Austin360 blogs > Digital Savant > Archives > 2009 > November > 17 > Entry
Sprint brings 4Gs to the ATX
Yesterday, Sprint Nextel Corp. launched 4G wireless service in Austin, boasting speeds (theoretically) of 10 times what we see on 3G,
The bad news: there’s not a phone that currently can surf at those speeds, though Sprint says we’ll see that next year as well as a netbook that’s embedded with a 3G/4G chip for surfing this faster network.
I met up with John Taylor, a manager of public affairs for Sprint corporate, and he showed me some wares currently available from the company that are able to access 4G (shown in the photo above). Among them is a USB modem, available for free with a two-year contract (at about $69 a month with no data limits), a Wi-Fi device that the modem can plug into to provide a mobile wireless hotspot (similar to, but larger than the Verizon MiFi device we reviewed) and a router that can service even more connections from the same modem. (The router and hotspot device do cost extra.)
We did a quick, informal test in the lobby of the Hyatt Regency on Barton Springs and Congress and got a download rate of more than 6 Mbps. That’s about what my home Internet connection download speed is with a desktop PC wired directly to my router with Time Warner’s Road Runner service.
Upload speed was more than 1 Mbps (faster than my home upload speeds).
We did a little light Web surfing and a recent episode of “Saturday Night Live” on Hulu streamed quickly and without any stuttering. (4G is pretty fast, but it unfortunately did nothing to improve the quality of the January Jones episode itself.)
Taylor was quick to point out that speeds will vary based on location, what kind of building you’re located in and, of course, how congested the network gets. At this point, nobody’s on 4G yet, so the data road was completely clear.
If you want to check out Sprint’s 4G for yourself, Taylor is hosting an informal get-together at Opal Divine’s on Sixth Street Wednesday evening (Nov. 18) from 5 to 8 p.m. He’ll have the wireless card and these devices and will be available to answer questions. Take a look if you have time and let me know what you think.
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By Brian
November 17, 2009 12:03 PM | Link to this
This sounds interesting. What kind penetration are they looking for before they cut the service off to new customers. Whats the coverage area? Is it just for business use or will it be available commercially?