What does 1x mean on a Sprint iPhone 4S?

Ever since iOS 7 came out I've been getting 1x a lot lately. Even when I had the iOS 7 beta version 1x came out a lot, and now a lot lately. It's definantly a lot more slower than 3G. Is this roaming?

1x is short for CDMA2000 1xRTT, which only supports dialup speeds.

When your phone shows the generic term 3G it is using EV-DO which supports low end broadband speeds, hence why 1x is so much slower.

The current technology is LTE, usually dumbed down to the term 4G. I get about 20Mbps down and 10Mbps up over my LTE connection, which blows my 12Mbps down 768Kbps up DSL connection out of the water.