Comments on: Sprint may throttle WiMax

By: JaggedXJ

JaggedXJ — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 18:29:23 +0000

Also, I was dumbfounded when AT&T were tearing up the (dead end residential street) shoulder across from my house laying down fiber & told me when I asked, that fiber to the home wouldn’t be in my area for the better part of a decade. The US truly is falling behind with broadband to the home.

By: JaggedXJ

JaggedXJ — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 18:14:34 +0000

I do not have high hopes with CrapWire in the picture. Worst decision I ever made for home service. Thought it would be cool to have an IS I could take with me like (geek squad). If you get them and have anything less than 4 bars during the first 24 hours RUN don’t walk back to the dealer & get rid of it. It also shouldn’t take a few hours to find “the spot” in your house for the reciever, which happens to be on the opposite side from the tower it is feeding. WTF.

By: MadMike

MadMike — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 14:52:09 +0000

@Bla1ze: They _ARE_ looking to bring it as a home broadband connection through a special router. Hence the comparison to Comcrap and FiOS.

Not just a mobile connection.

By: Bla1ze

Bla1ze — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 07:20:37 +0000

All this crap about FiOS and bandwidth caps, sure I may have rogers for my BlackBerry where I’m capped but FiOS is a home internet service..I have NO cap on my home services.

So isn’t sprint only looking at this for mobile service not home service…if so I fail to see why everyone is looping comcast and FiOS into the picture anyways..the only relevance I see there is they have caps so ummm we’re comparing a home service to a wireless service now because it can match speeds?

By: tiredofbs

tiredofbs — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 06:10:57 +0000

Let’s look at it this way. Xohm is a joint effort between multiple companies including Clearwire which is an ISP out west. If they cannot provide the bandwidth to feed all of their customers regardless of what anyone else is doing, don’t roll out the service until you have a solution. I’m not getting caps and all of the other crap from FiOS. If I want to download a few movies from NetFlix or Vongo and then grab some music, tv shows, movies from iTunes, why the hell should I be punished. Sprint, its called QOS. Look in to it, implement correctly, and have a damned backbone connection to the towers in excess of a T3 connection (not sure of the actuall connection speed, making a generalization). This is supposed to be 4G, people on the move, internet wherever. Don’t screw us with the WiMax like you already do with the outsourced customer service. I’m tired of your damned reps “Chris, Kelly, Mike,etc” that have to put you on hold for using a word like “Sure, ok, whatever, alright”. Bring it back home. Fuck India and their economy, jobs for Americans not bad speaking retards. And I thought Hesse was going to fix things. 2 million lost customers and counting. The ball is in your court. Choose wisely.

By: MadMike

MadMike — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 04:49:20 +0000

Then they should offer unlimited plans that are actually unlimited. Verizon FiOS may have a cap, but it doesn’t actually have a cap per se. From what the guy told me, if I use over 500GB/mo and they get reports of slowdowns in my area they will send me a letter to cut back. If I don;t cut back within the next month, they reserve the right to take “action.” Whatever that means.

That’s fine because 500GB is enough. If your pulling > 500GB, you are doing something illegal or using a home internet connection for a business. Both are no-nos.

By: Bla1ze

Bla1ze — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 04:09:39 +0000

The fact is they just simply need to stop baiting people with the word “unlimited” people in general would be more accepting of the services as long as they were clear up front on what it would be, don’t sell me an “unlimited” package only to say it has a 5GB cap on it, but then again..if they did that people would bitch about their not being any unlimited plans lmao

By: MadMike

MadMike — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 03:48:28 +0000

The 250GB cap is bogus. I can blow that away without doing anything illegal or deliberately excessive. 250GB is enough for “Average Joe User.” But I refuse to pay more, because it’s already overpriced as it is.

At least for now, Verizon FiOS doesn’t do that – but with talking to tech support, they noted 500GB “soft cap” that would raise some eyebrows.

By: kelly

kelly — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 03:34:38 +0000

@Gil
lol…my only wireless connection is the occasional tethering on my vzw cell phone for web browsing so no worries.

I realize that Sprint needs to manage their network to make sure it does not tank but, at the same time, Sprint is offering Wimax as an In Home Service. If I was to pay for the plan and use it as my ISP at home, I would expect to be able (or at least try) to do all that I mentioned above.

If they are not ready for their network to be tested that way then they need to spell out more clearly what you can and cant do. At lease with Comcast, I can monitor my bandwidth to make sure I stay under the 250gb cap and manage my network so I stay within 75% of my provisioning to avoid the throttling. I may not like it but at least I know what it is.

By: Gil

Gil — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 03:11:15 +0000

Logically, I can understand why wireless carriers want to limit the usage. Working in the industry myself, I know that the more people are using the data network, the more data is being streamed, the slower it becomes. In the interest of being fair to all their customers, wireless companies need to do what they have to. Then again, I’m not a heavy data user. I have my Blackberry that does what I need it to do.

However, if you intend on doing all that on a wireless connection, please let me know which one and where so I can avoid it!

By: kelly

kelly — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 02:56:30 +0000

I am sure Sprint and T-Mobile don’t want their networks to go belly up. At the same time, they need to be more explicit about what is “acceptable use”. Is downloading game demos on my Xbox 360 while I watch a streaming video online and do my daily backup to my box.net online storage account going to be considered excessive? At least with Comcast, I now know what the limits are.

By: MadMike

MadMike — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 02:46:51 +0000

For a wireless service I could understand limitations. They have a pretty stern limit on available bandwidth in a given area.

What I don’t understand are the cable companies and the larger broadband providers. They don’t have those limitations. They are just plain cheap bastards.

By: Will

Will — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 02:18:29 +0000

What is the big deal…Wireless is not yet ready to replace a hardline connection such as DSL, cable modem or “the fiber” that is FiOS.

I can deal with some vague cap, if it assures i get some sort of reliable connection. i think this and many site like it have made it very difficult for providers to mask poor/slow service;and hide behind vague caps when it actually is said service.

Who cares about the bandwidth hogs trying to use their wireless connection for mass video/music downloads or such things…the rest of us just want to surf on our tablet, watch a netflix movie sometimes or stream radio from time to time…

If you REALLY want to go wireless, ask Sprint, Verizon, etc to make a plan for you heavy users…guaranteed it won’t be in the $50 price point…pay for what you use cheapskate!