Quite a commotion was caused among the tech media yesterday when Dow Jones reported that Sprint CEO Dan Hesse said that the carrier was throttling data speeds for the top one percent of its users - contradicting the carrier's long-standing advertisements of unlimited data. As it turns out, the original story happened to misquote Mr. Hesse, prompting Sprint to post a clarification to its support forums today.
"For those that want to abuse it, we can knock them off," said Hesse according to Dow Jones. Apparently, Mr. Hesse had said that this applied only to users who are roaming on other networks and not using Sprint's towers.
Showing posts with label Sprint LTE. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sprint LTE. Show all posts
Huawei hotspot shows off 40-50Mbps download speed for Sprint LTE
Sprint has been very busy lately, getting its LTE network ready for consumer use. The first tower cluster was turned on just before the end of last year and a list of the lucky markets where Sprint will first offer the service was just named by the carrier the other day. If you plan on offering 4G service, it might be a good idea to sell LTE enabled phones and some leaked ads show that the Samsung GALAXY Nexus will be the carrier's first LTE enabled handset.
It all sounds like things are falling into place for Sprint and their customers who have been hoping for a 4G option other than WiMax. To test how fast Sprint's LTE service is theoretically capable of going, a video shows a Huawei branded hotspot hooked up to a computer running on Sprint's LTE pipeline. The tower being used is one in the Houston area, and the person testing the network was 1.8 miles away from it and didn't have the kind of congestion that Sprint will eventually have on its network. In fact, you can assume that there was no one else in the area using the pipeline at the time.
The results on the original video showed some good Ping times and download speeds above 40Mbps and 5Mbps for uploads. The tester later said that upload speeds were capped at 5Mbps during the day. More importantly, the same guy later posted a newer video that revealed speeds closer to 50Mbps down on the Sprint LTE network. At the risk of beating a dead horse, without others using the network at the same time in the same area, it is like figuring out how long it takes to drive from Rockland County to Yankee Stadium by taking a drive at 3am when the streets are clear.
Sprint denies throttling reports
It's kind of hard to deny reports that are referring to what your CEO said, but Sprint is going to try anyway. Yesterday, news came out that Sprint CEO Dan Hesse said that Sprint actually does throttle about 1% of users. The thing is that no reports, including the original from the Dow Jones Newswires quote Hesse as saying that.
Hesse was quoted as saying, "For those that want to abuse it, we can knock them off.” And, a new announcement from Sprint is claiming that Hesse was referring to dealing with users who break the company's terms of service. The announcement says that Sprint will contact violators, and if the usage doesn't change, it can and will terminate the user's service. It also says that "Sprint does not throttle any postpaid phone data users for on-network or off-network usage."
Given that Hesse was never quoted, just paraphrased, as mentioning throttling, it is possible that the original report may have overstepped the facts, but we'll just have to wait and see as more info comes out.
Sprint fires four, merges some enterprise and consumer operations
Last year ended with Sprint CEO Dan Hesse in better spirits. After all, his constant media attacks on the proposed $39 billion buyout of T-Mobile by AT&T resulted in the latter pulling out of the deal. And 2012 will be the carrier's first full year with the Apple iPhone 4S in its lineup. Looking inward, Hesse came to the conclusion that some changes were necessary at the nation's third largest carrier.
In a note to employees the CEO told his company that Sprint will be combining the sales and marketing teams for enterprise and consumer businesses into one group. According to Reuters, this is being done to streamline the company. A copy of the memo obtained by the news agency quotes Hesse as saying that there are really no longer any lines separating consumers and businesses and with the company investing in Network Vision and the Apple iPhone, Sprint needs to find ways to cut back on spending. As a result, Hesse says that it makes more business sense to merge both the enterprise and consumer units into one organization which will allow the company to eliminate duplicate jobs.
The combined marketing for enterprise and consumers will be headed by Bill Malloy, currently the carrier's chief marketing officer. Paget Alves, head of Sprint's business operations, will be in charge of business and consumer sales. Meanwhile, four executives have received their pink slip. Gone from Sprint are Bob Johnson, president of the consumer services group,integrated services group, Danny Bowman, the president of its integrated solutions group, Chris Rogers, senior vice president of its corporate development and spectrum, and John Carney, the senior vice president of consumer marketing.
Sprint spokesman Scott Sloat said that more changes are coming although the shuffling is not part of an upcoming round of layoffs at the carrier.
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