If you’re a Sprint customer then we’ve got some good news for you. Starting June 10th, which is tomorrow, your upload speed is going to get a small boost to 1.5 Mbps; currently it’s capped at 1 Mbps. It may not be much, especially compared to the 6 Mbps speeds you can get if you use Verizon’s LTE network, but those few precious seconds you save that would have otherwise gone towards watching a progress bar creep towards completion can now be better spent actually enjoying life. If you’re using a fixed mobile broadband device such as a desktop modem, and we don’t think many of you are, then the speed boost doesn’t apply to you. Also if you’re barely hitting 1 Mbps now because coverage is limited in your area, then don’t expect to magically hit 1.5 Mbps overnight.
Now if you’re the type who needs to send lots of large files from the field, here’s some advice: Swing by your local cafe and connect to their WiFi. There’s a good chance that their connection is much faster. That or go to your local library, who again probably has free WiFi, and their connections are usually so fast they’ll make your mind melt. And finally, if you’re a business person who deals with a lot of documents, try compressing your files. Text heavy files can be greatly reduced in size if you throw them in a ZIP file.
Curiously, we’re wondering Sprint has an upload cap in the first place? Don’t they sell themselves as the operator who sells you truly unlimited service, and that specifically means they don’t “throttle” you? It’s a bit misleading if you ask us, then again we’d rather have throttled upload speeds than download speeds. Our addiction to cute kitten videos on YouTube wouldn’t tolerate the buffering and stuttering that would result from a capped connection.