Prioritization and Deprioritization on Sprint’s Network

Last updated: 3/11/2020

When Sprint’s network is congested, some services will be prioritized over others. On this page, I list which services I expect are prioritized or deprioritized on Sprint’s network. It’s not always clear what Sprint’s prioritization policies are, so it’s possible that I’ve misclassified some services.

Prioritized services

  • Sprint unlimited plans before 50GB of use per line per month1
  • Sprint phone plans with fixed data allotments2
  • Boost Mobile and Virgin Mobile unlimited plans before 35GB of use per line per month3
  • Boost Mobile and Virgin Mobile phone plans with fixed data allottments4
  • Subscribers using Sprint’s network via the MVNO Ting5

Deprioritized services

  • Sprint unlimited plans after 50GB of use per line per month6
  • Boost Mobile and Virgin Mobile unlimited plans after 35GB of use per line per month7
  • Sprint’s mobile hotspot plans8

MVNO prioritization on Sprint’s network

Conventional wisdom suggests most MVNOs are deprioritized. I’m not confident that’s the case with MVNOs running over Sprint’s network. The MVNO Ting claims its subscribers on Sprint’s network get high priority.

In-the-weeds notes

Plans purchased several years ago may be subject to different prioritization policies. I expect that Boost’s hotspot plans are deprioritized, but I haven’t seen any confirmation.

Footnotes

  1. “Customers who choose to upgrade their handsets or activate new lines of service on or after October 16, 2015, and are on unlimited data plans, that use more than 50GB (35GB for Virgin Mobile and Boost Mobile) of data during a single billing cycle (the QoS Threshold) will be de-prioritized for the remainder of that billing cycle as compared to other customers at times and places where the availability of network resources is constrained.”
    From Sprit’s Open Internet Information web page on 6/18/2019 (archived here)
  2. I expect these plans are prioritized since they’re not associated with the deprioritization disclosures seen on many other Sprint plans.
  3. “Customers who choose to upgrade their handsets or activate new lines of service on or after October 16, 2015, and are on unlimited data plans, that use more than 50GB (35GB for Virgin Mobile and Boost Mobile) of data during a single billing cycle (the QoS Threshold) will be de-prioritized for the remainder of that billing cycle as compared to other customers at times and places where the availability of network resources is constrained.”
    From Sprit’s Open Internet Information web page on 6/18/2019 (archived here).
  4. Expected, not confirmed.
  5. Ting claims to offer high priority service over Sprint network in this post.
  6. “Customers who choose to upgrade their handsets or activate new lines of service on or after October 16, 2015, and are on unlimited data plans, that use more than 50GB (35GB for Virgin Mobile and Boost Mobile) of data during a single billing cycle (the QoS Threshold) will be de-prioritized for the remainder of that billing cycle as compared to other customers at times and places where the availability of network resources is constrained.”
    From Sprit’s Open Internet Information web page on 6/18/2019 (archived here).
  7. “Customers who choose to upgrade their handsets or activate new lines of service on or after October 16, 2015, and are on unlimited data plans, that use more than 50GB (35GB for Virgin Mobile and Boost Mobile) of data during a single billing cycle (the QoS Threshold) will be de-prioritized for the remainder of that billing cycle as compared to other customers at times and places where the availability of network resources is constrained.”
    From Sprit’s Open Internet Information web page on 6/18/2019 (archived here).
  8. On 6/18/2019, I saw indication on the Sprint website that the 10GB, 50GB, and 100GB mobile hotspot plans were deprioritized (archived web page).