October 22, 2015
Today’s story features the University of Minnesota. The University of Minnesota is not a customer of Mobile Citizen, but like Mobile Citizen’s nonprofit owners, is an EBS licensee. Only 15 days left till the shutdown. Sign our petition today.
Since 2011, the University of Minnesota has relied on a CLEAR unit to provide Internet access to its Rochester-area students, staff and faculty, as well as neighboring companies conducting classes, meetings and seminars. The monthly data usage from a single device averages between 30-70GB, far exceeding the 6GB per month Sprint will offer post-shutdown.
Meanwhile, in the St. Paul-Minneapolis area, 120 of the university’s users have already been transitioned to Sprint’s LTE network, resulting in constant usage warnings after a day or weekend of use and throttling after the 6GB limit is reached. Many users need more than 10 times the data Sprint is willing to provide, an issue Michael Thompson, Facilities Manager of UNITE Distributed Learning at the university, finds extremely problematic.
“If we cannot get this resolved, we will end up with users walking away from the service, as the service cannot meet their needs,” Thompson said.
Adding to the headache, according to Thompson, are problems with “upgraded” equipment that frequently malfunctions and Sprint’s lower quality of customer service.
“Support from CLEAR was quick and knowledgeable,” he said. “Sprint support is hampered by being consumer-level first-tier support covering all Sprint devices and services and unable to help with some issues because of our ‘Spectrum Barter’ account type.”
If you agree that the students, staff and faculty at the University of Minnesota deserve working equipment, quality service and Internet access that meets their needs, please sign our petition.
Read the full University of Minnesota story.