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I'm risking starting up another signal strength thread, but I figured this info was useful for anyone looking to return their Evo 3D or any other phone in Massachusetts.
I finally decided I had better try swapping out my Evo 3D at Best Buy in case there was something wrong with the radio. Reception in Eastern Massachusetts has been horrible with it. Far worse than my Moment or my wife's Epic.
When I tried to swap the phone out, they told me I owed $22 in taxes. Turns out that July 1st, Massachusetts taxes you on the full $699 and not the price you pay. So if you bought on the 24th and replace in store after July 1st, there is nothing Best Buy can do to avoid the tax.
I decided to switch back to the original phone because after loading a signal dbm widget onto both phones and the reps' personal evo 3d, they all had similarly crappy signals.
A few questions though:
1) It doesn't seem like signal is always bad. Just much more prone to dropping out. Anyone else experienced this?
2) Is it possible that the case is killing the signal? I have the platinum series case from best buy which looks slick but if it's killing the signal I'll get rid of it.
3) I noticed that bluetooth seems to have a significant negative effect on the dbm of the phone signal. Is this normal for a phone, bad design, bad luck or chance?
4) I struggle to get 4G to stay connected in Boston. It loses the connection then goes into 4G! mode and refuses to connect for more than a few seconds. Is this normal?
5) To what extent can HTC improve signal performance by software updates? Samsung was able to do this for the Moment, but they were starting with a lemon of a phone to begin with...
Anyway, bad signal or not, if you are messing around with phones in Massachusetts, be sure to sneak over the border to New Hampshire before returning it or you'll piss away $20+.
I'm having signal issues too gets really annoying esp with 4g hope its just a bug that can be fixed
I am in the worcester area and my signal is terrible everywhere I go. With my 4g it was fine, 3d absolutely sucks. I am on my second phone now and both have been horrible. I have been in the city where I used to have great signal but get nothing now. I also had no signal on the mass pike in auburn and was roaming.
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I noticed today, after changing the roaming mode from automatic to sprint only, that I was dropping in and out of service every few minutes. This had never happened previously as I always have a consistent signal in this area both with the Evo3D as well as the Evo4G. I am hoping a radio update will fix this...
I'll try it this week when I am in New York City and see if it improves. Maybe it just isn't using all the towers in this area or something.
I had the same exact problem with mine but then i loaded a custom prl (00001) and now it's rock solid signal and i haven't roamed yet. Highly recommend by me.
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Hope & change at work!
davec1234 said:
Hope & change at work!
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The economy may be in the crapper but the .gov has to get it's chips.
I'm in the Lawrence/lowell area, reception isn't that bad. Thanx for the heads up in that tax law, didn't know about that. ****ed up is what it is.
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codee said:
I had the same exact problem with mine but then i loaded a custom prl (00001) and now it's rock solid signal and i haven't roamed yet. Highly recommend by me.
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OMG, with that prl you are roaming all the time.
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Well i have really good signal strength in s.fla...i will see wen i visit my fam around Boston to see...but ive always had good reception so maybe its just your area
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Of course MA lawmakers passed the revised taxes bill. They had to find a way to hike their pay and they figured some weird tax would fill the void.
Yeah, I live in Beverly, Ma and my 3g has been total $hit lately.... +/- 1/2 meg down..... I usually leave it on WiFi @ home....
Sent from my 3VO
Even with full bars my signal would cut out and roam come back and do it again
dmora01 said:
OMG, with that prl you are roaming all the time.
Sent from my Nexus S 4G using Tapatalk
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My phone doesn't show roaming and it still locks onto my airave... I'll check my sprint.com acct to be sure though.
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I get pretty good service its just happens that everytime I hold my phone in landscape mode the signal drops. When I go back to portrait I get full bars. Anybody else experiencing this
My ''xDU4L C0R3 SH00T3Rx'' shot you down in 3D!
I live Cape Cod, and drive all over MA and RI, and my signal and 3G is horrible. I exchanged mine for a new one and no change in service. My old Evo 4G got 120 to 140 kbs and this one gets 22 to 70, occasionally 94... Something is wrong with the phone, not the service... I may just buy another Evo 4G from eBay since I gave mine to my nephew, and keep this phone until they find a fix...
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Framingham
I'm in Framingham right now, getting 2 bars on the 4g meter. Speedtest shows 7617 down and 1435 up.
3G sucks for me too. It's not quite 'deal breaker' material, but combined with some other pet peeves of mine I'm leaning towards bringing it back and waiting for the SGS2....cuz if I'm going to have a **** radio I might as well have an unlocked bootloader and CM8 guaranteed.
Well here in Wisconsin I've been getting pretty consistent signals and 3g. But about 2 hours ago everything failed. Haven't had 3g since and I either have 0 bars or I'm roaming, usually with still only a bar or two. Can somebody think of a cause for this because I'm out of ideas.
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I was one of the lucky ones that got vastly improved 3g a week ago. Now, not so much. Speeds are back to the way it used to be... I hope it only means they're still working on things here south of Chicago. Except, 4g speeds are suffering now too. 1mbps for 3g has gone down to 200kbps and 10mbps 4g is now 1mbps.
I too was experiencing extremely too good to be true speeds of about 1500-1800kbps here in upstate NY, and as of late i hang around 150kbps the way its been for the last 9 months. I am also constantly jumping from 3g, 1x to no data what so ever. I hope that just means they are still fixing the issue...
My slight speed increase went away as soon as the evening came and they were back to normal which is unuseable
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Mine did too from 2.7mps to 1.5 mps grr
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U guys sure ur checking ur speeds at the same time of day as you did before? That makes all the difference btw
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Yeah, I've actually checked a few times throughout different times of the days. And I've also gotten 1x in areas i normally don't but with full bars of service. I really didn't notice the difference until today though with the exception of the random 1x service.
Still have improved speeds after the *mystery update* here.
Strange, i've been getting frequent 1x switchovers in houston texas.. I was peaking at 2.2 mbps on 3g
Here near Houston I am having wacky 3g speeds.. Blazing one moment and crawling the next.. Consistent 3g though.
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Maybe they rolled it out to test its work load capacity for data gathering, then reverted back for further analysis? Just a guess. I do envy you guys though. Still get 96 down in these woods.
Maybe someone unplugged their airrave lol
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david914 said:
I too was experiencing extremely too good to be true speeds of about 1500-1800kbps here in upstate NY, and as of late i hang around 150kbps the way its been for the last 9 months. I am also constantly jumping from 3g, 1x to no data what so ever. I hope that just means they are still fixing the issue...
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I'm in upstate too, it's absolutly insane how much it's been jumping around lately. In Johnstown/Amsterdam area it's not too bad, but out in Schenectady/Rotterdam area it's all over the place, one minute I'm getting almost 2mb's then BAM 2kb/sec(no joke I had a speedtest come up as that).
Drewmungus said:
I'm in upstate too, it's absolutly insane how much it's been jumping around lately. In Johnstown/Amsterdam area it's not too bad, but out in Schenectady/Rotterdam area it's all over the place, one minute I'm getting almost 2mb's then BAM 2kb/sec(no joke I had a speedtest come up as that).
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i am much further south than u r, but maybe there is some hope, about a week ago i thought things were "fixed" i cant take this any more.
How do we know if our phones have updated without us knowing it. Is it a software version or something we can check?
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Improved speeds went away for me too as far as I can tell. One thing I've noticed is 1x in areas I've never had issues in and its not just my phone either. My girlfriend's evo 4g shift (bone stock, still unrooted) is doing the same in the same areas.
4G perfect, standing still it drops to 1x then back to 3g and then eventually to 4g. The strange part is while this happens I have full signal.
So far this has happened in downtown Orlando, FL and over in Conway area (for you other Orlando XDA ppl)
It happens more indoors at my house (until the update, never hit 1x at my house) when signal goes down to 2-3 bars over the past 24hrs. It happened a lot Friday out in the open in an error that I've never dropped below 3G (and even then, very rarely).
Anyone else noticing this in the Orlando area? Sprint says there are no known network issues.
Just felt like sharing this because I find this very odd. Where I live I get about 1.3mbps which I thought was pretty damn fast for sprints 3g but right now I'm on a road trip with some friends and we stopped in Walcott Iowa and while still connected to the Chicago server in the speedtest app (closest server to my house) I just pulled 2+ mbps multiple times in literally the middle of nowhere haha fastest 3g I've had on sprint
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That's because 10,000 other phones weren't using speedtest at the same time. You were in the middle of nowhere!
Rural towers where probably no one has sprint always work good. Or in many places Sprints edge of their coverage ends but on the past 8 years the city has moved outwards. And sprints network has not expanded like the other carriers.So the citizens don't use sprint in that area.
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In DC its been about the same. Im hoping these speeds stick for a whlie.
I was driving through Fenton Louisiana on my way back to see my folks when I decided to do a speed test. I was shocked and saddened by the results (6/16). I rarely ever get anything better than 100kbps here in San Antonio. God I hope I'm in range when LTE kicks in!
RudyP said:
I was driving through Fenton Louisiana on my way back to see my folks when I decided to do a speed test. I was shocked and saddened by the results (6/16). I rarely ever get anything better than 100kbps here in San Antonio. God I hope I'm in range when LTE kicks in!
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Juvenile giggle time, on 6/18 you got 69kbps haha. But back on topic, its weird getting like a decent speed on 3g and from what I've been hearing over at s4gru.com the 4g lte its stupid fast (in a good way) compared to the 3g speeds we are getting now. And then the network vision thing their doing should help with the 3g to eventually
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I've noticed a speed increase out here in the bay area as well were I live I would usually averagearound 150 to 300 kbps but over the past week or so my speeds have averaged from 500 to 800 kbps hopefully its a sign of good things to come
I average around 1.5 mb/s in my smaller city of around 60k peiple
Yeah I got over 1 meg for the first time in a few months... They are probably firing back up some of the towers now
Sent from my Sprint GS3
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Happens to me all the time in Orange County, CA. Some times the pings are under 100ms too, Normally when I'm on the freeways is when speeds are best.
I just get those speeds @3am lol
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munsterrr said:
In DC its been about the same. Im hoping these speeds stick for a whlie.
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It's probably because everyone who's been without power has no battery life left in their phones.
Hopefully they take care of them soon.
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kingsville,tx has amazing 3g
I live in the boonies of North Georgia and get at least 1 meg, usually more. Funny thing is if you put my zip code on Sprints website it will say they don't recommend sprint for this area due to lack of coverage. There's no Sprint store for miles!
Sent from my EVO LTE
megabiteg said:
I just get those speeds @3am lol
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Lucky. I never get those speeds no matter what time or day it is.
sslbaron said:
It's probably because everyone who's been without power has no battery life left in their phones.
Hopefully they take care of them soon.
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I thought so too. There are few people without power around me now. Lets hope that Sprint just decided to play nice.
Consider yourselves very lucky. I had MUCH better speeds on my OGEvo. I live in Lexington, SC, right outside of Columbia, and we never had 4G, and probably never really will.
I have been getting decent speeds right outside of Philly
Charlottesville, VA here
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Walcott, IA has one of the largest truckstops in the entire country. Imagine how much data is getting pulled down when 1,000 bored drivers are online.
I'm in NW Indiana and the past week has been horrible....3g has been slower than normal and almost non existent. Anyone else in the area or is it just my phone?
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I've had unusable phone service for 7 months. I'm now leaving Sprint this week. They have told me the towers are being upgraded for seven months. Now they say they're finished, and the service is no better. It's a joke how horrific it is. We fought them and are getting almost $500 in credits now for the terrible half-year we've had. That'll just about cover my early termination fee, haha. Good luck to you.
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im in a southwestern suburb of chicago and its been hell for 3 months now. dropped calls, missed texts, and even better is people don't get the pictures i send them. they just disappear... idk ive gotten the past 2 months free so i guess i can deal even tho they told me the 3 towers in my town getting upgraded would be done last month on the 7th... it amazes me how towns that were scheduled for completion a whole month after the ones in my town have been done for weeks and im still getting the shaft...
All of Chicago is nearly unusable. It won't get any better until early 2013 is my guess. I can't hold a call at all, and data is so slow I can't even stream Pandora. You're not alone. Sure, a few towers here and there have LTE but by and large the whole market is awful.
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it was bad by me SW burbs... for about 2 months... then they finished the NV upgrades in my area and I've noticed much faster 3G speeds... my wife's family in the west burbs are going through what we went through now... sounds like you are too... stick it out if you can... call sprint to try and get a credit... and soon enough hopefully we will be able to enjoy LTE... the few times I happened to be near a tower that was on the speeds were amazing and it gives me hope for sprint
Ok, I knew something strange was going on. I'm from NY, but I'm in the Chicago area quite often. I was driving across I-90 yesterday and when I got to Gary, IN, my phone kept bouncing back and forth from 3G to 1X. I knew something was wrong because I've driven through there many times in the past and would always get 4G LTE service. It was pretty much the same horrible service as I passed through Chicago... my phone even went into Roaming mode twice. I'm in La Grange, IL now and the service is pretty poor here too. I did receive full strength 4G LTE service while I was in Yorksville, IL last night and this morning, but my phone wouldn't hold the signal. I would be completely stationary and then the signal would disappear and go back to 3G. It was like Sprint was turning it on and off or something.
Really bad where I'm at. NW Chicago. But its especially bad at home. I can't receive calls at all when I'm home. Sometimes receive txts late
The reception of this thread is not good in general... gonna put it in Q and A where it should have been and it may get better reception...
dude i work at sprints largest 3rd party retailer. for the past 7 months, maybe since march, They tell us to tell you guys that there is maintenance on the towers. we have 10-20 new people come in a day asking why their phone sucks. As we speak, my phone has no data connection
I live in arlington heights, but my sister is in aurora. she complains as well... This is garbage
I can't even call people on sprint. Just says call can't be completed. But can call other cell phone users. Brought phone in and was told b.s. so close to buying out and going to a usable network.
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cazman420 said:
I can't even call people on sprint. Just says call can't be completed. But can call other cell phone users. Brought phone in and was told b.s. so close to buying out and going to a usable network.
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I did that recently and am so happy I did. Worth the money. Verizon has the new shared data plans, so it only costs me about $8 more per month. Completely worth it. Reliable phone signal everywhere I go, and blazing fast Internet everywhere too. I flip off Sprint every time I drive past one of their stores. They are liars and morons with terrible service right now in Chicago (has been since March).
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I'm in Joliet and have called sprint more times in the last 7 months than I have in the previous ten years. For 6 and a half months it was "we are working on the towers, bear with us and you will be amazed at the new service and glad you stuck it out"
Well Joliet is officially "up and running' I have three towers within a two mile radius of my house, the closest being .07 tenths of a mile a way. Guess who still dont have reliable 4G?! Last night it was on but I had 256kbps down and 2.5m up. Today I called them while I was literally sitting underneath the tower. I had no 4G on my LTE phone and my wifes evo was in 3G gettting a blazing fast 561ms ping, 19kbps down and 29kbps up!
CRAP!
Nothing has changed. the service still sucks, srint still gives me a different answer ecverytime I call. Meanwhile I can't stream Pandora, Tune in Radio or watch a you tube video even at the lowest of settings. If Verizon had an unlimited data plan...I would be gone....what to do?!??!
Maybe it just seems this way or I haven't tested with my GS4 in the same spots, but jesus, I can't get over 4meg down.. I always get 15-28 down almost everywhere I went and tested.. I'm gonna ask my dad to do a side by side with his note 2, if his is significantly faster, which I have a feeling it will be, I'm gonna have a bone to pick with T-mobile.. I won't accept this phone
LTE in Manhattan, NY
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I got some good speeds here in honolulu.
Here in the Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill area of North Carolina, T-Mobile's LTE download speeds are great (anywhere between 15 and 30 mbps), but no matter what, upload speeds will NOT top 10 mbps. Normally it'll jump above 10 then immediately go back down to somewhere around 9.5 mbps and stay steady there. No idea why, and it doesn't appear to be device-specific. It did the same thing when I had a GS4 GPE, and it does the same thing on my Z Ultra GPE. Makes no sense.
The same thing happened to me when I went from the S3 to the S4, it dropped about 10mb for a few weeks and then was right back up in the 40's and 50's. Now, coming from the S4 and now using the S5 I'm in the same boat, getting 28mb down and about 6mb up. I'm not really mad at all considering I just downloaded Wolf of Wall Street in 20 mins. Are we as consumers getting that impatient? I remember how stoked I was to see 3g when I had the original Mytouch.
San Antonio, Texas
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damaged82 said:
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Holy crap. Where are you located? haha
Lol Mckinney tx. I switched from AT&T to t-mobile and it was quite a surprise. I can only get those speeds around my neighborhood anywhere else just typical lte speeds.
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Just moved to Tmobile from sprint. Have literal perfect signal in my house. With sprint I had no signal. 4G seems good to me. Most I got with sprint was 18Mbps. I'll take the perfect signal and 40+ Mbps any day
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Not too shabby
ditched my iPhone 5s and to get this amazing
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I usually get 20-40 down here in Portland OR and at least 10-15up anywhere I go.
I really really sad though because my office literally just moved a mile and since I have been here the fastest I've gotten down is about 20 and up at most like 7. Its really sad too because I am near the Portland airport and its a dense area that should have fast coverage
I live by the Portland airport also and only get about 10-15 download. Ill have to check the coverage map.
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35 - 40 here in Seattle.
I have been an ATT user for years - when the S5 came out, on a friends advice I moved to TMOBILE - when I got my S5 and started checking speeds in my house and near work - I was disturbed to see speeds less than 1/2 what i used to get on ATT - at first I thought it was my S5 but when I put the Sim Card in my NOTE 3 -I got the same slow speeds.
I canclled tMOBILE and went back to ATT and was pleasantly surprised to find that ATT Speeds were even faster than they had been before.
Last year, my average speed from inside my houuse was around 6-10mbps -not bad - closer to work I got awesome speeds - almost 30mbps at times - usually 22-25 - very respectible.
BUT, now I am getting 12 to 18mbps in my house - and even faster speeds near work, often clocking in at 35 to 50mbps - ATT seems to have kicked into overdrive here - (Milwaukee) - this is not a commercial for ATT - many of my friends swear by TMOBILE - but I guess they just didn't have the towers close enough to me to give me any real speed - while ATT has become a rocket ship for me - and my S5 is faster than any other phone I have had before -
jamboxboy said:
I live by the Portland airport also and only get about 10-15 download. Ill have to check the coverage map.
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No one in my office has an ATT LTE phone but we have many times done a speed test with all our of phones out at the same time and the Verizon users get 20-40mbps down and I would always get 20-40 down as well, the sprint person would get like 5 down lol (on LTE too). VZ upload speeds are usually faster that TMO but that really is not a big deal.
There is a difference in the network coverage but I'm not willing to get rapped by Verizons prices for a little better coverage, that is what wifi calling is for. And in an emergency now you can jump on most any network with these phones so that doesn't matter either.
Where i live I do have very good TMO coverage, I completely understand switching because you don't have good coverage at home, that is a big deal.
jamboxboy said:
I live by the Portland airport also and only get about 10-15 download. Ill have to check the coverage map.
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You're not alone, I live in the 205 area and only get 19mb at the highest. And 7 upload.... I am hoping it's just tower upgrades..... hahaha
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fastfed said:
Maybe it just seems this way or I haven't tested with my GS4 in the same spots, but jesus, I can't get over 4meg down.. I always get 15-28 down almost everywhere I went and tested.. I'm gonna ask my dad to do a side by side with his note 2, if his is significantly faster, which I have a feeling it will be, I'm gonna have a bone to pick with T-mobile.. I won't accept this phone
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just got off the phone with t- mobile I have two of these devices both are getting below 1 meg . I live in Brooklyn NY. the speedtest result at the top is wifi . all the others are supposedly 4G LTE . this sucks!
ashraf sharif said:
just got off the phone with t- mobile I have two of these devices both are getting below 1 meg . I live in Brooklyn NY. the speedtest result at the top is wifi . all the others are supposedly 4G LTE . this sucks!
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Something is wrong.. When I was in brooklyn, I was getting 25 down average, in the city I was getting 40-50, was insane.. I'm the OP for this thread and I was worried because I kept doing a speed test and wasn't normal. I just moved into a new place and it just seems to be where I'm at. I see almost 10 or more wherever I go.. the truth is , anything over 4 down and it doesn't matter anymore. besides downloading, videos and all other data required things are just as good if I was getting 4 down or 400 down,