Alltel EV-DO and KR1

CorpITGuy · EVDO Newbie Joined: 11 Jul 2007 Posts: 8

My company is mostly in an area covered by Alltel, Sprint and Verizon EV-DO as well as AT&T's HSDPA. Though Alltel's corporate headquarters is here, Sprint and AT&T provide higher data speeds. However, Alltel does a much better job in terms of pricing... they are literally about a third of the cost on our corporate account.

I am accustomed to 800kbps-1500kbps on my AT&T air card, and the one KR1 the company has usually runs between 200kbps and 500kbps. That is just not cutting it. We've had it for about a year though. My wife's U720 on Sprint even runs at about 900kbps in our living room. We are moving to a neighborhood that has no DSL (new development) or cable Internet, so we'll be completely reliant on EV-DO or HSDPA. I just purchased a second KR1.

What kind of speeds can I expect? Does anyone else have experience with the KR1 and Alltel in the Little Rock, Arkansas market? Other markets? My Alltel rep tells me we'll have Rev. A any minute now. How much will that help?

Bigdave · EVDO Addict Joined: 08 Nov 2006 Posts: 1068

Hi and welcome to the forum. I am not in the Little Rock area but I do have Alltel EVDO. I currently use the PC5740 (been using it for about a year and a half now.) with the KR1. I average around 1200kbps down and around 130kbps up. Doesn't matter whether it's in the KR1 or not. Been getting some strange slow speeds for a week or so now but . . . . . .

As for Rev A "any minute now" . . . . . don't hold your breath!! Alltel doesn't appear to be THAT close to rolling it out but it's looking better since they have finally begun selling EVDO modems capable of being upgraded to Rev A. I've heard that we can look forward to Rev A towards the end of the year . . . . maybe.

I guess, in the grand scheme of things, as far as time goes that could be considered "any minute now" though huh!!

Although I use the Alltel card I went ahead back at the beginning of the year and got a Sprint U720 also just because they are leaps and bounds ahead of Alltel in deploying Rev A. With the Sprint card I get about the same DL's as with the Alltel card but, of course, Rev A means Sprint delivers much greater UL's. I am currently averaging around 500kbps up. Pretty cool. I'll probably be moving to SC very soon to an area that has no EVDO at all. Really sucks ya know. Might be unloading some data cards on the cheap!!

Anyway . . . . .again, welcome and good luck to ya!