[EVO 4G General] Hrshycro:
Below is my lengthy, but I think fair email about my past year with Sprint's nearly unusable 3G data network in my area.

To whom it may concern in Dan Hesse's office at Sprint:

Dear person reading this email, I have unfortunate news about how your network performance has been slowly degrading at the towers around the valley that I live in.

First off, here is the account info:

I live in in South East , which isn't the billing address (which is the office), but the home where I live when I'm not at the office.

When we signed up with Sprint last June, it was our first time using your network. You offered affordable family plans and had great service, according to your coverage maps and Consumer Reports ratings except that has ultimately not been the case the majority of the time.

As you can see for yourself, according to the coverage maps below (from sprint.com), there's perfect or nearly perfect voice and 3G data coverage at the billing address:

The first month or two that we had our EVO 4Gs, your network performed great and we were very happy with the service, but then in Sept. of last year, the 3G data completely stopped working/was slower than dial-up at the tower by the office. After calls to tech support, several techs claimed that the towers in the area had just been upgraded/updated...I asked: to what, dial-up?, since it wasn't just the tower by the office, it was the majority (and by majority, I mean 70%+ of the time) the 3G data barely worked or was slower than dial-up from the towers in and all around the Caldwell, ID area. Dropped calls were also a often occurrence.

When the Airvana Airave was released, I called in to tech support again, explained the situation and the tech found that we were experiencing upwards of 10% dropped calls, which is much higher than the avg. Also, tech support as never once admitted that it might possibly be the towers/network that's the problem; it's always: your phone must have issues, it mustn't be updated, ect., which I could see, except the same poor network performance was happening on all 3 of our EVOs, as well as all of my friend's EVOs in the areas. Several of them had also gotten the same story/runaround from tech support, too. Anyhow, relations sent us a free Airave, which was very nice of them, and that has made the phones work at the office/billing address, except the CSR in relations said that the coverage was 'very spotty' at that address, which I clearly don't see in your advertised coverage maps. With the Airave, 3G actually works and the calls are better, except the only reason for this is because it uses our ISP/internet to do so. The tower's 3G is still incredibly slow and much slower than advertised nearly a year later. I'm not at the office very often myself, so I can't provide you with speed test recent results, but I would suspect them to be in the 100-200k range.

Next, lets talk about the horrible service at the house. Home address is:

The service here (mainly data/3G speeds) haven't been any better than at the billing address; the sprint.com coverage maps also say that there is perfect or nearly perfect service here.

Surprise, surprise, it's also the tower that doesn't work in this case! By the way, there is an app called Antennas in the Android Market that locates which tower the phone is currently connected to, then plots it on a map - in case you were wondering.

I've called tech support and gotten the same story about how it must be the phone, not the tower...of course. Yes, my (previous) phone was rooted, but fully updated with the latest radios, PRI, NV and PRL), but other's EVOs on the plan are not rooted (but still fully updated) and they receive the exact same type of degraded service, therefore, it makes no difference to be rooted or not, even though the techs insist that it does. Finally, I gave up trying to communicate with tech support; retentions wouldn't send another Airave out for the house, either. The 3G data speeds have been hovering around 75 - 100kbps (1/6th of your lowest advertised 3G data speed, which is 600k) for almost a year - sometimes they reach upwards of 300kbps in the early hours of the mornings. For instants, one day I installed the latest Google Maps update which was about 5.75MBs; it took 28 minutes to download while I was out and about, but still in the radius/connected to the tower by my house...that's about 190kbps and probably a slightly more accurate speed test than using the Speed Test app since it was a larger file download.

Anyhow, I was in a 50MPH t-bone motorcycle wreck last week when a driver crossed the road directly in front of me when I was 10 feet from the intersection. In the wreck, my EVO was completely ruined and I was forced to get a new one. I just got home with a brand-new, fully updated, not even rootable (yet) EVO (I've been in recovery, without a phone, and haven't been home for 8 days) and guess what...the 3G data speeds have dropped even lower at the tower by my house since I was home last. Now, I can't provide a screen shot of the latest speed test results (because you have to be rooted for screen shot apps to work), but the results aren't good. The highest 3G data speed result is 23kbps, with the lowest being 4kbps; upload is slightly higher (typically is/has been) with 89kbps high and 37kbps low - that's out of 10 tests over 5 hours (every 30 minutes). Those speeds are completely unacceptable and less than half the speed of dial-up. Sprint's advertised 3G speeds are 600 to 1400...I'm getting 25.

And this continues, since its not just the towers by my house or the billing address, its about half of them, if not more. Like I said, I have several friends with EVOs who live in ; some of the EVOs are rooted, some are update, some aren't, ect. They're all experiencing the same lackluster service, even though they're in 'good' coverage - ALL depending on what tower their phone is currently connected too!

I finally stopped in to some of the local Sprint stores the other day and asked the employees there: What's up with the horrible 3G speeds? The guy at one store lied to me and showed me how he was getting perfect 1800kbps 3G speeds...of course the store had an Airave hooked up in the back, which the phone was connected to (when connected to an Airave, phones make beeps when initiating calls). The other 2 stores smugly agreed with me about how the speeds are super slow, even on their phones. On a side note, I really wonder how the hell you've been selling phones, except I know its most likely because 90+% of the customers don't know that its the crappy 3G speeds that make their email take forever to load, for Facebook to display a photo, ect.. One store did tell me that all they knew was that all of the towers from Portland, OR to SLC, UT were being updated and the ones here should have been fixed months ago.

Now, I know I'm not the only person experiencing these problems while also paying monthly for Sprint's completely and utterly unusable 3G data speeds, here, or in other parts of the nation. I know I'm not the first to email Dan's office about this problem with these same types of problems, too. I know what the replies from Dan's office have been about these types of network problems to other's. I don't expect a canned response. I don't except or want to get the runaround about the problems. I don't want to hear about how they'll be fixed by the 1st of some month in the near future, since that promise have always been broken when given to others. And I don't want a new phone because this one is the reason while I'm experiencing poor network performance.

What I expect is:

- A network/tower tech in my area to call and talk directly to me - I do do computer and tech work for a living and have read hours of information on forums and the internet; I know what I've been experiencing and I know what I'm talking about.

- Monthly discounts on all (3) lines until I receive your advertised 3G data speeds and service the majority of the time, not just when the phone is connected to an Airave our about 1 out of 7 towers.

In the end, I'm just your customer, asking for your advertised speeds and coverage, with no lies, runarounds or bull****. I'm not mad, just disappointed at how nothing has been resolved in almost a year. This is not how a business should be run.

Regards,