EVDO vs EVDO Rev A

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dna0603@yahoo.com - 28 Jul 2006 18:43 GMT

Looking at getting a PC Card to use in the Baltimore, MD area. Anyone
have experiences there?

Sprint is offering a plan through a corporate discount... which ends up
going through the bluefish.net site. The plan is unlimited data for
$49.99 (which sounds like a SERO) but I would also receive the NVP of
25% on that so it would take the plan down to $37.49. Not too bad IMO.

My dilemma is... knowing that Rev A is coming out soon... and not
knowing when the offer for this plan is going to end... would you go
for the current plan without a Rev A card... or wait it out and end up
paying more per month for the plan with a faster speed? Typical net
usage is surfing, email, some music streaming videos from Yahoo!...
nothing out of the ordinary.

Thoughts on the card to get as well? It seems that people say they
prefer the Sierra Wirelesss card, but looking at actual speeds
clocked... it seems that one of the other two may be a better choice?

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Jim - 28 Jul 2006 20:06 GMT

Before you make any decision, be sure that you will get the NVP
discount. I highly doubt that you will. It was promised to me when I
signed up, and needless to say it did not appear on the first bill so I
called. I was told that NVP can not be applied to data plans!!!!

There was a recent thread on sprintusers.com about this, and it seems to
hold true. You can how ever get most of the other discounts, they did
apply my 20% loyalty discount.

So double check on the NVP before you make any deal.

Jim

jrr(at)nycap.rr.com

> Looking at getting a PC Card to use in the Baltimore, MD area. Anyone
> have experiences there?
[quoted text clipped - 14 lines]
> prefer the Sierra Wirelesss card, but looking at actual speeds
> clocked... it seems that one of the other two may be a better choice?

Reply to this Message

dna0603@yahoo.com - 28 Jul 2006 20:34 GMT

Sorry about the info not being in columns... but it seems to be
applying the NVP already right on the site... even before you check
out.

What card do/did you use? What area are you in? Speeds?

Thanks for your suggestion!

Sprint Data Plans for EVDO Cards
Retail Cost Your Cost Data Allowed Additional Data / Charges
Agreement

$80.00 $60.00 Unlimited Additional $0.20/minute charge for calls
made on PCS Connection Cards' with voice capability 1 Year

$60.00 $45.00 40 MB $.02 per kilobyte charge over 40 MB limit;
Additional $0.20/minute charge for calls made on PCS Connection Cards'
with voice capability 1 Year

$40.00 $30.00 20 MB $.02 per kilobyte charge over 20 MB limit;
Additional $0.20/minute charge for calls made on PCS Connection Cards'
with voice capability 1 Year

$49.99 $37.49 Unlimited Additional $0.20/minute charge for calls
made on PCS Connection Cards' with voice capability 1 Year

> Before you make any decision, be sure that you will get the NVP
> discount. I highly doubt that you will. It was promised to me when I
[quoted text clipped - 29 lines]
> > prefer the Sierra Wirelesss card, but looking at actual speeds
> > clocked... it seems that one of the other two may be a better choice?

Reply to this Message

Jim - 28 Jul 2006 21:36 GMT

What site were you on?

I'm using the Sierra 580 aircard. I'm in the Albany, NY area and we
don't have the EV-DO,,,,,,YET. I'm still waiting. SPCS sold me the
service, then told me after I received the card that it's not available
in this area yet.

> Sorry about the info not being in columns... but it seems to be
> applying the NVP already right on the site... even before you check
[quoted text clipped - 55 lines]
>>>prefer the Sierra Wirelesss card, but looking at actual speeds
>>>clocked... it seems that one of the other two may be a better choice?

Reply to this Message

Paul Miner - 28 Jul 2006 23:48 GMT

>Looking at getting a PC Card to use in the Baltimore, MD area. Anyone
>have experiences there?
[quoted text clipped - 5 lines]
>usage is surfing, email, some music streaming videos from Yahoo!...
>nothing out of the ordinary.

If EVDO is available in your area, (Power Vision rather than Vision),
I think you'll find it quite satisfactory for the things you've said
you plan to do. Rev A is coming, but I wouldn't say it's right around
the corner, so you may not want to wait. The first Rev A deployment
isn't far off, but your area may not be upgraded for quite awhile.

>Thoughts on the card to get as well? It seems that people say they
>prefer the Sierra Wirelesss card, but looking at actual speeds
>clocked... it seems that one of the other two may be a better choice?

I have the Sierra 580, and it works well, but quite a few of my
friends have the Novatel S620 and they claim its newer chipset gives
it a leg up in performance. I haven't put the two cards side by side
and tested them (yet), so I can't answer that question. Either will
work for you, and it might be that the biggest difference is that the
Sierra has the little flip-up antenna while the Novatel's antenna is
entirely self-contained (and therefore can't easily be broken off.)

Signature

Paul Miner

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Glenn - 29 Jul 2006 01:09 GMT

>> Looking at getting a PC Card to use in the Baltimore, MD area. Anyone
>> have experiences there?
[quoted text clipped - 5 lines]
>> usage is surfing, email, some music streaming videos from Yahoo!...
>> nothing out of the ordinary.

I'd agree with the previous comments about not waiting for faster speed
from rev A. You should realize that the speed you experience will
depend strongly upon how many other users there are on the same
tower/segment/carrier. This will also be true for rev A when it appears.

In my region there are a large number of 1xRTT (voice) towers but
perhaps only 10% of them (total of 3 in fact) also have EV-D0. Each of
those presently only has 1 carrier/sector, as far as I can tell. Unlike
1xRTT, for downstream EV-DO each carrier is totally dedicated to a
single user. Multiple users must time share the resource. This means
that while I see as high as 1.15 Mbps down and 130 kbps for upstream
data, as soon as another user comes on the same sector, my download
speed drops to half or less so things can get quite choppy or even come
to a temporary standstill.

>> Thoughts on the card to get as well? It seems that people say they
>> prefer the Sierra Wirelesss card, but looking at actual speeds
>> clocked... it seems that one of the other two may be a better choice?

The measurements I made were with a Novatel S620 in my laptop and with a
spectrum analyzer for monitoring the tower. While according to
DSLReports, where I logged the tests, my result was among the highest
performance for Sprint servers, and while I performed it with an
external antenna on the card (an advantage of the Novatel, BTW)
guaranteeing good or excellent signal strength (as high as -55 dBm), it
is likely that the fact that I was careful to measure at low usage times
when there was no one else trying to use the same sector and carrier
probably trumped any differences I might have seen by using different
cards or PAM/computer combinations.

Overall I'm fairly impressed with Sprint EV-DO performance and plans,
enough so that I just added a Treo 700P to my toybox. I hope that my
writing this doesn't encourage too many people in my area to add Power
Vision before Sprint can add enough EV-DO carriers and towers to keep it
up! (:>)

Glenn

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