Sprint -- can you hear me now?

First the connection would go up and down seemingly at random. I know a bit about multipath propagation, so no big deal. But random cars driving by outside and what I was seeing was two different things.

First, after putting a heavy load on the card, such as a big download, the signal would drop in strength -- consistently. Sometimes it would drop into dial-up speed world, and the using the internet would be painful.

After a while, and on some days, all I could get was dial-up speeds.

Second, as my mother passed away recently, I have another almost identical card in my pocket. For the past couple of days, I've been playing a game: when one card has problems I switch the cards.

Every time so far the signal has gotten better and the transfer speed improved. Now these are two identical cards in the same place getting different results.

Is Sprint promising me one kind of bandwidth and delivering on another -- sort of high-speed for all the folks that don't really need high-speed? I'm beginning to think so, although I am not completely sure.

What I am sure about is if the larger story of ISPs playing games with speed figures continues, we're going to end up not only having net neutrality, but some QoS regulations as well. As a libertarian, I am against government intervention, but everybody deserves to have a very clear idea about what they are buying or the marketplace doesn't work efficiently. The impedance mismatch between what people think they are purchasing and what they are getting grows larger.

So Sprint! Can you hear me now? Or do I have to get a bigger stick?