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 Review by azwoodman 
UPDATED: 1.1 years ago
member for 8.8 years, 1523 visits, last login: 4 days ago
 Gilbert,Maricopa,AZ
 $39 per month
 "they are gone!!"
 "I actualy liked them...at frist"
 "I now use Cox HSI"
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Next week I will have SBBD for 2 years, contract up. I'm not sure what SBBD will do to me. I would like to keep it but they need to fix the packet lost and outages. I would like to game on the net but can’t with SBBD. Cox just got to my area so I will have to make a choice soon.
In the 2 years I have had a lot of truck rolls and they all ways made me feel like it was my fault the connection did not work. BUT on the last truck roll 4-5 weeks ago I was told I was in a " no service area"!! If that was the case why did they install the development behind me?? They installed there until the cutoff in October 2001. I can see 5 pizza boxes from me computer room's window.
Any way, the long waits on hold, being told that the bad service was my fault because of my PC, and then begin told I was in a "no service area" (but they took my money each month with out mentioning this) has left a funny taste in my mouth.
If they raise the price equal to COX or there is no improvement by the end of the year I guess a change is will be in order.
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Review by davemc
UPDATED: 1.6 years ago
member for 7.9 years, 13 visits, last login: 1.3 years ago
Redwood City,San Mateo,CA
$70 per month
"When good, very good... but now, not bvery good"
"speed has decreased as more users join the service they blame my neighbors trees"
"May have to consider Comcast, but can't stand the company"
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I've had Sprint Broadband since 12/2000, during the dead period as well as the new live period. Service has been all over the map, including a period earlier this year when i researched alternatives (again).
However, the service is reliable now, consistent and affordable. I'd like better link speeds, but can't argue that it works through all kinds of weather, or other factors.
More and more of those ubiquitous pizza box antennas are appearing around my area.
Update: 4/2008: performance has declined to almost unusable. Can't hold a VPN more than 10 minutes. May have to go to other options.
davemc
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Review by werkowitch
Posted: 1.7 years ago
member for 1.7 years, 18 visits, last login: 71 days ago
Belton,Cass,MO
$59 per month (24 month contract)
 about 1 days
"Its an Aircard works everyplace I go so far."
"Networking"
"Ok for laptop mobil use"
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I originally purchased this aircard to replace my Hughesnet satelite ISP. I am self-employed and use the internet in my company - heavy use. I have a network with three computers and hughes is dead dog slow. You hit the enter key and take a nap. I thought the Sprint Aircard would fix my speed problem. So I purchased the modem and was going to tell hughes to take a hike and use the aircard. Well there is little support from Sprint or from the modem folks for hooking it all up and that isn't my specialty so it hasn't been done yet. I told Sprint what I was trying to do and they were real helpful to make a sale but not in support of networking. i
The Aircard itself works just fine, the speed is slower that I thoght it would be. It works in remote locations like I want it to do. Installation was pretty easy. Just load the CD and plug it in, it was really that easy for me. Well thas my story. I'm disappointed in the networking aspect and it AT7T hooks up the DSL in the next 30 days like they told me then the aircard and hughes both go back. No question!
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Review by buzzardseton
UPDATED: 1.7 years ago
member for 6.6 years, 55 visits, last login: 1.6 years ago
Westminster,Adams,CO
$49 per month
"Was the only thing I could get at the time"
"Has become slower and slower over time"
"go with cable or dsl"
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When I first got Sprint Broadband Direct it was fairly fast and the only thing available . Over the last year it has become increasingly slower. I have been a customer for about nine years and now I am thinking about switching to dsl for more speed and it is also cheaper. If you can get anything else you will be better off getting that instead of Sprint Broadband Direct...
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Review by xfer_rdy
Posted: 1.9 years ago
member for 1.9 years, 14 visits, last login: 3 days ago
Louisville,Boulder,CO
Contract price not specified.
"Good between 12:30AM and 6AM"
"Service has very poor speed and is unreliable"
"Service the worst ever in Denver/Boulder"
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Service the worst ever in Denver/Boulder, has been slow, under 300kbs -- thats bits !! Since SBBD has started a consolidation of channels in the Denver market, the service is awful. Customer support is powerless to help.
I asked some questions of SBBD, I'll share some of the answers
Best guess on what SBBD is doing ?? Customer support says they don't know. Who knows there is no corporate message.
Will the service ever improve ? Customer support says they don't know, but we can send out a truck/technician again. -- The technician has already been here once, the problem is in the head end.
Is SSBD shutting down service in the Denver market ? Customer support says they don't know.
Is there a minimum level of service ? Yes, 512kbs (bits), but they cannot meet their minimum level of service for 8 weeks.
Can I ask a senior manager if I should get a new service ? Customer support says they don't know, they don't have the ability to get a manager/director to call me back.
I believe SBBD is deliberately driving customers away.
Followup comments:  ydoucare
join:2003-03-12
Rensselaer, IN
 ·Embarq
 ·Millenicom
·Sprint Mobile Broa..
1 edit | ... If I were you, i'd just switch over to Sprint Mobile Broadband (EVDO Rev. A), or a wired connection if available. Sprint has EVDO coverage in your area. Typical speeds are in the 800 kbps - 1.2 mbps range. In more populated areas where towers are fed with more bandwidth, people see over 2 mbps. | |
| | sneumann55
join:2002-07-27
Yonkers, NY | Re: ... I Second That Idea, I am Totally Happy With The Sprint Card, Speed is great! | |
| | | xfer_rdy
join:2007-12-13
Louisville, CO
·Sprint Broadband D..
| Re: ...GO Sprint EVDO This is my Dad's SBBD account, I'm getting Sprint EVDO.
Just to let everyone know, SBBD has been down since December 25th. Today is the December 28th, and still no service. No one in support knows if/when it will be back.
Hopefully, after I get the EVDO service, my Dad will see the light. SBBD should pay him to be a customer !!! | |
| rayatrayg
join:2008-03-01
Fountain, CO
| RE... review of Sprint Broadband Direct My service in Colorado Springs has been horrible for the last three months. The technician has been here and the problem is Sprint's computers. He confirmed the high uplink packet loss that I see.
For the last two weeks uplink packet loss has been 36% to 95%. Uplink speed has been less than 8 kbps for the last four days.
Today I got an email from Sprint that the problem has been fixed. My testing today shows the packet loss was 71%, uplink speed peaked at 4 kbps, dropped to 1 kbps, then failed to complete the test.
Tech Support says that uplink speed is not guaranteed. My uplink speeds are not a concern. Sprint can only check packet loss from Sprint to my computer which is low. They are not concerned about the uplink packet loss.
Service was good for many years but has been getting worse for the last six months. Three months ago email became pretty much unusable. I cannot send any email with an attachment. One email to tech support I had to send at work because it wouldn't upload through SBBD.
I also believe SBBD is deliberately driving customers away.
ray@rayg.us | |
| | rayatrayg
join:2008-03-01
Fountain, CO
| Re: RE... review of Sprint Broadband Direct I finally had a technician visit and restore the quality of service for my SBBD connection. Upload speeds 46-165 kbps and download speeds 1600-3000 kbps. Packet loss is typically 1-3%. The packet loss is in the same Sprint Computer as previously. The technical Support Department doesn't have a clue on how to test or fix problem, they just do tweaks and declare the problem fixed.
rayatrayg | |
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Review by TechnoKraut
UPDATED: 2.1 years ago
member for 2.1 years, 2 visits, last login: 2 years ago
Peoria,Maricopa,AZ
$44 per month
"It used to be good years ago"
"Its bad at present, and not getting any better"
"I will be with another ISP on Friday"
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SBD used to be faster than our local cable company on down loads, and I never got above 125 k on up loads. I have been with them for seven years, and the last two have left me with an empty feeling. Now, it is hit or miss, they give me excuses and no solutions. Some days it runs ok, some days it runs as slow as my first modem of 28.8 kb and AOL. I am not getting value for my money, so I must go with another ISP. I am editing this, I have been reading some of the other reviews, and they all seem to agree with mine, even though I have been with this forum for a short time.
Followup comments: TechnoKraut
join:2007-10-09
Peoria, AZ | Update 10-28-2007 I'm glad I changed my ISP. Much better service for less money. | |
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 Review by USAFA82
UPDATED: 2.3 years ago
member for 2.5 years, 228 visits, last login: 2 days ago
Colorado Springs,El Paso,CO
$39 per month (12 month contract)
"When I first signed up with them in 2001, they were the only ISP to provide broadband to my neighborhood"
"They have no money to upgrade their equipment. Download speed is inadequate. Upload is very slow. Latency is horrible"
"You can get more value for your money from another provider"
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I've been experiencing numerous outages and high latency from Sprint Broadband for the past year. I called their tech support most recently on May 2nd. The tech stated that my modem probably would need to be replaced. The company that made the equipment has gone out of business, so all replacement modems are refurbished/used equipment. The tech stated that the architecture is "ancient" and not scheduled to be replaced due to the cost. The tech suggested going with Comcast because that is what he uses at his home and I would be pleased with the lower latency and higher download speeds.
I switched to Comcast the same day (May 2nd) and have been pleased so far. I called Sprint Broadband today (May 7th) to cancel. The Sprint Broadband rep said the billing cycled today and my credit card would be charged anyway. I feel this is very unfair considering I've been a loyal Sprint Broadband customer for six years and have put up with their poor service for the past year.
Stay away from Sprint Broadband if you can!
Update: 6/27/07: After not getting anywhere with the Sprint "supervisor," In early May I filed a complaint with the BBB (who forwarded the complaint to their Kansas City office). I received an email message this morning from the Kansas City BBB that Sprint Broadband would refund the $39.95 and I should be receiving a check within 10 days.
Update: 7/6/07: Received the check and deposited it today!
Followup comments: orlandvic
join:2001-03-13
Orland Park, IL
·Sprint Broadband D..
| SprintBroadband Direct Chicago Il. from aSears tower antenna I have had many outages in the past 6 months thinking its my equipment. The "Techs" are telling me they need to send a tech out to check the hardware. My contract has also ended years ago. To replace anything their will be a $99 charge for each device, modem or antenna or sign up for a year with a contract & they will replace every thing for free. For FREE Sound like a scam after reading others having the same problem with speeds slowing down and many outages. Its funny when things start working and speed up faster at night and or just after you contact the "TECHS" on the phone. When you tell them tests where done using the speed tests in Broadband Reports.com, they do their double talk back at you. Oh we cannot raise the upload speed at all. | |
| 
MadAtSprintBBD
@sprintbbd.net
| Had the same problem with billing... I am preparing to move to a different house...the area has a better, faster service for cheaper price then Sprint. So I called today to cancel and ask for them to credit my account back the money they charged, since they just charged my account today. No luck, they said that they would shut down my service but wouldn't credit the money back to my account. So now I'm going to be charged for a service that I'm not going to be using. When asked why, I was given an answer that "it's out policy".
So I told them that this information is not on the website, and there is no explanation that there is a "no refund" policy.
I have been a loyal user of this service for 7 years...and this is the treatment I get. I never once complained about the outages, and the slow connections that happened at anytime.
I'm done with Sprint Broadband...never again will I use this service nor will I recommend this service to anyone. | |
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Review by josephisen
Posted: 2.5 years ago
member for 8.4 years, 307 visits, last login: 1.2 years ago
Chicago,Cook,IL
$44 per month
"Generally decent downstream speeds"
"Puny upstream speeds, highly erratic performance"
"Barely competitive in today's broadband landscape"
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I have had Sprint Broadband Direct in Chicago since 2000. Installation required the physical attachment of a receiver dish on the outside of my building, connected to a broadband modem indoors by Coaxial cable.
Downstream speeds are generally fairly good (1500 kbps and above) and occasionally hit 5000 kbps. Upstream speeds are poor (between 100 and 150 kbps). The connection is temperamental. The modem purportedly delivers DHCP but the connection was constantly being hijacked by some mystery device so I configured my computer (a Mac) with a fixed IP address, which works far better (and also supports internet connection sharing in Mac OS 10.4).
On occasion, the connection either fails altogether or delivers both download and upload below dial-up speed.
When I got this service it was the only game in town where I live. I stay with it from sheer inertia (and a small measure of gratitude for being there when others weren't). Several of today's alternatives are considerably better both in performance and value.
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Review by Pro_D
Posted: 4.1 years ago
member for 6.4 years, 33 visits, last login: 1.3 years ago
Tucson,Pima,AZ
$47 per month (24 month contract)
"In it's hayday was awesome and has potential but..."
"has severe ups in downs in various areas of quality."
"Might be a good pick in a while (under a new manager)."
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Our experience with spring has had good and bad, more recently very bad. I am no longer a sprint customer and here is why: Poor quality service, poor quality and rude customer service and tech support people, and in particularly an overly broad interpretation of our contract by the new general manager here in Tucson which had us shut down without notice.
In general latency on online gaming has always been such that games show a latency (or ping) of 5000ms and has never improoved (though recently there have been claims to the contrary). The main thing the service WAS good for was downloading with massive amounts of bandwidth to be had at night, well beyond the 1 megabit speed. Instead of going with accounts having a cap they instead went with a load balanced approach so when usage is high bandwidth is low and vise versa.
Recently the service has been going downhill with frequent outages making it difficult to even surf the web let alone download anything. They have been updating the service as late and performing general maintenence which is fine for a month, this went on for about 3 months.
Customer support and tech support reps were quite kind and service outage information was plentiful and accurate. Now they have been causing outages themselves and then steering customers into thinking that it is the customers fault. Also tech reps appear to be poorly trained compaired with the hayday of SBD. Lastly most (not all) people we have spoke with have been either mildly rude and unhelpfull to just plain rude.
At first the service cost about 30 dolars a month, and the service was great, now the service is going downhill fast and costs $47 a month.
The straw that broke the cammels back (and caused me to cease being an SBD customer) was about a week agoe we talked to another person about how the service was performing badly with outages, it came up (again) that our firewall has been showing active attempts at hacking of late and this rep (one of the few decent ones of late) took a heavy interest in this and we setup plans to help them track down these hackers or virus spreaders. Then 2 days agoe the internet connection stops, completely down. We all thought that it was yet another outage and opted to wait it out. About 3 hours into this outage we finaly get a phone call from a sprint rep who rudely informs us that we are on 24 hour probation and no previous warnings had been sent. We are told that the new general manager instituded this temporary baning on about a dozen people for violation of their contract stating that we were detrimental to the service. The secton of the contract in question deals with malicious acts agains the service such as hacking or spreading of virus, we were engaged in nither activity and were in fact trying to help them on that score.
After a couple long conversations we found out that the service was being modified with frequent outages and that they were not informing their customer base of this and in fact (from our experience) leading customers to believe that it was their equipment or computer at fault. Also the new general manager, for whatever reason, decided that bandwidth usage above average constituded malicious acts against their system. This has negated all the things we liked about sprint to this point such as friendly and helpfull support and massive overnight bandwidth (sometimes).
In closing, given recent experience, I would HEAVILY recomend going elsewhere, at least until customer complaints have piled up to have a change in management, which I doupt will happen. In conversations, attempting to politely both figure out what was going on and find a solution, customer service reps claimed that they couldn't make a record of the complaint so this will have to do. If you are considering a switch either to or from this service wait a week for a comparison of this service with comcast (our new ISP).
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Review by aaacis
Posted: 4.2 years ago
member for 9.3 years, 650 visits, last login: 61 days ago
Tucson,Pima,AZ
$69 per month (12 month contract)
about 25 days
"Great When It Works - Which has become more problematic."
"Inept Technical Support, Close Tech Support on Weekends and Evenings, Blocking Self Diagnostics, Overselling Market"
"Only Use this One is it is the ONLY Choice."
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After a Complete disaster with COVAD, 5 Years ago, [Qwest and Covad were a very bad pair for SDSL especially in Tucson, AZ], I ordered Sprint Broadband. It was delivered and installed in about 30 days.
There were the numerous outages and high latency as Sprint Broadband, added more clients to their service base and disconnected The Huges TV network that was purchased to roll into their new wireless service.
Trouble Tickets averaged every 1.5 weeks causing extreme stress and poor /unacceptable performance.
I was a pretty smooth ride after the 1st year and a half of pain, service was better, better speed, however the higher than normal latency (for wireless) was and still remains an issue and makes the service inconsistent.
Beginning this year 2005 in April or so, Sprint Started selling more clients, ever since that the service has become impossible, with outages occurring daily at peak periods, performace has dropped to less than dialup during these periods, on site service takes about a week to respond.
For a speed review checkout the most recent activity at dslreports.com
Please let me know if you are in the Tucson Area or are having similar issues with Sprint Broadband.
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