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Pondering VM over Sprint

No 4G on Virgin Mobile. Virgin Mobile 3G service is not reliable. I would say, 10% of the time, you will get no connection. My buddies have the Optimus and the Intercept, and they experience the same 3G issue (here in Southern California) as I do with my Triumph. They would have to turn on and off the airplane mode to get the 3G to work again.

Kenster
 
Look into "ForceRoam" for getting out of your sprint contract.

There is no 4G with VM. VM's 3G is slower than Sprint and there is no roaming.
 
Service depends on where you are. If you're happy with Sprint's service where you are, you'll probably be happy with VM.

I'm reasonably happy, especially for the price. And I'm convinced we'll have CM7 or something like it on the Triumph soon (I'm working on it), although the stock load is NOT bad. It's primary limitation is that it doesn't want to tether (at all), which you're not supposed to do anyway.
 
Oh you can do it - Barnacle works, but you have to tolerate ad-hoc network setup and changing the MTU on your end, or use PDANet. Both are fine, but neither is as nice or simple as clicking "wireless hotspot."
 
Yes, it appears in this article that the limitation only applies to wifi and USB tethering gets by unscathed. I use Klink, a USB app similar to EasyTether, so my hairbrained scheme is still alive!
 
tickerguy said:
Oh you can do it - Barnacle works, but you have to tolerate ad-hoc network setup and changing the MTU on your end, or use PDANet. Both are fine, but neither is as nice or simple as clicking "wireless hotspot."
Click to expand...

Barnacle works perfectly. I've tried it out on both my imac and my wife's windows 7. No need, for me, to do anything else to the phone. (I am rooted though)
 
Here in indy, Sprint is faster than VM. Virgin typically takes a lot more hops to reach the destination than Sprint which results in poorer performance typically. Virgin has its own infrastructure in place in parts of the country and other areas of the country run directly through sprint. So you could be in a sweet spot, so to speak where all the local traffic is handled through sprint directly.
 
I used to have Sprint and got virgin.

Honestly, the prices are the best thing about Virgin.

I'd rather pay 79.99 for better coverage and reception(And better choices of phone)
over VM.

Customer Service experience is horrid
Radio signals---delays in text and 3G consistency is an issue

I will say having to get multiple Triumphs, I did find one that worked perfectly but unfortunately Signal issues are making me choose a different company altogether.
 
You're really going to have to try it, as it is dependent on location and various other factors. You could get the phone you want and the cheapest plan, then try it for 30 days. If it doesn't work, return the phone and don't renew the plan. If it works ok, then keep it. =)
 
Being realistic:

Your coverage and connection speeds/quality WILL BE WORSE than Sprint. It's a fact
Your support options WILL BE WORSE than Sprint. You'll come to curse the name of "Alex, your automated help desk worker" in no time

You need to decide whats more impoarnat to you, connection quality, speed, and support, of $$ in your pocket. It is a trade off. A good chunk of that higher monthly fee you are paying Sprint is in roaming fees the carriers charge each other for better service to thier customers. VM doesn't have that, they lack the bandwidht to support thier subscriber base, and outages happen.
 
This is hilarious - and wrong.

No carrier allows you to roam on other carrier's towers when you're within range of their towers. None. Ever. They also won't even permit an attempt to force service onto the other guy's towers unless you're in an area considered "fringe" and might otherwise have nothing. If your phone's firmware allows you to do that you can try it with a contract phone and you'll see that I'm right. If you have T-Mobile service for example in many areas you can roam on AT&T. But those areas are places where T-Mobile has no service at all. Try it in a place where T-Mobile has service and you will find that your attempt to register on AT&T's tower is rejected. And yes, all the carriers maintain maps of each other's tower locations and where they have service and they will deny a roaming registration if they have service in that area no matter how crappy it is. The same holds true for Verizon and Sprint.

The reason for this is quite simple - the netting the carriers do means they pay for off-network use.

There are exceptions. After hurricanes around here the carriers will typically remove all blocks and allow all roaming, compensated or not. That's very common after major storms, but it's an anomaly and is due to the fact that some towers may be out of service but the carriers determine that the life-safety value of permitting this use is more important than the revenue (never mind that 911 calls go through whether you have a valid "registration" on a network or not)

So if you go in a place where there's no "X" service, and your phone can roam on carrier "Y" and "X" will permit it on your service plan, that's good. You get service.

But if "X" and "Y" have service where you are, and you have a phone from "X", your phone will always connect to "X" if it is available, and if you try to force a connection to "Y" it will be refused.

This isn't rocket science - it's economics for the carrier involved.

So if you're unhappy with Virgin, but Sprint has towers where you want to use the phone (that is, you have a signal but the quality of service bites) it will bite whether you're on Sprint or Virgin.

That's just how it works.
 
doctadunk said:
modify prl and build prop and i got 50.0kb/s - 140.0kb/s
Click to expand...


You get what you pay for, I get always at least 1.5, and usually 2-3 mbs on ATT. Frequently on up to about 3-3.5 mb/s. On 3g (I dont have a 4G phone just a Captivate).


That's some blazing fast 3g. People knock ATT for not having LTE yet like Verizon, but neglect that ATT's 3g is the fastest in the USA (much faster than Verizon's 3G), and a lot of people cant get Verizons LTE due to location.

Edit: just did a random test and got 1944 kbps down...
 
I have to say that Virgin Mobile is the way to go, at least to try it out. If you don't like it after 28 days or so (as you'll have 30 days to return the phone). Try it out for a month and see. Of the poeple on here that complain, there are plenty that don't AND your results will vary from any of our. Also, if you go back to Sprint after trying Virgin Mobile, you should at least get some good new signup deals with Sprint.

On a side note, anyone tried Boost Mobile?
 
TomXP411 said:
according to what I've read, it may only work on the 1800 MHz CDMA bands in the US.
Click to expand...

If I understand things correctly, those are the ones owned by Sprint, and not the ones owned by other networks (Verizon) that Sprint has an agreement with to share when their own towers are not in range.

So basically, you are only able to use the Sprint towers and not roam on other networks, if you get a good signal with Sprint, you get it with Virgin as well. It is only if you are getting the signal from elsewhere that your signal may be different

I could be mistaken in this, but I am pretty sure I am not.
 
tickerguy said:
This is hilarious - and wrong.

No carrier allows you to roam on other carrier's towers when you're within range of their towers. None. Ever. They also won't even permit an attempt to force service onto the other guy's towers unless you're in an area considered "fringe" and might otherwise have nothing. If your phone's firmware allows you to do that you can try it with a contract phone and you'll see that I'm right. If you have T-Mobile service for example in many areas you can roam on AT&T. But those areas are places where T-Mobile has no service at all. Try it in a place where T-Mobile has service and you will find that your attempt to register on AT&T's tower is rejected. And yes, all the carriers maintain maps of each other's tower locations and where they have service and they will deny a roaming registration if they have service in that area no matter how crappy it is. The same holds true for Verizon and Sprint.

The reason for this is quite simple - the netting the carriers do means they pay for off-network use.

There are exceptions. After hurricanes around here the carriers will typically remove all blocks and allow all roaming, compensated or not. That's very common after major storms, but it's an anomaly and is due to the fact that some towers may be out of service but the carriers determine that the life-safety value of permitting this use is more important than the revenue (never mind that 911 calls go through whether you have a valid "registration" on a network or not)

So if you go in a place where there's no "X" service, and your phone can roam on carrier "Y" and "X" will permit it on your service plan, that's good. You get service.

But if "X" and "Y" have service where you are, and you have a phone from "X", your phone will always connect to "X" if it is available, and if you try to force a connection to "Y" it will be refused.

This isn't rocket science - it's economics for the carrier involved.

So if you're unhappy with Virgin, but Sprint has towers where you want to use the phone (that is, you have a signal but the quality of service bites) it will bite whether you're on Sprint or Virgin.

That's just how it works.
Click to expand...


VM doesn't even have access to all Sprints towers. And it can't roam. there are less physical towers VM can connect to, this means for the majority of people, your signal strength and quality will be less on a VM phone.

Personally, I'm fine with that in exchange for paying $25 a month. Some people might not be. I'm not a VM or Triumph hater, but I'm not going to sugarcoat VM to a prospective customer. VM service is generally going to be worse than any major carrier, Sprint included. Each person needs to decide whther that's an OK trade off for saving $50-$60 a month. For me, it was, for others, it might not be.
 
I'm back with sprint now with a nexus s

Honestly with my optimus and triumph on virgin signal was an issue majorly.

With my nexus s, the experience is much better. No I don't have perfect signal. But If I can get a maximum of two bars with sprint when I often got no bars to one bar with virgin, I'm okay with that.
 
shark974 said:
I get always at least 1.5, and usually 2-3 mbs on ATT. Frequently on up to about 3-3.5 mb/s. On 3g (I dont have a 4G phone just a Captivate).


That's some blazing fast 3g.
Click to expand...
I wouldn't know, the 2 almost 3 months that I had AT&T, I had virtually no 3G and the couple calls that I did make dropped. Oh and SMS, 2-3 days late. Not bad for $80+ a month.
 
lanceg said:
VM doesn't even have access to all Sprints towers.
Click to expand...

I don't believe that is true- you have a source for that piece of info? AFAIK VM has access to all sprint owned towers, but of course it doesn't have access to any roaming towers.
So a sprint phone with roaming turned off should get virtually the same service as a VM phone.
 
wsimon said:
I don't believe that is true- you have a source for that piece of info? AFAIK VM has access to all sprint owned towers, but of course it doesn't have access to any roaming towers.
So a sprint phone with roaming turned off should get virtually the same service as a VM phone.
Click to expand...

True for Voice but not data,data on VM is not as consistent as Sprint,as it is routed through VM servers.
 
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