Sprint the latest carrier to push LTE as a replacement for fiber

As this site has previously reported, wireless carriers are making it a point to push their wireless service plans to customers in areas that the carriers simply do not want to build out to. Considering these providers collect billions from the taxpayers of these areas (by promising to build wired connections to them), it seems rather unbelievable that the carriers could simply not finish building out, receive the benefits of the agreement and then push ridiculously bad plans to those customers.

But, we have seen Verizon do just that several times including recently. Verizon received $13 billion to build fixed-line broadband to the state of New Jersey by 2010, never came close to completing the project and then pushed their LTE technology onto those who didn’t get the fixed-line broadband.

Now, Sprint is pushing a new service by VTel which allows for internet over Sprint’s broadband spectrum to those in Vermont who do not have better options (though to be fair to Sprint, they did not sign any agreement to wire the state like Verizon). VTel has twelve towers working and plans to put up another 157 through strictly private funds by the end of 2015.

Those speeds include expensive plans, low data caps and average-at best service. For example, plans for VTel allow customers to buy data buckets ranging from 1 GB per month to 50 GB.

Want to stream Netflix shows on these plans? Are you a console gamer who downloads games digitally? Streaming in 1080p on Netflix takes up 4.7GB/hour. Download the latest Call of Duty: Ghosts takes up almost 40 GB.

VTel will offer the service to 20,000 customers in 24 towns in Vermont. Sadly, as the Waterbury Record notes, “some areas will receive broadband for the first time.”

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