 Review by TScheisskopf 
UPDATED: 75 days ago
member for 3.4 years, 1042 visits, last login: 3 days ago
 Belvidere,Warren,NJ
 $64 per month (12 month contract)
 "Embarq is incredibly competent."
 "Embarq is not in charge of policy for the entire Broadband industry."
 "Taken as a whole, you cannot do better. You can do a lot worse."
| Pre Sales Information:
Install process:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
(ratings above consensus)
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Sprint has degraded into a parody of itself. Once a capable and competant broadband provision pioneer, with the pending spinoff of local and broadband services Sprint has decided to pull approx. $US8 Billion out of the local service side of things to pay for its Nextel acquisition. The effect of this has been a degredation of QoS to the point that if there was ANY other provider of broad/baseband services in my area, other than the abhorrent Comcast, I would be long gone.
Alas, there is not.
Here is a representative traceroute:
02/27/06 19:38:37 Fast traceroute www.sprint.com
Trace www.sprint.com (65.173.211.241) ...
1 192.168.1.254 1ms 1ms 0ms TTL: 0 (home ok)
2 xx.xx.xx.xx 14ms 13ms 13ms TTL: 0 (nj-xx-xx-xx-xx.dhcp.sprint-hsd.net ok)
3 69.34.161.210 12ms 16ms 12ms TTL: 0 (crnjcltn01 probable bogus rDNS: No DNS)
4 144.232.201.89 177ms 167ms 219ms TTL: 0 (sl-gw1-pen-11-1.sprintlink.net verifying...)
5 144.232.5.5 182ms 170ms 208ms TTL: 0 (sl-bb25-pen-5-0.sprintlink.net verifying...)
6 144.232.16.77 187ms 177ms 206ms TTL: 0 (sl-bb24-pen-14-0.sprintlink.net verifying...)
7 144.232.20.111 197ms 172ms 197ms TTL: 0 (sl-bb26-rly-0-0.sprintlink.net verifying...)
8 144.232.20.89 214ms 197ms 224ms TTL: 0 (sl-bb25-chi-3-0.sprintlink.net verifying...)
9 144.232.26.114 205ms 199ms 224ms TTL: 0 (sl-bb20-chi-9-0.sprintlink.net verifying...)
10 144.232.19.138 218ms 214ms 229ms TTL: 0 (sl-dr21-lee-15-0.sprintlink.net verifying...)
11 208.33.105.22 227ms 228ms 233ms TTL: 0 (No rDNS)
12 10.229.95.90 215ms 227ms 234ms TTL: 0 (No rDNS)
13 65.173.209.100 220ms 224ms 231ms TTL: 0 (pending)
14 65.173.211.241 229ms 230ms 227ms TTL:113 (pending)
As you can see, these latencies would be high on a dialup connection, not a top-tier DSL connection. This has been going on for months. They tried to stonewall, then fib, now they tell us it will be fixed by March 16, 2006.
No one I know is exactly holding their breath: after all, it IS Sprint we are talking about.
We, in NNJ, pay some of the highest broad/baseband rates in the nation. We see other areas of the nation getting state-of-the-art services and service speeds at much lower rates. When asked about this, Sprint but shrugs. Instead, for the money we pay, we get service like the above, and hold times, on calling customer service, of a half-hour or more.
They very rarely offer refunds on your bills, to slightly mitigate the pain of your being a customer. The cruel reality is that even after offering these refunds and telling you that you will be getting them, they fail to follow through and you just don't get the refund.
Thus, insult is added to injury. Is this a great company or what?
I would say to those people who are lucky enough to live in an area that has a plethora of broad/baseband service providers, and where Sprint is one of their choices, use anyone else. Anyone. "Joe's Hot Dogs, Brake Service and DSL" would be preferable to inflicting this sad and sorry state of affairs on yourself.
Avoid Sprint like the plague. The gods only know where they will be by this time next year, but it ain't looking promising right now.
You have been warned.
Update 3/29/06: Bandwidth issues in NNJ area seem to have been addressed by the addition of large gouts of newly-lit fiber. Bottleneck at the Clinton NJ POP seem to have dissapeared, to Sprint's credit. Now, let's see if the situation holds. The jury is still out here. Maintain vigilance.
Update 5/9/08: Let's keep this short and sweet: We are now Embarq here. Embarq rocks on every metric. A lot of providers could learn from them This is the way Broadband oughtta be for everyone.
Followup comments:  sdetlef
join:2005-08-16
Whittier, CA
| I agree use anybody but these guys I'm an IT manager with 30 sites throughout the west coast. I have a Sprint Broadband Direct WISP connection for my San Jose site and Fresno site.
I will admit I didn't read the reviews on DSL Reports thoroughly before I decided to give Sprint my business. BIG MISTAKE... PLEASE DON'T MAKE THE SAME MISTAKE.
The latency is NEVER EVER below an average of 200ms. Packet loss is frequently as high as 10%. Their support is laughable and only repeats those numbers are within reason for them. Well actually 6% packet loss is within reason but they have never fixed the issue for me anyways.
I have 3 other WISPs and the 2 I would bend over recommending are SkyRiver (San Diego) and Verde (Las Vegas).
Sprint provides inferior service with horrible indignant tech support.
If you are lucky enough to have a choice; don't chose them.
As for me... I am on this site right now looking for replacements and will opt to buy out of the 2 year contract ($300 buy out) that I was stupid enough to enter. | |
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Sprint Broadband Direct
