Sprint iPhone 4S owners complain of slow data speeds

We reported earlier that a side-by-side-by-side test of AT&T vs. Verizon vs. Sprint showed Sprint coming up last in every test, and badly. While that was a test, in one location of the United States, based on threads at Sprint's discussion boards, it seems that Sprint customers across the country are having the same issue.

The earlier test showed Verizon to be the equal (or better) of AT&T in real-world browser testing, but to trail badly in a straight download test. However, Sprint lagged badly in all of the tests involved.

Thing is, the speeds appear to be all over the map (and we don't mean that facetiously). For example, the first post says their download speed was 0.16Mbps, while their download speed was 0.05Mbps.

Meanwhile, the second post in the thread gave a result of "Download: 0.20 Mbps Upload: 0.07 Mbps." Others in the thread gave much better numbers, with one saying at "a Metro station in DC this afternoon I had 2.1 down and .4 up."

We ourselves just ran SpeedTest in the SF Bay area and say 1.5Mbps d/l, and .8Mbps u/l.

Although the news is making the rounds of the blogosphere, the thread is only about 180 posts long. It's clear though that most people don't post when they are happy, and it's unclear how many Sprint iPhone 4 / 4S models have been sold.

Could Sprint be feeling the pain of the data hungry iPhone? It's a little too early to tell, but Sprint has yet to respond with an official statement.