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Review by stonecolddsl 
UPDATED: 222 days ago
member for 5.8 years, 1695 visits, last login: 110 days ago
 Sarasota,Sarasota,FL
 $75 per month (24 month contract)
 "Mobile broadband no matter where I go."
 "Way to expensive by time you add taxes"
 "Get your boss to pay for it."
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I happen to use this card when I am on the road. This service offers basic dsl speeds almost any major city. There are very few places where I am not getting an evdo signal. Service is usually fast and low latceny.
Sprint billing and customer service sucks as always and probably cancel the contract as I am no longer so much a road warrior and just dont need to be spending that kind of money on internet. When I can use my phone via bt tether a cheaper cost from alltel.
Update 04/20/2009:
Droped the service when they forced me to the 5 gig cap limit. Apparently for a company that use to believe unlimited really ment unlimited that unlimited now means 5gb but ast least they say it upfront..
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 Review by dpm1124
UPDATED: 238 days ago
member for 8.8 years, 2772 visits, last login: a few hours ago
Bartlett,Dupage,IL
Contract price not specified.
"Connects just about everywhere"
"Sometimes lat. is REAL bad"
"For an otr driver it is great"
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I drive a tanker cross country. Connection is very important to me so I asked a lot of questions about who had the best card and most access points. Since I bought this plan I have had very few problems with connections. As long as I have 2 bars on my phone I am on the internet faster than 56k. Some of the speeds I get are great, some are,,, well, better than dial up. Latency gets to be a problem sometimes, but you get used to it. All in all if you travel a lot and go to some out of the way places I would recommend Sprint.
If you look at the sprint charts and look for my name you can see some of my speeds and I put where I was when I did the tests.
Update: here it is a few years later and things are what they are. In different areas of the country I just fly and in others they suck. It is interesting in the fact that some of my best speeds were out in no mans land. Case in point I was at a rest area in the middle of Kansas and had almost a 1.5 download. Yet I was in Conley Ga (just outside Atlanta) and
was barely connected. Still I would be in with-drawl without my Sprint card.
Yet another update: Here it is a year later and I am still with Sprint. i have compared my speeds with other drivers and it a hit or miss situation. I may be at 756 down and the guy next to me on verizon is barely connected. Then the next town over he is flying and I am running at barely over 56k. i will be staying with Sprint for the time being and when my contract is up I just might change, Then again I can get very lazy about this stuff.
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 Review by Irloki
Posted: 244 days ago
member for 259 days, 97 visits, last login: a few hours ago
Dewey,Washington,OK
Contract price not specified.
"Goes anywhere, not terrible latency, not affected by weather"
"Connection latency can randomly spike"
"Good Buy"
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I am in a rural area where there were NO other broadband services than satellite which I will never buy. I got the unlimited data package and it has been wonderful for WoW. I am even able to comfortably play in the WoW arena comfortably. Install is easy as a software install.
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 Review by ninjatutle
UPDATED: 247 days ago
member for 3.9 years, 2197 visits, last login: 25 days ago
San Ramon,Contra Costa,CA
$59 per month (24 month contract)
 about 3 days
"Being mobile, what else."
"5GB cap"
"Mobile broadband is a must for me."
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Merlin S720 Card.
Pricing as shown on the bill:
PCS Connection Charges:$59.99
Surcharges and Fees:
Federal Wireless Number Pooling and Portability $0.15
Federal E911 $0.40
[Edit]
No longer have Sprint...ATT 3G now.
Followup comments:  wilby
join:2001-12-30
Deltona, FL | Smmoth Talker Has anyone tried the Smooth Talker booster? | |
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Review by Jarhead
UPDATED: 253 days ago
member for 8.1 years, 2542 visits, last login: 193 days ago
Herndon,Fairfax,VA
Contract price not specified. (24 month contract)
about 1 days
"N/A"
"N/A"
"Was great when I had it"
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No longer have the card but the service was great when I had it. Upgraded to Instinct w/everything plan. Have not tried phone as Modem yet but thats the plan.
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Review by carlnoble
Posted: 254 days ago
member for 254 days, 2 visits, last login: 252 days ago
Orlando,Orange,FL
 Business customer
Contract price not specified.
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It is almost as bad as dialup! I only get 384 down best case and not even 100 up. I have used both 3G cards they sent me Merlin and Sierra, on 3 laptops in multiple locations and my Verizon card is always better.
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 Review by sirwoogie
UPDATED: 255 days ago
member for 7.9 years, 2734 visits, last login: a few hours ago
Carleton,Monroe,MI
$60 per month (24 month contract)
about 3 days
"Good coverage (Rev. A) in urban and many rural areas. Advertised speeds can be reached with good signal"
"Latency can fluctuate even with solid signal, but seems to be normal for protocol"
"Good for the high-speed traveler or as a HSI replacement for those with no other option."
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My residence was not serviced by any HSI. Charter cable tap is approximately 600ft from my house across a railroad track. They would require full node deployment to hit my house from the other direction. AT&T CO is 18,500 from my house, thus not far enough away to justify lighting an RT, not close enough to have reliable DSL service. I was relegated to dual-channel ISDN for ~$90/mo ($60/mo line + $30/mo service). Raise in rates for ISDN pushed me to make the effort to switch.
Based on reviews and my situation, the Novatel S720 was the most appropriate card to get. Went to local Sprint store as the online store was flaky and really didn't get me what I wanted. Phone sales kept dumping me to someone that read a script, thus going to a store for wheel-and-deal was the best option. I upgraded all phones on my service and added two new lines. The deal I swung was $50 out the door for the card with 2-year agreement and $60/mo for the service. They can apply all mail-in rebates and credit the activation in-store if you ask them to. You cannot combine the SERO offer (which is $50/mo for service on data) if you currently have an existing plan for phones (needed to stay on the Family Plan).
The card was activated via a call to data services. The store was out of stock on the S720 and had to ship one to my house (came 2nd day FedEx). They supplied a dummy ESN at the store to get the billing and rebates taken care of. Took about 5 minutes to have data provision the card and update the firmware/profile. After that, I was off and running.
Service at my house is fantastic as I have full LOS of two Sprint towers. I get full bars on phones and card inside my house. Typical specs seen:
Signal: -65 to -70 dBm
Latency: 100 - 250 ms
Down: 1000 - 1300 kbps
Up: 175 - 300 kbps
I seem to be getting what most typical "good signal" users can achieve. I would prefer a bit more upload and a more stable latency, but I'm definitely not outside the norm for the service. The connection has been rock-solid for over a week, and I've used plenty of bandwidth (current shows 18G down/6G up). They do filter many incoming ports (most notably 25 and 80), but that's not unexpected for this type of service. Web, Bittorrent, NNTP and other general landline services work like a charm. I use an old laptop with Kerio firewall to provide services to my house computers.
Sprint advertises this as an unlimited service, and based on what I can see thus far, that advertisement is true. I'm very happy with the service thus far, and is definitely a good replacement for those relegated to Dial-up/Satellite if EVDO is in the area.
If you want to dive into the EVDO world, I suggest starting at »www.evdoinfo.com/ and their forums. You can get plenty of ideas for the service offerings, hardware, antenna and speed reviews.
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Update 3/24/2007
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Service still working as originally reviewed. Ping times and upload/download have been consistent. Have transferred over 40G in a month on the line and have no issues with caps or nasty-grams from Sprint. Gaming works, but it's best to pick something as geographically (and subsequently network-wise) near your HA address. I still average about 85ms just from my link to the HA, so anything extra counts against you.
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Update 7/29/2007
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Still going strong. The only real difference is the speed has increased. Seems they either upped the caps, or added more bandwidth to the tower I lock to. Seeing average 1700/700 now with similar power and latency above. Seems we may be some of the first to get WiMax in our area by end of year, thus I'm very excited. The only thing I'm in anticipation of is the latency. The speeds are "good enough" for now. My expectations have lowered somewhat from a wired world. Perhaps I will get the thirst again.
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Update 3/18/2009
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Service is still working as advertised. Fortunately, I have been grandfathered in regarding the service caps. Thus, I routinely go well above the 5GB/mo CAP with no notice from Sprint. I also have a discount via my employer, so perhaps they put that in the "business customer" exception. Speeds are tending to be lower now as I'm assuming there is a larger uptake of users in the area (still the only HSI available for many). Typical speeds are about 1500/512. Latency is still the same obviously because of the rev.A protocol.
As for 4G/WiMax from Sprint/Xohm/Clearwire, that doesn't appear to be in the cards until at least 2010 or later according to the released plans (»www.4ginfo.com/index.php/clearwi···ans.html). I'm somewhat expecting LTE to reach us before WiMax, which is disappointing. However, since 3G/4G is the only options at my dwelling, I don't have much choice in the consumer class of ISP. So at least I might expect >3G service at some point. Charter still has not deployed to this area (and most likely will never due to their debt), AT&T has not deployed an RT and has no plans to offer U-verse in this area for most likely 3-5 years (if ever), and no local WiSP exists.
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 Review by djdanska
Posted: 278 days ago
member for 8.6 years, 4582 visits, last login: a few minutes ago
Westmont,Dupage,IL
$59 per month (24 month contract)
"Faster than edge w/tmobile, decent coverage."
"Slower than tmobile 3g, Doesn't like the train. Kinda on the high side price wise"
"Better than edge, For travel it's better than the alternatives"
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I almost went with verizon but they wanted $50 for the data card and sprint was free. I signed up with sprint and a few days later the data card cable came in the mail. Installation was easy on xp and vista x64. I also installed it on 32 bit windows 7. Was a pain but i did get it working. The SmartView program is slow on my xp machine but flys on my vista machine. (That's what i get for using an older laptop).
The speed at home in Westmont, IL is about 1200kbps down 300 kbps up. If i am away from home, it's about 600kbps down 150 kbps up. Gets even slower while going 65 mph on the train going west.
I get coverage everywhere on the train. (burlington northern from chicagoland to western illinois) I have noticed that the data card doesn't like switching towers very well. I will lose service for 20 seconds, roam, and then mysteriously have full service again with sprint. Something else it does is go from evdo to 1xrtt back and forth all the time. Usable but a pain. Slows downloads down.
Better than t-mobile edge/gprs coverage. Slower than t-mobile 3g coverage. If t-mobile gets 100 % 3g coverage in Illinois within the next year or two, i plan on canceling this data card and keeping them instead. I get a constant 1100kbps down 350 kbps up with them 24/7. And just about all the places i go has a t-mobile signal.
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 Review by rickbme
UPDATED: 290 days ago
member for 2.4 years, 378 visits, last login: 1 days ago
Roy,Pierce,WA
$59 per month (24 month contract)
about 1 days
"Better than Sattelite and dial up by far."
"have to watch your download volumne."
"A great alternative to sat or dialup, plus you can take it with you!"
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Generally an all around great connection. Install was simple, and connections have always been reliable. Occasional slow down at times. But compared to Satellite it's leap years ahead. Currently using the PX500 to connect plugged into A linksys 3g router. Almost 2 years now into it, and pleased with performance.
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Review by tiredoldguy
Posted: 292 days ago
member for 4.5 years, 30 visits, last login: 154 days ago
Fort Wayne,Allen,IN
$50 per month (24 month contract)
about 1 days
"As advertised"
"little slower then anticipated"
"worth the money"
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All of the wireless broadband players have a presence here. Sprint had the best deal for me, probably because I was already an established Sprint customer.
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