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Users Say Sprint Epic4G 3G Upload Speeds Limited To 150kbps
Miamicanes writes "Nearly everyone who owns a Sprint Samsung Epic 4G and has benchmarked its 3G performance has discovered that its 3G upload speeds are apparently limited to 150kbps. So far, Sprint has not officially acknowledged it as a problem, nor has it indicated whether this might be a firmware bug, a PRL issue, tower-related, or the result of a deliberate policy to cap 3G upload speeds. Regardless, the problem is causing widespread anger among Epic4G owners, many of whom have bitterly noted the irony of being charged a $10 surcharge so they can endure data transfers that are slower than they had 4 years ago (and a quarter of the speeds enjoyed by Evo owners on the same 3G network)." Cellphone networks are fickle beasts; can anyone out there with an Epic provide a counterexample?
Epic fail
"Don't worry. We are slowing down the Evo speeds too and we will be charging them $29.99/month for wifi hotspot."
--- We need more Ron Paul!
VOIP, Video Chat are good examples. There's more to the internet than files.
Movies and pictures shot with your phone. Runs into the 100 megabytes for a couple of small movies.
Video. Most phones have cameras. You could upload directly to YouTube.
So long as people keep paying their bills, the market is bearing this imposition. I am all but certain that this is another example of telcoms limiting and crippling their services rather than improving their infrastructure. AT&T taught the industry a hard lesson with their iPhone exclusivity deal. They burdened their entire infrastructure which was unprepared for the load. I am of the opinion that Sprint seeks to avoid the same. Additionally, as these handheld computers are getting phone network enabled, I suspect VOIP and other forms of internet communications will become more frequently used. So they will sell you a "phone" and you will in turn use it to bypass their business model? Not if they can help it.
It more than just what the market allows; compare what we have in the US to say, Europe, and you will come to the conclusion that we're simply seeing the effects of regulatory capture.
I have to agree - don't "be angry" as a customer, phone them up and complain. If they won't do anything for you, cut the service there and then and tell them why. If they bother to argue about things, dig out your contracts, file official complaints, etc. But, ffs, don't just "get angry" on a forum they probably never read and don't care about while you're still paying your monthly fee. Damn well complain, move companies, terminate contracts, etc.
This is the sort of thing you should realise while the contract is still fresh if it's important to you, so use the early get-out clause and introductory periods and get the hell off it. If you keep paying, it's really NOT that important to you. And if you entered into a cast-iron contract that you can't get out of (HIGHLY unlikely) for a service that you didn't bother to read up on, check terms, insist on minimum speeds, etc. then that's your own tough luck.
I still can't figure out why people pay for shit that they don't want, and then complain about it.
The difficulty is that the banks won't lend to improve infrastructure, as nobody is sure where the demand will go. In fact, I have some sympathy for the carrier. When O2, which is in my view a pretty [comment redacted owing to libel laws in UK] telecoms supplier, introduced the iPhone, our company was using O2. I noticed that every time a visitor with an iPhone entered our offices, calls started to drop out. I guessed that there wasn't enough bandwidth to the cell tower, and the iPhone was getting prioritised. I couldn't prove what was going on but I was suspicious. I jumped up and down and we switched to Vodafone; problem disappeared. I guess a supplier introducing a new, potentially high bandwidth device, would be careful so that, in the language of sales consultancy, they don't turn POCs into PPOCs (pissed off customers into permanently pissed off customers.)
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Information about the $10 "4G tax" can be found in http://explainthefee.com/ . There's a new post about how to cancel service without paying ETF in case you want out
The best test environment is production. - Me
chrome://browser/content/browser.xul
150Kbps, not KBps.
In the forum thread mentioned there appears to be a comment regarding the phone's firmware.
Apparently, some guys over at xda developers uploaded the european rom and were able to get full bandwidth from the phone. Given the reception issues and other communication problems I'm going to say this is a badly cooked rom on part of the Sprint side. (Even more Epic fail).
Now, at the moment this is completely unconfirmed and if you are an Epic fail owner I would suggest visiting their site to confirm.
"You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours." -- Yogi Berra
Either you don't know what's going on or you're purposefully spreading misinformation. Virgin and Boost are Sprint. Cingular is AT&T. Really there are only 4 companies to speak of: AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon. And it'll probably be down to 3 in the next few years.
But these 4 companies don't compete very vigorously. If anything, the cost of SMS messaging leads me to believe they're coordinating.
Do you have any idea how much regulation and enforcement action was required to allow the consumer to choose their LD carrier? The Bells didn't just wake up one day and decide you could hook a non-bell phone to their network, they were ordered to allow it. They don't interface with VoIP providers because they like them.
They will have to be dragged kicking and screaming into a competitive marketplace. At a minimum it will be necessary to insist that all phones be unlocked and capable of operation on any cell network in the U.S. and that purchase of the phone be unbundled from the service. Next up will be ending the sneak attacks by huge bills.
After all, this is an industry that has pulled every dirty trick in the book including designing phones so that the user can accidentally do things that result in significant charges.
As a side note, the technology did NOT freeze. In that time they went from a system where a human being physically connected pairs of wires carrying analog signals together to complete a call to a fully automated digital network. The services offered to the CUSTOMER stagnated.