Wednesday, September 1, 2010

Sprint Guarantees Indoor Reception

Last week in an article published in Wireless Week, it was reported that Sprint is giving away 3G femtocells to Sprint customers to have reception troubles inside buildings. There are a number of us who would like to know what it takes to qualify for one of those free femtocells (micro-sized cell sites that fit inside buildings to increase coverage). Are these being given to complaining homeowners, big-spenders...or Joe Sixpack?

Sprint has been helping customers with indoor coverage issues with both free and paid-for 2G femtocells for some time. The fact that they are actually giving away the new 3G version (as long as you remain a customer) even before you can buy one is quite a big deal. It tells me Sprint is doing all it can to make customers happy...or...trying to polish up their slightly-tarnished reputation by doing a little something in the hopes of getting a lot of credit.

I actually think it's more of the former and less of the latter since they don't harp much about it. Yes, we'd really like to think they really are trying to make being a Sprint customer a special experience.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

They've gotta do something and not just for home users. They are doing very little to add onto their network but are taking away from what we can use in those times of roaming. I was a loyal customer of Sprint for just over 10 years and was on the simply everything plan. I had a family emergency in August and ended up in an area for about 4 weeks where there was no Sprint coverage and I was roaming. I found my phone off one morning and when i called I was informed that I had used 803 roaming minutes and there was a maximum of 800 minutes per month. When I explained my family emergency and that I really needed my phone on the rep I was speaking to replied "That's not our problem. You went over your minutes and your just going to have to deal with it." I asked for a supervisor and after explaining once again my situation the supervisor responded "Quit wasting my time" and hung up. Will never do business with them again.

Dan from Atlanta said...

First off I like this site. I had a friend tell me about it and I have to say that it has a lot of good things. I had the same thing happen to me. I also had the $100 everything deal. My wife and I took a vacation to an area about an hour outside Ashville, NC which I must say was absolutely gorgeous. My wifes job gave her the time but required her to be present via phone for either the morning or afternoon meeting which ment about 60 to 90 minutes a day. She already had a work phone issued to her from AT&T so she agreed and off we went. When we arrived we discovered that there was NO GSM service at all in the area. My Sprint phone was roaming but did have full coverage. When I called Sprint to ask I was told that roaming was fine as long as we did not use a huge amount for 3 months in a row so all was figured out. About 5 days into the trip my phone died to and when calling in I found that I had used 824 roaming minutes and the rep told me they wouldn't reactivate my phone. When I told him what was told to me before I was told that the rules had changed and it was no more than 800 minutes in a single month. I had been a customer since Feb of 2002 and was never late and had only roamed 1 time before in 2006. That day Verizon gained a customer and Sprint lost another. I am paying $20 more a month but to not have to go through that again and to be talked down to as I was makes it worth it.