Hotmail won't sync anymore

anybody else having this problem? I'm getting an error 80072efd. I also ping m.hotmail.com (goes to an activesync.hot.glbdns.microsoft.com and get request timed out.
 
Another thread here:
http://forums.windowscentral.com/general-discussion/195480.htm

And a thread at MS:
hotmail suddenly stopped syncing on windows phone (without error - Microsoft Answers

I called Sprint and sounds like their solution is a hard reset. But since it seems to not be an isolated incident, I'd like to see it explained before I apply that "fix".
That's pretty much what I did... I changed my account over to outlook.com at the same time, so it was worth the big pain in the arse...