reports.

Just underscoring that you're lucky. Verizon *does* have a "not permitted"
list, whether they choose to enforce it in any individual case or not ...
aren't we all beyond the "ISP as nanny" model?

from Verizon, http://b2b.vzw.com/broadband/bba_terms.html :

>>>
Data Plans and Features [...] may ONLY be used with wireless devices for he
following purposes: (i) Internet browsing; (ii) email; and (iii) intranet
access (including access to corporate intranets, email, and individual
productivity applications like customer relationship management, sales
force, and field service automation). These Data Plans and Features MAY NOT
be used for any other purpose. Examples of prohibited uses include, without
limitation, the following: (i) continuous uploading, downloading, or
streaming of audio or video programming or games; (ii) server devices or
host computer applications, including, but not limited to, Web camera posts
or broadcasts, automatic data feeds, automated machine to-machine
connections or peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing; or (iii) as a substitute or
backup for private lines or dedicated data connections. This means, by way
of example only, that checking email, surfing the Internet, downloading
legally acquired songs, and/or visiting corporate intranets is permitted,
but downloading movies using P2P file-sharing services and/or redirecting
television signals for viewing on laptops is prohibited.
<<<

My last trip to L.A., I was able to watch the Battlestar Galactica season
finale live on my Treo 700p by tuning into my PC, which was running Orb.
When the bridge melted in San Francisco, I tuned into MSNBC. If I forget a
file from my PC, I can use Avvenue to grab it. I often log in to my desktop
with the EzRemote remote desktop client. All for $15/month. Without every
worrying one iota about whether I'll be "caught" or how many gigabytes I've
used.

Thank you, Sprint. I <3 U.


"Dennis Ferguson" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> On 2007-05-03, Bill Marriott <[email protected]> wrote:
>> Assuming you will have adequate coverage with either carrier, your most
>> important consideration should be data policies. Verizon advertises
>> "unlimited" but will in fact cut you off it you use "too much" and they
>> specifically prohibit doing anything but web browsing, email, and
>> connecting
>> to corporate systems. They are notorious for enforcing this.
>
> To be clear, what they seem to strictly enforce is the 5 GB/month
> limit, and Sprint might be worth while just to avoid this. Verizon
> doesn't, however, appear to actually do anything about the application
> restrictions; I've used mine for a bunch of stuff not in their
> permitted list without any difficulty or complaint.

On 2007-05-03, Bill Marriott <[email protected]> wrote:
> Just underscoring that you're lucky. Verizon *does* have a "not permitted"
> list, whether they choose to enforce it in any individual case or not ...
> aren't we all beyond the "ISP as nanny" model?

Bill,

You are correct, though it isn't like Sprint doesn't have its own set
of "do this and we'll cut you off" conditions. They're just less specific
about what particular applications they might be imagining:

Specific Terms & Restrictions On Using Data Services
In addition to the rules for using all of our other Services, unless
we identify the Service or Device you have selected as specifically
intended for that purpose (for example, wireless routers, Data Link,
etc.), you can't use our data Services: (1) with server devices or
host computer applications, or other systems that drive continuous
heavy traffic or data sessions; and (2) as a substitute or backup for
private lines or frame relay connections. We reserve the right to
limit or suspend any heavy, continuous data usage that adversely
impacts our network performance or hinders access to our network.

So it is still more interesting to me what the carriers actually
enforce, rather than what they could theoretically enforce (both have
sufficient lattitude to cut you off for anything). Verizon enforces
its 5 GB/month limit but doesn't seem to measure anything else or
worry about what you've been doing if you don't exceed the limit.
I've not heard of Sprint cutting anyone off yet. Verizon has a hard
limit (and is a far bigger liar for calling their service "unlimited"),
Sprint's limit is subjective and is as yet, to my knowledge, untested.

As always, past performance is not necessarily an indicator of
future results.

Dennis Ferguson

I did extensive reseach on this topic on various
RV forums and decided to go with Sprint for 2
reasons:

1. Better technology
2. No limitations

I've using Sprint broadband since Sept 2006,
and since that time Sprint has added towers
all over the country and in my primary location,
actually upgraded the tower capabilities so that
I don't have any problems viewing YouTube.Com.

Tom

On 2007-05-01, [email protected] <[email protected]> wrote:
> Does anyone have experiences regarding the real-world performance/
> coverage differences between Sprint Mobile Broadband and Verizon
> Broadband Access?
> Thanks

These might be useful.

http://www.dslreports.com/archive/spcsdns.net
http://www.dslreports.com/archive/myvzw.com

Dennis Ferguson

On May 1, 1:59 pm, [email protected] wrote:
> Does anyone have experiences regarding the real-world performance/
> coverage differences between Sprint Mobile Broadband and Verizon
> Broadband Access?
> Thanks

Given spcs's implosion of subscribers, Virgin Mobilers should get
video soon.