I'm not a VM customer yet but from reading around it sounds like people think VM data speeds are limited because it is prepaid? I know about the throttling after 2.5 GB.
Just curious because I saw this on the VM web site....thoughts? I'm waiting to sign up until the HTC One V (hopefully) or an even better phone comes to VM in the next few months. One concern I had was that I might get poor speeds because it is prepaid.
Also, is there a way to try to determine what my data speeds would be? I've looked at Sprint's coverage map but it seems like data speeds are pretty variable based on the area. Thanks!
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You said it best, it is variable based on the area. I'd say you'll at least get 50kbps, which isn't bad. I get at least 100kbps on my phone. I'm in Houston BTW.
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Not that I've ever been able to tell. My old roommate had an Intercept with Sprint when I use to have the Intercept from Virgin Mobile (my daughter now has that phone). Same speeds. No difference.
One really can't say what the norm speeds would be as it's totally going to depend on your location.
Not that I've ever been able to tell. My old roommate had an Intercept with Sprint when I use to have the Intercept from Virgin Mobile (my daughter now has that phone). Same speeds. No difference.
One really can't say what the norm speeds would be as it's totally going to depend on your location.
Thanks, I mostly meant the normal speeds for any given location.
A secondary question for those that have VM - if I buy a fairly expensive phone can I return it or re-sell it on ebay if I don't get good service in my location? It seems like the coverage maps are not always a good indicator of good service. It seems like it will be OK but I'm not sure.
I'm on the border of Hangover Park in Schaumburg IL, which is oddly near where NoNameFace is, and get about .75-1Mbps on my Optimus V. That is quite a difference in speed for practically being in the same city. I guess this is a good example of how Sprint is quite variable, even in the same town.
Last edited by nnickn; April 13th, 2012 at 08:38 PM.
Thanks, I mostly meant the normal speeds for any given location.
A secondary question for those that have VM - if I buy a fairly expensive phone can I return it or re-sell it on ebay if I don't get good service in my location? It seems like the coverage maps are not always a good indicator of good service. It seems like it will be OK but I'm not sure.
The normal speed... There isn't really a normal speed since Sprint's network isn't constant.
And if you buy a phone from wherever you should have 30 days to return it for a full refund. After that you could sell it for partial price to someone on ebay or craigslist or the like.
And yea coverage maps aren't always that accurate. I got bad signal even though according to VM's coverage charts I was in a perfect signal area...
OK, maybe another stupid question but I have not upgraded to the smartphone world yet. Are the speeds such as 700 kbps on par with other companies 3G service, T-Mobile for example?
OK, maybe another stupid question but I have not upgraded to the smartphone world yet. Are the speeds such as 700 kbps on par with other companies 3G service, T-Mobile for example?
On par with T-mo... No since they use HSPA or advanced 3g. So on T-mo 3g or as they call it 4g you would get higher speeds depending on your area. I regularly get 5+mbps down. Now comparing to Verizon or AT&T 3g it might be on par. But not compared to T-mo's...
OK, maybe another stupid question but I have not upgraded to the smartphone world yet. Are the speeds such as 700 kbps on par with other companies 3G service, T-Mobile for example?
This is my extremely unscientific analysis on the subject in the Chicago area. All speeds are downloads.
T-Mobile 2G Edge about .10mbps
Sprint 3G CDMA Rev A. average about .75-1Mbps
Us Cellular 3G CDMA Rev? about 1-2mbps
AT&T 3G HSDPA average about 2-3Mbps
Clearwire 4G WiMAX 20-28Mbps
Verizon 4G LTE 20-70Mbps
Thanks everyone, do you find the speed to be good enough to support an occasional youtube video and general web surfing, email, etc?
That really depends on where you are located and how fast your speeds are... Mine took about 5 minutes to load one page and to watch a youtube short youtube video I would probably have to let it buffer for a while... But other people have no problem so it ultimately comes down to how fast your data is.
Thanks, I guess the only real way to know will be to sign up and see for myself. 5 minutes is pretty unreasonable for a web page IMO. I guess you get what you pay for but my area won't have 4G for a long time.
I know this forum isn't for T-Mobile but does anyone know how to check and see if my area is HSPA+ or is their entire network that way? Unsure of what I'm doing here.....I was also thinking about going with Str Talk with T-Mobile.
Thanks, I guess the only real way to know will be to sign up and see for myself. 5 minutes is pretty unreasonable for a web page IMO. I guess you get what you pay for but my area won't have 4G for a long time.
I know this forum isn't for T-Mobile but does anyone know how to check and see if my area is HSPA+ or is their entire network that way? Unsure of what I'm doing here.....I was also thinking about going with Str Talk with T-Mobile.
im here in minneasota about 6 miles away from minneapolis hitting about 300kbps down and 200 up and when im in minneapolis been getting 1.5mbs down and 900kbps up
Not bad.....I'm probably going to sign up either here or with Boost if/when some new phones ever come out!
The Optimus Elite should be coming out some time this month and the Evo V (formerly known as Evo 3D) and the HTC One V should be coming out some time after May 27th.
Here's MHO. Though I don't think VM is throttled, I do think that Sprint Customers are given priority. What this means to me is that if a tower is congested, the network customers get more allocated bandwidth. If they aren't then you get the standard fair (.8-2 Mbps). I have no real basis for this opinion mind you, just my minimally educated guess.
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Here's MHO. Though I don't think VM is throttled, I do think that Sprint Customers are given priority. What this means to me is that if a tower is congested, the network customers get more allocated bandwidth. If they aren't then you get the standard fair (.8-2 Mbps). I have no real basis for this opinion mind you, just my minimally educated guess.
I used a Sprint PRL and didn't see that big a difference
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My old roommate that I lived with for many years has Sprint (and at one time we both had the Intercept. His with Sprint and mine with VM. My daughter has my Intercept now). We both always had the same connection speeds. Any time my 3G went out (which was seldom), his was out as well.
Also keep in mind that your speed tests to speedtest.net are not going to be indicative to what your speeds would be to anywhere else. The speed tests you do for speedtest.net simply show your connect speeds to their servers.
I used a Sprint PRL and didn't see that big a difference
The towers might not be doing this based on the phone's prl. They might be doing it based on ESN. Sprint most definitly has these numbers clearly defined and seperated for VM phones.
The towers might not be doing this based on the phone's prl. They might be doing it based on ESN. Sprint most definitly has these numbers clearly defined and seperated for VM phones.
My old roommate that I lived with for many years has Sprint (and at one time we both had the Intercept. His with Sprint and mine with VM. My daughter has my Intercept now). We both always had the same connection speeds. Any time my 3G went out (which was seldom), his was out as well.
Also keep in mind that your speed tests to speedtest.net are not going to be indicative to what your speeds would be to anywhere else. The speed tests you do for speedtest.net simply show your connect speeds to their servers.
Yeah, actual download speeds are about 10% of your connectivity speeds.
Preferred Roaming List. Basically tells your phone where all the cell towers are. Having an outdated PRL can potentially not enable your phone to a closer tower.
Preferred Roaming List. Basically tells your phone where all the cell towers are. Having an outdated PRL can potentially not enable your phone to a closer tower.
that for vm or sprint also ? also how,do u update it?
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Lately I've been pulling 1.5 to 2.2 megs and pinging 130-165 ms around my area in Hoffman Estates, IL at any given time...but in nearby Palatine, IL where I work, can't ping any better than 600-700 ms and pull an avg of maybe 200 kbps.
Lately I've been pulling 1.5 to 2.2 megs and pinging 130-165 ms around my area in Hoffman Estates, IL at any given time...but in nearby Palatine, IL where I work, can't ping any better than 600-700 ms and pull an avg of maybe 200 kbps.
Here's MHO. Though I don't think VM is throttled, I do think that Sprint Customers are given priority. What this means to me is that if a tower is congested, the network customers get more allocated bandwidth. If they aren't then you get the standard fair (.8-2 Mbps). I have no real basis for this opinion mind you, just my minimally educated guess.
I once started a thread on another forum to investigate this idea. No one was ever able to turn up anything from a reliable source to substantiate this. People offered all kinds of guesses and logic puzzles, but never found a single press release, engineering document, 10-K statement, FCC filing, state PUC filing or anything else that proved or even hinted that Sprint prioritizes traffic by brand.
You are too focused on the air interface - that is only one network component that contributes to overall throughput. The data has any number of opportunities to get slowed down as it goes from handset to wireless tower antenna to land-line back haul network to data center to public Internet and back.
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I once started a thread on another forum to investigate this idea. No one was ever able to turn up anything from a reliable source to substantiate this. People offered all kinds of guesses and logic puzzles, but never found a single press release, engineering document, 10-K statement, FCC filing, state PUC filing or anything else that proved or even hinted that Sprint prioritizes traffic by brand.
You are too focused on the air interface - that is only one network component that contributes to overall throughput. The data has any number of opportunities to get slowed down as it goes from handset to wireless tower antenna to land-line back haul network to data center to public Internet and back.
Full speed data?
