IGX

Looking to possibly change from Verizon to Sprint (cost). Home in Colorado, plan to be travelling all around the western US. Any experiences?

Sprint does not work well in Montana. I use Verizon.

Sprint used to suck royally out here in pretty much all of Northern California. Verizon is where it's at. AT&T not much of an option either.

The monthly savings should make up for minor issues you may encounter. I know people who have Sprint and they've never had issues getting in touch with me no matter where they were in the U.S. I've got Verizon but I pay a good $40 extra per month. I'm not really getting that much more for my money as far as coverage goes, and I'm certainly not getting more as far as plan features go.

Mostly for talking, texting or data?

I had Sprint with my family. It seemed like the data was always cutting out and was slow. My employer got me a company phone, which was verizon. Everytime I traveled, I would compare the data speeds of Sprint and Verizon, and started logging them into a spreadsheet. In at least a dozen different states.

Basically, with one exception, Sprint sucked donkey droppings. It was ALWAYS slower than Verizon, and always had fewer bars for talk. What's the point of Sprint's unlimited data if it's too slow to use it. You don't need data limits when you can't possibly download 2GB of data in a month if you tried it was so slow. To add insult to injury, they charged an extra $10 per month for smart phones because of the extra data you'd not be able to use.

Now Sprint is all messed up in 4G land too. They started using WiMax technology for 4G, but dropped that a while ago, with very little roll out. Now they are supposedly going to go to LTE, but have nothing rolled out. Basically if you have an older sprint 4G phone it will be useless in 4G, and they are not expanding their older 4G. If you have a newer 4G phone, it is useless as nothing has rolled out yet.

If you want cheap, I think some of the straight talk phones to use Verizon towers.

Thanks guys. That was my concern with Sprint. Looks like I'll suck it up with Verizon.

http://www.cellreception.com/coverage/

The above gives a decent idea about how the coverage is in different areas.

Sprint is also doing a big transition: http://money.cnn.com/2012/05/29/technol ... /index.htm
Sprint is both Nextel and Sprint-- an area with good Nextel coverage but not good Sprint coverage suggests that data will suck (AFAIK Nextel towers are older and aren't set up for data). This may mean that phone coverage will get worse for Sprint, unless they are aggressively replacing the tech in Nextel towers with Sprint tech.

Also, from what I've heard, Sprint will tune down (not sure the technical term) their towers in some areas during off peak hours. This would tend to mean lousy data coverage and fewer bars.

My personal experience, not a lot of it out west, is that Sprint coverage isn't great outside of major metro areas.

I'm seriously considering changing coverage when my contract is up.

Tracfone! Coverage any where in the world. No contracts, no monthly statements. no nothing. Just buy cheap cards. Pay as you go and you're released from slavery!!

I've had Sprint in NoCal for years. I always have coverage and I pretty much never drop calls.

msr2112 wrote:I've had Sprint in NoCal for years. I always have coverage and I pretty much never drop calls.

Exactly. These country bumpkins need to either get within cell range of civilization or muster up the cash for a satellite phone.