Sprint is just trying to kill itself

December 23, 2005

I currently have Sprint as my local phone company. They are the only one in this area so I really don’t have much of a choice. I also have DSL with Sprint. Since I have DirecTV a cable modem is kind of out of the picture. I believe I could get cable modem service from either one of the cable providers up here, but don’t do it for a couple reasons. First being Sprint does not block port 80. I can as I have done in the past setup a web server from my connection. In fact this site started out on that connection. I also have up to 20 hours (I think) of dialup to EarthLink each month. This has come in handy several times when I need net access from my laptop and I was somewhere without an available connection. Sprint also does not cap or throttle traffic. No invisible caps here.

There are of course the negatives. For gamers pings are a bit higher since Sprint turns on interleaving by default. Interleaving is an error correction scheme used between the DSL modem and DSLAM to combat line noise. This is turned on whether it is needed or not and to get Sprint to turned it off pretty much takes an act of GOD. If Interleaving is off, it means you’re configured as FastPath. So what does all this mean? Interleaving can mean as much as a 30-50ms increase in your ping. Online gamers are not happy with this.
Price is another, it’s expensive. Comparing to Verizon DSL, Sprint is double the price.
There is also the $14.31 I pay each month in taxes to Sprint. This not being Sprints fault, all the traditional phone companies have this issue. All large companies also seem to have this last problem, bad customer service. I’m not sure if the people are lying to you on purpose or if they are just idiots. Having been lied to myself and reading the stories of other Sprint customers being either lied to or having to deal with incompetent customer service reps makes me pray I will never have to call them again.

I read the Sprint high-speed Internet discussion board on DSL Reports. This is a place that Sprint DSL customers can go to get help, find out information and just communicate with other DSL users. As far as help, it is 100% better than calling Sprint directly. There are/were several Sprint employees that on their own time would read and post to the board helping people out. Never were they acting as official representatives of Sprint. Just knowledgeable people that helped out other (they were customers too) DSL customers with their issues. I know one helped me after a CSR fubared my upgrade order.

Why the rant about Sprint?
In Sprint’s great wisdom, they have proclaimed that Sprint employees are not supposed to be posting without official permission.
That’s right, if you work for Sprint you CAN NOT post to this discussion board at all. What a load of crap. I’m sorry Sprint, but if I worked for you, which I do NOT, what right do YOU have to say what I CAN and CAN NOT do on my own personal time? Total BS.

I have a suspicion why this is being done. For the past year the buzz has been that Sprint Local Phone Service will be spun off to its own company or bought by someone else. For employees this is never fun. I suspect Sprint wants to keep any employee skepticism or personal views away from their customers.

Whatever the reason is, it still smells.

Written by Mike · Filed Under Technology
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