Sprint Mobile Broadband: A Wireless-Internet Review

There are times when your home's DSL line or cable internet connection isn't quite enough to meet your Internet browsing needs. And while your favorite coffee shop and even McDonald's may offer free or for-pay wireless Internet, sometimes you just want a bit more freedom and mobility than any additional fixed-location venues will offer. If this is the case for you, it may be time to consider Sprint's mobile broadband services with the EVDO network.

I've been using Sprint's mobile broadband service with my laptop for about five months at this point and I can honestly say that it's the best $60 per month investment that I've made for my business. Not that this mobile broadband internet service is for business use only, but being able to check my email, watch Youtube videos and read the news at the park or while traveling down the highway in the back of a van on a 300 mile trip is really a great set of benefits.

Sprint's EVDO Rev A Speeds

The Internet speeds for Sprint's EVDO Rev A network are pretty solid - if I'm connecting anywhere around where I live; at home, or at any of the five local parks I will get a download speed of anywhere from 500kb/s to 1300kb/s which translates loosely to 60KB/s to 160KB/s download speeds. These speeds at the higher end rival low-end DSL line speeds.

As for upload speeds - they're a bit harder to figure as I do not upload nearly as much data as I download. However, I've consistently noticed around 30KB/s to 40KB/s which is in the 200kb/s to 400kb/s range.

Overall, I am very pleased with the speeds I'm receiving. Now, you might want to avoid watching videos on sites like Hulu.com because they don't seem to buffer their videos whereas Youtube does. While you can watch videos and such at present using Sprint's mobile broadband according to their terms of service - non-buffering videos do not fare well with this service in my experience.

Sprint Mobile Broadband Roaming

I had the opportunity a few weeks ago to test out Sprint's mobile broadband while roaming. The speeds were not the best - but that could have been due to the fact that I had almost no signal as well. I would equate my limited roaming experience to surfing the net with a congested dial-up connection. In all honesty it was probably faster than most dial-up internet connections, but at times it did take a considerable amount of time for certain media-rich pages to load.

However, when I was roaming I was also traveling in the back of a vehicle down back roads in upstate Michigan - I assume that the signal and speeds would have been more consistent had I been in a stationary location.

Sprint's Wireless Internet - Signal Issues

To be honest I have had almost zero issues with losing my signal in my home area. Now, I have great coverage where I live near central Michigan, but there are a lot of trees that apparently play with the signal every once and a while depending on where I'm connected.

I use the Sierra Wireless Aircard 595U USB card and there was about a week period where I would lose the ability to browse the 'net even while I had a full signal. If I disconnected the software and reconnected the issue was fixed - but it only happened a few times over a one week period.

Overall, the signal as been good to excellent for me for the last five months of almost daily usage.

Sprint's Customer Service for Wireless Issues

Sprint has an apparent reputation of providing shoddy customer service - but I have not found that to be true in my case. Now, I haven't really had all that many issues where I needed to call customer service, but in the few times that I have it's been acceptable or better. The wait times have been acceptable and the CSRs have always been at least moderately helpful and I've never ended a call without my problem being addressed or resolved.

Final thoughts on Sprint's Mobile Broadband Service

This service is not perfect, it's not cheap when compared to a home DSL line or cable connection and it's not designed to be your only internet connection. However, because of the near DSL speeds that it gives me and its mobility - the $60 per month price tag is well worth the investment in my opinion.

Sources:

http://www.sprint.com/business/products/products/evdoEnterZip.jsp
http://www.sierrawireless.com/product/ac595U.aspx