Users Say Sprint Epic4G 3G Upload Speeds Limited To 150kbps 138
Miamicanes writes "Nearly everyone who owns a Sprint Samsung Epic 4G and has benchmarked its 3G performance has discovered that its 3G upload speeds are apparently limited to 150kbps. So far, Sprint has not officially acknowledged it as a problem, nor has it indicated whether this might be a firmware bug, a PRL issue, tower-related, or the result of a deliberate policy to cap 3G upload speeds. Regardless, the problem is causing widespread anger among Epic4G owners, many of whom have bitterly noted the irony of being charged a $10 surcharge so they can endure data transfers that are slower than they had 4 years ago (and a quarter of the speeds enjoyed by Evo owners on the same 3G network)." Cellphone networks are fickle beasts; can anyone out there with an Epic provide a counterexample?
Opps (Score:5, Funny)
Epic fail
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That's not this device's only Epic fail:
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Many issues have been fixed in the D107 update that was just released on Friday. We're all anxiously awaiting Android 2.2 which is rumored to be out at the end of the month.
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Side by side is a bad idea. I've been told that there should be about 50 cm space between two GPS antennas to avoid interferences.
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Epic fail #2:
EXPENSIVE. You are paying ~$60/month for this 150k upload service. My DSL gives me the same speed for only $15. Even satellite is cheaper
from Sprint... (Score:5, Funny)
"Don't worry. We are slowing down the Evo speeds too and we will be charging them $29.99/month for wifi hotspot."
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I wonder if this is the same issue that AT&T experienced when the new iPhone 4 came out and there was some issue on AT&T's side, when users were routed through Alcatel Lucent equipment that caused a hit to transfer speeds.
Could this be something similar in nature?
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Wouldn't more Ron Paul mean that the oligopolies are free to do just that, even when the user has nowhere else to go?
Freedom should be for individuals, not corporations.
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Wouldn't more Ron Paul mean that the oligopolies are free to do just that, even when the user has nowhere else to go?
Freedom should be for individuals, not corporations.
I don't know Ron Paul's view but the libertarian idea is that oligopolies exist because of government regulation. If you reduce the right regulations you can encourage competition. Now the problem is any legislation to reduce regulation brings out the corporate lobbyists and the regulations become targeted even more to strengthen oligopolies. Some libertarians are very concerned with the power of corporations, because that power is often obtained through Government entitlements, which Libertarians label
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"I don't know Ron Paul's view but the libertarian idea is that oligopolies exist because of government regulation."
Which seems not to be supported by reality. Oligopolies are an unavoidable outcome of competition on any stable environment (in other words: in the end, the winner takes all).
Even in "the real real world" (Nature, I mean), the best example for an unregulated market, on stable ecosystems what you get is an oligopoly or even monopoly for each and every niche. Yes, you have high biodiversity by
A classic example of "what the market will bear." (Score:5, Insightful)
So long as people keep paying their bills, the market is bearing this imposition. I am all but certain that this is another example of telcoms limiting and crippling their services rather than improving their infrastructure. AT&T taught the industry a hard lesson with their iPhone exclusivity deal. They burdened their entire infrastructure which was unprepared for the load. I am of the opinion that Sprint seeks to avoid the same. Additionally, as these handheld computers are getting phone network enabled, I suspect VOIP and other forms of internet communications will become more frequently used. So they will sell you a "phone" and you will in turn use it to bypass their business model? Not if they can help it.
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>>>seeing the effects of regulatory capture.
What's that?
Also why does everyone think Europe is so much better? According to speedtest.net the EU's average wired internet speed is 1 Mbit/s slower than the US average. Is their cell service any better, or if this just a case of "the grass looks greener on the other side" until you get there and discover it's actually no different.
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No, it's typical basement-dwelling Slashdotter repeating of something someone else said that isn't true.
Slashdotters also like to keep saying that in the U.S. you are forced to pay for incoming voice calls and text messages. Well, sure, if you did exactly ZERO research into the matter. There are plenty of U.S. networks that don't make you pay for incomings. U.S. Cellular, the #1 carrier in Chicago is one of them.
Just like the average Slashdotter believes that Tokyo's Akihabara district is a haven of exot
Re:A classic example of "what the market will bear (Score:5, Insightful)
I have to agree - don't "be angry" as a customer, phone them up and complain. If they won't do anything for you, cut the service there and then and tell them why. If they bother to argue about things, dig out your contracts, file official complaints, etc. But, ffs, don't just "get angry" on a forum they probably never read and don't care about while you're still paying your monthly fee. Damn well complain, move companies, terminate contracts, etc.
This is the sort of thing you should realise while the contract is still fresh if it's important to you, so use the early get-out clause and introductory periods and get the hell off it. If you keep paying, it's really NOT that important to you. And if you entered into a cast-iron contract that you can't get out of (HIGHLY unlikely) for a service that you didn't bother to read up on, check terms, insist on minimum speeds, etc. then that's your own tough luck.
I still can't figure out why people pay for shit that they don't want, and then complain about it.
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Exactly. Most contracts will include a dispute process of some sort or another. For business contracts, once the dispute is filed, you stop paying and they can't disconnect you for not paying. For individual contracts, I can't speak to it, but I suspect that the local and state laws may have something to add to that where consumer protection is concerned.
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What's written on paper, and what a court judges to be fair, differ in many ways. Consumer protection is high on the list for most judiciary - just don't expect some small claims court to accept that argument if you try to represent yourself (and do it badly). Just because something is written down, does NOT make it a fair and binding part of a contract. Otherwise, a company could easily write that every agreement it signs is covered by the laws of Sealand which is happens to own. If you're trading in a
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But, ffs, don't just "get angry" on a forum they probably never read and don't care about while you're still paying your monthly fee. Damn well complain, move companies, terminate contracts, etc.
Actually, complaining on public forums does get attention.
At one of my old jobs, I did application support for a guy who worked at Comcast a few years back setting up RSS google feeds so they can scour forums, twitter accounts, and FB updates for people complaining about Comcast and respond to them in a positive man
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I still can't figure out why people pay for shit that they don't want, and then complain about it.
Because it's easier to speak than to act.
What makes me grin is that some people never stop complaining about their problems, but keep being victims.
Stockholm Syndrome ?
Hopefully, there will be a class action, and everything will be solved at this moment (in a few years).
Insightful... (Score:4, Interesting)
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Which taxpayer funded infrastructure are you referring to?
I am not aware of any funding for the specific goal of providing bandwidth to cellular base stations.
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Cheap or free right-of-ways. Not everyone backhauls with microwave unless you're in the boondocks.
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Since the 1996 Telecommunications Act, my speed has jumped from 14k to 750k, with the the option of 50,000k if I want. How is that "not seeing results"?
Also I'll have a data-capable cellphone. That didn't even exist in 96.
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My experience in the USA is that carriers do continuously improve infrastructure, but not fast enough to keep a lot of customers satisfied.
This seems unlikely to me. I would only expect negative impact on network performance if the network was already close to capacity (with active voice/data
Re:Insightful... (Score:5, Interesting)
Except that it's correct. When the iPhone was first released, the baseband code was misconfigured and it caused all iPhones to "scream" at the cell towers and the cell towers to "scream" back. This caused all other phones that weren't configured as such to start dropping calls. It was pretty well documented and there was quite a few stories on slashdot about it.
You learn something (Score:2)
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Now, if it were a competitive market, you'd probably have a point, but this isn't a competitive market and you don't have a point. In order for a market to bear a price, there needs to be real and substantial competition.
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A limited and controlled market can bear a lot more than a free and competitive market. We all know this. You're right in all the things you are saying. You just have to continue voting with your dollars and, if you can get the ear of a politician, complain. At the moment, no government body recognizes mobile phone service as critical in the sense that it would fall under the utilities regulatory commissions, but that is the first thing I would push to change. Putting POTS under regulatory scrutiny rea
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> Premium services such a "touch tone service" was (and still is I believe) an "option" that must be paid for.
Ironically,"touch tone" service is really only premium service in the eyes of the sales department. From an engineering POV it's actually cheaper way of signalling than make/break pulses.
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Ironically,"touch tone" service is really only premium service in the eyes of the sales department. From an engineering POV it's actually cheaper way of signalling than make/break pulses.
Really? My dad couldn't use touch tone phones in his house until they came and 'upgraded' the line. I never really did understand that.
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Really old, really crappy lines might have had a problem with DTMF signalling, but then those lines would be sub-par for any other application, too. Including clear voice calls.
It's much more likely that the line at the CO end had to be moved from a 50-year-old piece of junk to much better gear in another cabinet.
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Really old, really crappy lines might have had a problem with DTMF signalling, but then those lines would be sub-par for any other application, too. Including clear voice calls.
Voice was just fine. I think we even had a 2400 baud modem working on it too. My dad couldn't see the point in paying the upgrade fee just to get touch tone.
It's much more likely that the line at the CO end had to be moved from a 50-year-old piece of junk to much better gear in another cabinet.
That wouldn't surprise me. I think it was a money grab.
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I've actually made a visit to one of those switching houses where all the phone lines are being relayed from here to there. This was quite some time ago in Paris Texas. There was actually one segment where there existed a huge active board of relays clicking away! Talk about bizarre!
Yeah, the switching networks should all be digital by now, but at the time, those old stations were still running old style. I was quite surprised and amused. It seemed they were still transitioning over as they still had s
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>>>Putting POTS under regulatory scrutiny really made them behave properly
Not really. POTS fell under regulatory control in the 20s, and then we had to deal with a stagnation of technology due to the government-created ATT monopoly for another 60 years. (Example: Modem technology stagnated at 1200 bits/second from the 1950s to the 80s.) Basically the same thing that happened in East Germany with their piece-of-junk Tribant car - technology froze in a WW2 state.
It was only when the government fin
Re:A classic example of "what the market will bear (Score:4, Insightful)
Do you have any idea how much regulation and enforcement action was required to allow the consumer to choose their LD carrier? The Bells didn't just wake up one day and decide you could hook a non-bell phone to their network, they were ordered to allow it. They don't interface with VoIP providers because they like them.
They will have to be dragged kicking and screaming into a competitive marketplace. At a minimum it will be necessary to insist that all phones be unlocked and capable of operation on any cell network in the U.S. and that purchase of the phone be unbundled from the service. Next up will be ending the sneak attacks by huge bills.
After all, this is an industry that has pulled every dirty trick in the book including designing phones so that the user can accidentally do things that result in significant charges.
As a side note, the technology did NOT freeze. In that time they went from a system where a human being physically connected pairs of wires carrying analog signals together to complete a call to a fully automated digital network. The services offered to the CUSTOMER stagnated.
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All I have to do is look at my Comcast Monopoly, realize that it was GIVEN that monopoly by my state government, and that negates any belief that government is "good" for the consumer.
Government is more often an impediment because otherwise I would be served by numerous cable companies like Comcast plus Cox plus Cablevision, and be able to choose for myself. Government grants of monopoly have taken away that choice, as they did during the 1920s-70s ATT era.
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The monopoly wasn't given, it was bought and paid for in various ways both legal and shady. In the same way various radio, TV and wireless carriers bid on and buy radio spectra, cable, power and phone network companies pay for the right-of-way to build and operate their networks. They paid for their monopolies. Make no mistake about it. Now as far as the deals the carriers got for their money? Well, I agree that it is essentially used as a license to rape the consumer. But watch for when the deals are
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>>>The monopoly wasn't given, it was bought and paid for in various ways both legal and shady.
The monopoly was given by the State Government's leaders who granted Comcast the exclusive right to distribute TV in my county
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Government regulation in itself is absolutely necessary. BAD regulation is a serious problem, as is no regulation. Some regulation is actually essential. Someone had to use eminent domain to allow all those cables to be run at all. More to allocate the EM spectrum.
The problem isn't that your state government granted Comcast a monopoly, the problem is that the fools fail to pull on the strings attached to the grant (or more likely, Comcast is pulling on the strings attached to the "campaign contributions").
O
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Since when is the market bearing a cost a justification for over pricing? No business has a right to massive profits, especially when it's the result of maintaining a oligopoly over the particular market.
What massive profits [google.com] are you talking about? If you had even remotely bothered to type in a few search keywords, you would know that Sprint is losing money $250M every month. The claim that they are charging above-market prices or maintaining an oligopoly is absolutely inconsistent with the facts.
If anything, a company that's consistently (five straight quarters) posting losses should be raising prices or cutting costs since obviously they cannot burn through money forever. What's more, Sprint spent billions [arstechnica.com]
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Their single biggest expense is administrative and marketing. Of course if thyey would quit pissing people off, their marketing department wouldn't have to run up hill all the time.
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Don't be fooled too much by the numbers. Sprints loses are mainly coming from defection of old Nextel customers who are moving on after their contract is up. That happens a lot after acquisitions. Sprint's own customer base is pretty stable or growing, and the numbers look good after the bleeding stops from the Nextel buyout.
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So long as people keep paying their bills, the market is bearing this imposition. I am all but certain that this is another example of telcoms limiting and crippling their services rather than improving their infrastructure.
I wouldn't say that it's "a classic example". Often the phrase "what the market will bear" implies a real market-- you know, with meaningful competition. This is more an issue of "what consumers will bear before they give up on having cell phones at all."
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How is the cellular market not competitive?
Just like the wired phone service lets you choose your long-distance and local provider, so too do cellular service let you choose from many companies. I've got Virgin. You might have Sprint. My iPhone friend has ATT I think. Then there's Cricket and Clear and Boost and Verizon and Cingular and.....
Re:A classic example of "what the market will bear (Score:5, Informative)
Either you don't know what's going on or you're purposefully spreading misinformation. Virgin and Boost are Sprint. Cingular is AT&T. Really there are only 4 companies to speak of: AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon. And it'll probably be down to 3 in the next few years.
But these 4 companies don't compete very vigorously. If anything, the cost of SMS messaging leads me to believe they're coordinating.
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>>>Virgin and Boost are Sprint. Cingular is AT&T
No they really aren't. For example Virgin's HQ is in London, United Kingdom, EU
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the point is if you count the number of companies that have as capital assets real live TOWERS
ATT owns towers
Sprint owns towers
Verizon owns towers
T-Mobile Owns towers
everybody else rides on those towers (with of course peering agreements giving you towers owned by say Verizon having a Sprint transponder and an ATT transponder)
Virgin mobile IN THE US uses sprint towers (and the sprint PRL)
Nextel is owned by sprint and is i think being phased out (BOOST uses nextel/sprint towers)
Cingular is ATT
Cricket leases
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>>>ATT...Sprint...Verizon...T-Mobile owns towers
Okay now I see your point. So if it any different over in the European Union? (just curious) Or do they also have a quadopoly like US has?
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Most countries only have a few major mobile operators. The difference in EU is that most/all of them use GSM, so it's much easier for customers to switch; and that they're otherwise regulated much stricter when it comes to any kind of collusion or customer abuse.
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Virgin Mobile sold their US operations to Sprint. Virgin Mobile never owned their own network in the US; it was always just rebranded service (an MVNO) from Sprint running on Sprint's network. Yes, Virgin US is a CDMA service, unlike Virgin's GSM service elsewhere.
Recently they decided to get out of actively running a US wireless operation in the US and sold the business and licensed the brandname to Sprint. Virgin Wireless UK has nothing to do with it any more.
So Sprint is now four main brands: Sprint,
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>>>Virgin and Boost are Sprint. Cingular is AT&T
No they really aren't. For example Virgin's HQ is in London, United Kingdom, EU
Virgin Mobile USA is not Virgin UK. Sorry, but you're quite simply wrong. See for yourself:
Go to virginmobileusa.marketwire.com [marketwire.com] and click on "Fact Sheets":
"Virgin Mobile USA Fact Sheet
Overview: Virgin Mobile USA, one of Sprint's Prepaid Brands, offers millions of customers control, flexibility and social connectivity without annual contracts for mobile phone service and prepaid Broadband2Go high-speed Web access, with national coverage for both powered by the Sprint Nationwide Network.
Headquarters: Spr
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>>>Virgin and Boost are Sprint. Cingular is AT&T
>No they really aren't. For example Virgin's HQ is in London, United Kingdom, EU
Yes, they really are, at least within the US.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boost_Mobile [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgin_Mobile_USA [wikipedia.org]
Do your research before you post next time.
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How is the cellular market not competitive? Just like the wired phone service lets you choose your long-distance and local provider, so too do cellular service let you choose from many companies. I've got Virgin. You might have Sprint. My iPhone friend has ATT I think. Then there's Cricket and Clear and Boost and Verizon and Cingular and.....
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>>>I am all but certain that this is another example of telcoms limiting and crippling their services rather than improving their infrastructure.
(putting on conspiracy nut hat). I think it's done on purpose. ATT and others want to take TV channels 25 and up for usage by cellular phones/internet. What better way to achieve that goal than to slow everything to a crawl, and then say to Congress, "Look. We've already run out of space and need more spectrum. It's time for television to give its 'fa
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Sorry, but that doesn't make any sense. If it were an intentional limitation on the Epic by Sprint, then they would have done the same thing on the Evo, which has been out for several months. Or they would have ADDED the limitation in an update.
Besides, we are talking about the 3G and not even the 4G connections. Something else is going on...
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The most credible theory I've seen so far is that the towers and/or Epic4G don't recognize each other as being capable of EVDOrevA, and are falling back to rev0 (which, conveniently, has a reverse data rate of almost exactly 153kbit/sec). I personally doubt Sprint would have done something as stupid as blatantly throttle Epic4G owners down to 150kbit/sec, because they're smart enough to know that Epic4G owners were going to be pulling out the benchmarks and comparing metaphorical penis size with Evo owners
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While Android users might use more data than iphone users on average, unless:
( number of Android users on VZW * android data average) > (number of iPhone users on ATT * iphone data average)
bringing up VZW's network is moot.
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How?
It's not like you can just buy a phone and use it on any telco like say in Europe. This is not "what the market will bear" this is "how much can a monopolist/oligarchy abuse you" and the answer to the 2nd scenario is "a hell of a lot more then the in first scenario". Places where the market is made to work right like Australia and Europe not only are you not forced to buy a 2 year contract as you can get phones outrigh
It's a hardware limitation (Score:1, Interesting)
Maybe for a $50 fee, they will unlock the hardware and provide the full potential.
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They're just uploading it wrong.
Most likely OS/Radio Issue (Score:1)
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*Only* 150k? (Score:2, Insightful)
And yes, I can upgrade my cable modem to faster service for a price but I willingly have so far opted not to; I find my current cable modem to be more than sufficient for my own needs.
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150 kbit, not bytes. Your 100k a sec is about 1000kbits /sec. To put it in terms of your connection, its like getting 15k a sec
Re:*Only* 150k? (Score:4, Informative)
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Hey that's still five times faster than my Netscape Dialup service!
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150kbps, not 150Kbps...unless you are measuring the temperature of your data. K = Kelvin.
You can capitalize if it is Ki (kibibits, 1024 bits) For most data streams it actually is k (kilobits) though, i.e. 100kbps is 100,000 bits per second, which is 12.207 KiBps.
For a way the mind can actually interpret: 150kbps = 59.4+ seconds per MiB of data after removing the 6% TCP/IP overhead. Whether you should count protocol overhead depends on if the 'speed test' sites are doingitrite or measuring ultimate data tran
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100k what ? bits or bytes ?
TFA talks about kilobits, divide by 8 to get the kilobytes number and next time pay more attention.
Ahh, and you should find some other ISP, one that doesn't charge you for every ICMP packet you send out.
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How do you live with 100k? I serve a popular Ruby on Rails website from my cell phone and the 150k limit is really crippling.
Although the phone is literally burning a hole in my pocket I'm still cooool as a motherfucker.
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Wait... you have a webserver running on your phone that's able to take inbound http requests over the mobile network from the internet at large? Who's your carrier?!? AFAIK, every carrier in America (if not the world) effectively firewalls their mobile-phone IP addresses from inbound tcp connections from the outside.
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You are mistaken - both my previous PocketPC phones were webservers that could be reached by the public; my current phone does so as well, which includes a webcam on an alternate port. Obviously don't use it often, but it does work.
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Who's your carrier?
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Verizon.
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Full HD porn video streaming?
When you're finally doing it with a $5 hooker, you do want the world to know.
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>>>Full HD porn video streaming?
Sure.
You can do 1920x1080 video streaming at 150k. It's just really blocky. (I routinely stream at 50k albeit at DVD quality, not HD.)
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I tried to to think of a way to parody this post through exaggeration, but the self-centredness is simply too immense. The light of humour simply cannot escape the black hole of narcissism.
http://explainthefee.com/ (Score:5, Informative)
Sprint Palm Pre has similar issue (Score:2, Interesting)
ROM Bug (Score:5, Interesting)
In the forum thread mentioned there appears to be a comment regarding the phone's firmware.
Apparently, some guys over at xda developers uploaded the european rom and were able to get full bandwidth from the phone. Given the reception issues and other communication problems I'm going to say this is a badly cooked rom on part of the Sprint side. (Even more Epic fail).
Now, at the moment this is completely unconfirmed and if you are an Epic fail owner I would suggest visiting their site to confirm.
Epic Owner Here (Score:2)
4G?! (Score:2, Interesting)
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> I wonder what real 4g will be called in the us.. Epic 4G, no wait...
Duke Nuke'em 4-FR-G
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It depends on what you are calling 4G. Sprint considers it's new wimax-based networks as 4G.
Just about everybody else considers 4G to be LTE (or technically LTE Advanced, since plain LTE is only 3.9G), which is expected to be used by providers that used to be part of of 3GPP (GMS/EDGE/WCDMA/UMTS/HSxPA), as well as the 3GPP2 (CDMA/CDMA2000) providers.
This could potentially finally bring the ability to swap phones between providers to the US, since they would all be using the same technology for their latest
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For at least the next 2-5 years, Verizon's LTE network will be about as useful to a visiting European as Sprint's WiMax network -- ie, not useful at all. Verizon's using it ONLY for data, just like Sprint. The truth is, Sprint will have to switch to LTE eventually, if only to avoid being locked in to a single vendor for hardware... but in the meantime, Sprint customers will get to have 4G 6-18 months sooner than their neighbors with Verizon. Verizon's LTE is pretty much the bare-bones minimum they can deplo
Why? (Score:2)
Re:What would you upload from a cell phone? (Score:5, Insightful)
VOIP, Video Chat are good examples. There's more to the internet than files.
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>>>I am all but certain that this is another example of telcoms limiting and crippling their services rather than improving their infrastructure.
(putting on conspiracy nut hat)
I think it's done on purpose. ATT and others want to take TV channels 25 and up for usage by cellular phones/internet. What better way to achieve that goal than to slow everything to a crawl, and then say to Congress, "Look. We've already run out of space and need more spectrum. It's time for television to give its 'fair shar
Re:What would you upload from a cell phone? (Score:4, Informative)
Movies and pictures shot with your phone. Runs into the 100 megabytes for a couple of small movies.
Re:What would you upload from a cell phone? (Score:4, Insightful)
Video. Most phones have cameras. You could upload directly to YouTube.
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People might send attachments via email, might upload videos to youtube, might tether, voip, video chat, maybe they're streaming audio for a few people, this is a few obvious things.
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Video. I was at the Metro (concert venue in Chicago) last night, and took some pretty awesome video from the side of the stage while the band was playing, and uploaded it from my Nexus One. Trivial? Perhaps. But that's what I'm paying T-Mobile for unlimited data for (+1 for 3G in Chicago; had 2.5Mb/s up).
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Well, "we" are angry about it. That is, people who read slashdot and/or other such sites. No one else seems to care, and it boggles the mind why. Well, since you're usually stuck in a contract, you get a free phone upgrade every two years, and I guess people like that - and yes you'd get a new phone if you switched carriers.
I bought an unlocked Nexus One while Google was still selling them, but you saw how that turned out - they stopped offering them. There's no market incentive to offer this in the US exce