Sprint Still Exploring Wireless Broadband Offerings
from the could-be-this,-could-be-that... dept
Most people have assumed that Sprint was going to wait out this round of wireless broadband offerings (especially after they had so much trouble with their last attempt at a fixed wireless offering) and then look to leapfrog folks like Verizon by going straight to an EV-DV-based offering that would offer higher speed wide area wireless broadband while also giving them the ability to upgrade their voice network with the same equipment. However, as the buzz gets stronger about all the new wireless broadband offerings, people are starting to wonder if Sprint won’t be able to wait that long and, instead, will jump on board with a different broadband wireless technology that’s ready now. One analyst declared that Sprint would definitely follow in Verizon Wireless’ footsteps and look to offer a nationwide EV-DO offering that would offer speeds in the 200 to 500 kbps range, but do little to advance their voice offering (the DO is “data only” as opposed to the DV, which stands for “data voice”). Sprint quickly responded saying they haven’t made a decision yet, and are still looking at both EV-DO and EV-DV and Flarion’s FLASH-OFDM technology that has been getting so much press lately with Nextel’s trials (which, while being much faster in terms of data rates leads to other issues, such as it being quite a different beast to deal with from their other offerings). Still, it’s looking like the wireless carriers, who had been hoping to stay on the wireless broadband sidelines a little longer, are beginning to realize that they need to be making their bets pretty soon, or there may be nothing left at all.
Comments on “Sprint Still Exploring Wireless Broadband Offerings”
Sprint
I have a Sprint phone with their 3G Wireless Internet (Sprint calls it Vision). I have unlimited usage of Vision for $10 per month (actually free for me since my base plan is greater than $100/mo).
It gives me 144 Kb/s internet connectivity and works pretty well. Currently the Terms Of Service prohibit the connection of a phone to a laptop or desktop PC for use as a cellular modem, but it works and so far only a few idiots who decided to use it for extensive file sharing and multiple gigabytes of data each month have been punished.
Sprint also sells PCMCIA wireless cards that work on the same network. Their packages start at $40 per month for 20 MB of data and go up and then $0.002 per kilobyte after that. That’s just obscene. I can easily download at least 20 MB on my phone if I wanted (games, ringtones, web surfing, etc).
If they offered an all-you-can-eat wireless broadband for $65 per month I would consider it as I’d love to add wireless internet to my iPAQ, but there is *no way* I’m paying by the kilobyte for data
Re: Sprint
What Sprint is offering is *not* 3G, but 1xRTT – which is 2.5G. The real speeds tend to be significantly lower than the advertised 144k, and it’s really more like a little faster than dialup.
As for pricing, pretty much all the carriers realize that per byte pricing will never fly (it took them a *long* time to get there) and they’re all looking at flat-rate offerings. Initial prices tend to be around $80 for unlimited data, and then start to drift down to about $50 when competition sets in (about a year after they launch). Later on the prices will drop even more… So, expect better speeds at more reasonable prices before too long.
Re: Re: Sprint
Sprint, with the exception of their cell phones, no longer offers an unlimited data plan.
The real speed I have seen the few times I used my phone with my laptop have been fairly close to 144 kbps but I have never sent/received anything bigger than a couple of MB to see if it stays consistent or not.