iPhone Roadtrip to Brenham, TX

I like icecream in small towns. How exciting.

I enjoy reading this articles very much and always look forward to them.

Also, I really think we (or Katie) should give a name to her iPhone, after all she treats him (or her?) as an individual (i.e. See last pic: "Katie and iPhone").

That's good to know. Hopefully I'll have a similar experience with AT&T's service the next time I go out to the piney woods of East Texas.

13,000?

I live in a small town (St. James, MO) of about 4,000. I get great coverage and EDGE speed on mine, although looking at the map you see why missouri is pretty covered.

arn said:

of note, Texas appears to really good AT&T coverage everywhere... (though perhaps I just didn't zoom down enough to be sure it's true in the smallest towns.)

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AT&T is based in San Antonio

I miss blue bell

We eat what we can and sell the rest.....

Hmm bluebell!!!!!!!

I love the Factory there! And the free ice cream is such a good touch!

This weekend I took my iPhone to Yosemite Valley in California. While everyone else's phones were not getting service. I was able to get service, internet and emails. I loved it!

Haha, Blue Bell. I haven't been up there in quite some time. I do pass through Brenham though on trips to College Station (Home of the Fighting Texas Aggies) although I've not made the trip since buying iPhone. Good to know I'll have coverage though. Ha, I already knew this though. AT&T coverage in most of Texas is great (as arn denoted with the fancy coverage map)

I'm in College Station myself, and my wife and I have gotten fantastic coverage here in town, and on several trips between here, Houston, and Austin. As Arn posted, AT&T has really thorough coverage in Texas... and that includes EDGE.

In fact, I did a speed test while on HW6 between here and Hempstead, and still got a fantastic 230-260 kbps... which is roughly what my Treo got on College Station's EV-DO. I'm quite happy that EDGE wasn't really a noticeable bandwidth downgrade for me after all.

The ice cream factory... I'll definitely have to go check that out. Do they do tours on weekends?

AT&T has very poor reception here in Fort Lauderdale, Florida... and I wouldn't call Fort Lauderdale a small town. Check out that map! The entire state of Florida is "in coverage area." Pshhh... Yeah right. I don't even like calling people on AT&T because I can never hear them...

Sorry for that negativity, I know that it's frowned upon. Lol. I was in Walgreens yesterday and the guy at the pharmacy was playing with his iPhone while talking on the Walgreens phone... so I stared at him for like a minute and a half and then whispered, "Hey, nice phone!" I'm just super cool like that

Ryanr14 said:

I live in a small town (St. James, MO) of about 4,000. I get great coverage and EDGE speed on mine, although looking at the map you see why missouri is pretty covered.

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I'm in St. Louis, but went out just past Union MO on monday to do some swimming in a friends lake:
http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=38.468223,-91.335847&spn=0.005023,0.008948&t=h&z=17&om=1
<a href="http://dontclickitdude.com/IMG_0065.JPG" target="_blank"><img src="http://dontclickitdude.com/IMG_0065.JPG" width="500"></a>

I've been out there before and to bourbon Mo, which is not to far away and on my old SonyEricsson w610 on AT&T I never got reception. not even emerency services...
with the ipho(jesus/allah)ne I had full bars the whole time and full edge. I was able to check my mail and update my myspace(yeah. I'm kind of a tool like that).

not sure if it's the phone or AT&T upping the netwerk.... but anyway It's pretty rad!

with all this signal my only problem is getting my car stereo to not blip and bleep whenever the phone is checking it's nets.

loudestnoise said:

I do pass through Brenham though on trips to College Station (Home of the Fighting Texas Aggies) although I've not made the trip since buying iPhone.

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Isn't that like grabbing an ice cold drink before you go to hell...?

Educ8r said:

AT&T is based in San Antonio

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They're also all over Texas, from what I understand. Also, Texas is a surprisingly Teched up state... They were smart when the oil boom started to die down a little bit, and Austin & Dallas & Houston all house a number of silicon companies. Not only that, but big oil is still doing well. Given all that, Wireless coverage seems pretty exceptional in much of Texas. I've done pretty well driving through WEST Texas, too, staying on the highways, and there's hardly anyone there. Brenham, as I recall, is way too close to Austin, San Antonio, and Houston to have poor AT&T reception.

As a native Texan now living in Brooklyn this was an especially painful piece to read. Pining for Blue Bell is one thing; pining for an iPhone is another; but to pine for both at once -- it's too much!

deannnnn said:

AT&T has very poor reception here in Fort Lauderdale, Florida... and I wouldn't call Fort Lauderdale a small town. Check out that map! The entire state of Florida is "in coverage area." Pshhh... Yeah right. I don't even like calling people on AT&T because I can never hear them...

Sorry for that negativity, I know that it's frowned upon.

Click to expand...

Hey, I understand that. AT&T varies a lot from place to place, which really explains the widely varying opinions of it. I am on AT&T, which is great in Austin, where I used to live, and just fine in Norman, OK, where I go to school, but it really sucks out here in Los Alamos, NM, where I am doing an internship. I am also planning on moving here. AT&T only has coverage here through partners. So, since I am on a family plan with my wife's sister and brother-in-law (who are still in austin), we have to be careful not to use more minutes than they do (AT&T stipulates that you get your service disconnected if you use more than 50% of your minutes on non-ATT towers for 2 months in a row). It's pretty lame. One of my major disincentives for buying an iPhone.

Hopefully AT&T does well enough from the iPhone to be able to expand and improve it's network a lot more.

"I like icecream in small towns."
You must have never had Blue Bell!

My dad lives in Brenham, and I was down there a few weeks ago for Blue Bell's 100th anniversary. Happy 100th!

Matthew

noriyori said:

I'm in St. Louis, but went out just past Union MO on monday to do some swimming in a friends lake:
http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=38.468223,-91.335847&spn=0.005023,0.008948&t=h&z=17&om=1
<a href="http://dontclickitdude.com/IMG_0065.JPG" target="_blank"><img src="http://dontclickitdude.com/IMG_0065.JPG" width="500"></a>

I've been out there before and to bourbon Mo, which is not to far away and on my old SonyEricsson w610 on AT&T I never got reception. not even emerency services...
with the ipho(jesus/allah)ne I had full bars the whole time and full edge. I was able to check my mail and update my myspace(yeah. I'm kind of a tool like that).

not sure if it's the phone or AT&T upping the netwerk.... but anyway It's pretty rad!

with all this signal my only problem is getting my car stereo to not blip and bleep whenever the phone is checking it's nets.

Click to expand...

Awesome my friend.Ive been trying this out all around town today getting used to it and testing signal and edge. Haven't gone to far out in the country but I'm at vbs right now using edge to surf and post this, I love it!!

shadowfax said:

[...] Also, Texas is a surprisingly Teched up state [...]

Click to expand...

Suprising?! The integrated circuit was invented here after all:
http://www.ti.com/corp/docs/kilbyctr/jackstclair.shtml

I have to agree with the good AT&T coverage. I live & work midway between Houston & Galveston and just swithced from a Verizon analog phone to the iphone. The Verizon coverage had gotten so spotty as to be virtually useless, but I get great phone calls on the iphone everywhere I've been so far in this area. (I haven't yet been out of the are since I got the iphone.) The internet speed I get on the EDGE network far exceeds what I expected from the early reviews and is completely usable and adequate. Even if I only get one or two bars (from inside a metal building), the phone is still clear and the internet speed acceptable.

Lancetx said:

That's good to know. Hopefully I'll have a similar experience with AT&T's service the next time I go out to the piney woods of East Texas.

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The phone gets really good reception in the east texas area. You should have no problem.

I figured I'd chime in since I lived there for a few years.

First, an interesting fact - Blue Bell sells more ice cream in the few states in which in distributes (its only like 10) than the other ice cream companies that distribute to all 50 states.

Secondly, when I lived in Brenham, I was a subscriber on the original AT&T Wireless network (before they merged with Cingular). I never got a signal at all with that particular network (which was an 1800MHz network, I believe) until I got out of the town limits, but I was always able to roam on Cingular's network (which was in a lower band).

This posed a problem because I had a phone that wasn't compatible with the lower band, so I always had to switch the SIM to another phone when I visited the 'rents in Brenham.

katie ta achoo said:

The iPhone and I took a little trip to the Blue Bell Creameries in Brenham, TX yesterday. We went on a tour and it was all very fun and very tasty (you get ice cream at the end!) but I was concerned about how the iPhone would operate in a small town.

While Brenham isn't exactly a small town, as it has a population of about 13,500, I've lived in Houston (population about 2.1 million) my whole life. I'm used to having a Starbucks on every corner, four shopping malls within 20 minutes, and seeing cell phone towers dot the landscape.

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Hey you know whats cool, i go to Texas A&M and i live in College Station, which is like 10 mins away! Nice to see MacRumors so close!

arn said:

of note, Texas appears to really good AT&T coverage everywhere... (though perhaps I just didn't zoom down enough to be sure it's true in the smallest towns.)

Click to expand...

Texas has great AT&T coverage because their headquarters are in San Antonio.