i was an alltel unlimited 3g customer using a huawei ec168 (usb modem), when verizon completed the takeover in my area... i always had great bandwidth and service with alltel... in fact, i was able to have downloads over 3Mbs, and uploads around 750kbs... since verizon completed the takeover here, the bandwidth speed has been flaky, the system down occurrences have been way too often, at times up to five hours down completely... so, i have not been a happy verizon customer, at all! i have had literally thousands of times when the 3g broadband would drop from rev a evdo, to that ugly 1xrtt, which is way slower than a dialup modem... i tested my bandwidth here often, being a sr. tech type, and i could live with the speeds being around 1.2Mbs dl, and about 700kbs up... then, a not so funny thing has occurred since verizon started rolling out their 4g in some areas... just prior to that, i would test the ping time and was satisfied that the best i could get was as low as about 85-90ms, with jitter around 10ms and even a bit lower... so with the recent changes verizon is obviously doing... i now have had the ping times go to about 140ms to over 180ms, at times... and the jitter that was often in single digits is now like 20ms and more... my download speeds now are sometimes much less than 1Mbs, and upload speeds are now as low as 200kbs... weird, that i can get the full four bars, 100%... and yet the verizon 3g is nasty slow, down and up... having worked in high tech for over forty years... imo, verizon is purposely slowing down the 3g speed... which doesn't make a lot of sense when my original 2 year contract expires in early may 2011... how in the world could i possibly even consider signing a new contract with verizon with all the poor 3g speeds and poor customer service since they took us away from alltel? in fact: as far as i can tell, at&t has dsl at half the cost of verizon 3g that is faster than the verizon 3g... that doesn't make any sense at all... i realize that all companies in the broadband game have issues and problems... but from my experience working in computers, electronics, modems, systems, etc... i cannot believe that any of the others are this bad... i stay away from these forums because the picture you see here is really pitiful... and i really feel sorry for the ones who don't understand what is going on, and don't know how to be assertive and demanding quality when dealing with verizon customer service... for one, netbooks are garbage... etc... it is getting to the point now that i can see saving myself $60 a month, and just using wifi hot spots... i'm just sayin'