Me too. That would also allow LTE data while on a phone call, which the current units cannot do.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Carrier AT&T LTE Network...very congested?
- Thread starter BlockEight88
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Me too. That would also allow LTE data while on a phone call, which the current units cannot do.
I'm located just north of NYC and the coverage has become awful. I pretty much stay on 4G and don't use LTE unless I'm outdoors. AT&T claims that there is a tower down in my area, but it's been like this for the past two months. I'm so disgusted with their inconsistent service. Even when it was working well, I never saw anything over 5mbps. I would switch to Verizon but having to purchase new phones would be a pain.
Do you know if there is a site where I can find out what frequencies at&t has deployed? Specifically, I'm looking to find out: location, frequency and whether it's voice or LTE.
I'm not an RF engineer, so the simplest site would be best, but I'll take any info / sites you have
Thanks!
----------
So the carrier file can dynamically determine which band has the most congestion, and force the phone to switch frequencies?
If so, would you elaborate more on this subject? I always thought the carrier file was just there to "statically" tell the phone what bands were available.
----------
It happens. Sometimes when I'm in Miami Beach and there's a big event going on, LTE barely works at all. I could have five bars and barely be able to load a simple page.
Turn off LTE to hop on HSPA+ and suddenly it works perfectly and fast.
That's the nice thing about having two data networks available.
Why can't the phone automatically switch to 3G when the LTE network become saturated? Is this a limitation of the phone, GSM or something else?
Thanks!
Do you know if there is a site where I can find out what frequencies at&t has deployed? Specifically, I'm looking to find out: location, frequency and whether it's voice or LTE.
I'm not an RF engineer, so the simplest site would be best, but I'll take any info / sites you have
Thanks!
----------
So the carrier file can dynamically determine which band has the most congestion, and force the phone to switch frequencies?
If so, would you elaborate more on this subject? I always thought the carrier file was just there to "statically" tell the phone what bands were available.
----------
Why can't the phone automatically switch to 3G when the LTE network become saturated? Is this a limitation of the phone, GSM or something else?
Thanks!
The device will always choose the fastest available cellular connection and also prioritize Wi-Fi over cellular connections.
So in order of hierarchy it will go Wi-Fi > LTE > "4G" > EDGE > GPRS
That's just the nature of the technology. If you want to force 3G then you'll have to manually turn off LTE.
- Provider networks are becoming saturated
- Too many people running speed tests
- Tower/Network maintenance
Last edited:
I've noticed that most people in my area of Los Angeles (Northridge) have better luck with AT&T than Verizon. I always find my phone switching from LTE to either 3G or 1x. In my dorm last semester I could hardly get LTE anywhere especially when I was in my room. I'm thinking about switching to AT&T or either T-Mobile because of this and the cost of service.
- Provider networks are becoming saturated
- Too many people running speed tests
- Tower/Network maintenance
Haha sometimes I wonder why I bother wasting my data on speed tests....
Do you know if there is a site where I can find out what frequencies at&t has deployed? Specifically, I'm looking to find out: location, frequency and whether it's voice or LTE.
I'm not an RF engineer, so the simplest site would be best, but I'll take any info / sites you have
Thanks!
----------
So the carrier file can dynamically determine which band has the most congestion, and force the phone to switch frequencies?
If so, would you elaborate more on this subject? I always thought the carrier file was just there to "statically" tell the phone what bands were available.
----------
Why can't the phone automatically switch to 3G when the LTE network become saturated? Is this a limitation of the phone, GSM or something else?
Thanks!
For the first question, I would direct you over to check out FCC's website here and click on "browse using a map" and this will allow you to see who is licensed to operate on which frequency in your area. I think this site can be a little confusing, but someone has created a color coded google maps for the same purpose and I think its very easy to see who own what in what areas. On spec maps website, just click on a frequency/band you're interested in and it will light up the US map with color coded sectors that identify what carrier owns that piece of spectrum. This only tells you what spectrum a carrier owns, but it doesn't tell you what they use that spectrum for. But in general at&t uses 700 for LTE, 850 for 2G/3G/4G, 1900 for 3G/4G/LTE
FCC: http://reboot.fcc.gov/reform/systems/spectrum-dashboard
specMap: http://specmap.sequence-omega.net
So yes, the carrier file does tell the phone what bands are available and what band to search for first and this would be the most simplistic carrier file. More advanced files communicate with the cell site and "see" which band is less utilized and actively selects the best band. So during the day you may notice that your phone may become "sticky" with band 2, but as night approaches it becomes "sticky" with band 17 because of its better signal penetration. There's of course more traffic during the day, and your phone tries to pick the band that has less congestion. At night it will switch over to band 17 just because of the less amount of congestion on the site and band 17's superior signal penetration characteristics. After all a phone that has more bars will use less power to communicate with the cell site.
I'm guessing that the carrier file doesn't have instructions for switching to 4G/3G when LTE is over saturated. I think a carrier would like to put such a file on a phone, but at the same time it might end up resulting in high call volumes to customer service/tech support about LTE connectivity issues. Its probably cheaper for them to have you suffer than hire more call center reps. haha
----------
A thing for everyone here to remember is that the more spectrum a carrier has doesn't necessarily mean they will have faster speeds. A carrier with less spectrum can densify their cell network by having smaller radius cells that serve less people per sector. Having a denser network also has another perk; your phone has to use less power to communicate with the tower you save tremendous amounts of battery.
I actually live in Chatsworth, and have no problems with AT&T in the entire area. I would definitely recommend it over Verizon purely for signal strength's sake.
In Boston I am generally around 20-30. I don't think I have ever hit 50. Maybe 40-ish a few times. Even during peak tourist times it seems good. That said, she is one of the smallest big cities out there, so there's that. LOL.
Yeah, I'll definitely be going to AT&T since their service seems to be better than Verizon in that area. Not entirely sure about T-MO anymore since I've been hearing bad things about their ETF reimburesment situation.
I just found out that the new LG G3 on at&t supports at&t LTE band 29. I find this to be great news for the upcoming launch of the iPhone 6. It is highly likely that the new iPhone will also support band 29 LTE. at&t as you may or may not know owns 6Mhz of 700 D block spectrum in the contiguous US as well as an addition 6Mhz in the E block in several key markets including the SF bay area, LA metro, Philadelphia, NYC metro, and Massachusetts.
If you look up the specifications for band 29, you'll notice that it is all downlink only spectrum. That means a carrier can't really deploy band 29 without carrier aggregation because uplink spectrum is necessary for a device to function. Because this spectrum is right next to at&t's lower B/C blocks, this can allow them to increase bandwidth on their network from a 10Mhz(down)+10Mhz(up) to a higher bandwidth network 15+10Mhz in most markets or even 20+10Mhz network in the few cities mentioned above.
If you look up the specifications for band 29, you'll notice that it is all downlink only spectrum. That means a carrier can't really deploy band 29 without carrier aggregation because uplink spectrum is necessary for a device to function. Because this spectrum is right next to at&t's lower B/C blocks, this can allow them to increase bandwidth on their network from a 10Mhz(down)+10Mhz(up) to a higher bandwidth network 15+10Mhz in most markets or even 20+10Mhz network in the few cities mentioned above.
at&t is currently upgrading their 5x5 band 2 LTE to 10x10. Checked my phone the other day in the test mode and found 10x10 band 2 LTE where it was previously 5x5. At&t hasn't bought any PCS spectrum lately, so they must be refarming their old 2g/3g PCS airwaves to LTE.
Probably why at home I have 3-bars, then I get no service, then it comes back to 3-bars. Noticed this for a few days.
AT&T vs Verizon in Seattle
I'm in Seattle thinking about switching back to AT&T because Verizon has been so unreliable recently. Are you saying the iPhone 6 will support AWS (don't really know what that is though ) and it will be a different ball game?
I'm actually more interested in consistency than speed (assuming speed is reasonable). Really sick of no response from the browser, and of dropouts when working on the bus with wifi hotspot (FYI, I take the 5 bus most days from Greenwood to Harborview downtown!)...
Any advice re AT&T vs Verizon in Seattle welcome!
I'm in Seattle thinking about switching back to AT&T because Verizon has been so unreliable recently. Are you saying the iPhone 6 will support AWS (don't really know what that is though
) and it will be a different ball game? I'm actually more interested in consistency than speed (assuming speed is reasonable). Really sick of no response from the browser, and of dropouts when working on the bus with wifi hotspot (FYI, I take the 5 bus most days from Greenwood to Harborview downtown!)...
Any advice re AT&T vs Verizon in Seattle welcome!
I'm in Seattle thinking about switching back to AT&T because Verizon has been so unreliable recently. Are you saying the iPhone 6 will support AWS (don't really know what that is though
I'm actually more interested in consistency than speed (assuming speed is reasonable). Really sick of no response from the browser, and of dropouts when working on the bus with wifi hotspot (FYI, I take the 5 bus most days from Greenwood to Harborview downtown!)...
Any advice re AT&T vs Verizon in Seattle welcome!
iPhone 5s/6 both support Verizon's AWS frequencies. If you don't have a phone that supports AWS your phone can only connect to band 13 LTE. To better explain why your phone is getting slow, think of a highway system. Verizon originally deployed a "10 lane" highway for its LTE network. Soon too many people started driving on the highway and resulted in highway congestion, which you are experiencing. Verizon then built an adjacent parallel 20 lane highway that only cars built after 2013 are allowed to use. Most cars out there aren't that new, so only a few cars are on the 20 lane highway and there is much less resulting congestion.
What i mean to say is that older verizon band 13 devices will be slow because that is the main LTE band they operate off of. Band 4 (AWS) adds an additional 15-20Mhz of spectrum allocated to LTE. This can provide peak speeds twice as much as band 13 and thus a resulting 2x capacity. You live in seattle, so your new "highway" is actually 15 lanes or 15Mhz of additional AWS on top of the original 10Mhz of 700spectrum giving you a total of 25Mhz of LTE capacity.
At&t on the other hand has a similar approach in that they are also using 10Mhz of 700spectrum. Unlike Verizon, at&t is repurposing its PCS spectrum to create additional LTE capacity. Where spectrum licenses are available at&t has refarmed 5-10Mhz of PCS spectrum to LTE giving some areas up to 20Mhz of total capacity. This can also be increased up to 20Mhz of PCS, but thats only if at&t has contiguous license in those areas.
Wow, thx for all the info! It seems like we can't really know which carrier will be more reliable in coming years since there are so many variables (how many people will be on a network in an area, how a carrier's bandwidth will be allocated, etc).
Any "best guesses" at which carrier in Seattle will be most reliable (minimal interruption of fast-enough service, which I would say includes non interrupted HSPA+ by AT&T, assuming I am correctly recalling the name of their fast sub-LTE network) in the foreseeable future?
Any "best guesses" at which carrier in Seattle will be most reliable (minimal interruption of fast-enough service, which I would say includes non interrupted HSPA+ by AT&T, assuming I am correctly recalling the name of their fast sub-LTE network) in the foreseeable future?
Living in Manhattan I'm constantly noticing that my 5s on AT&T (unlimited plan) has dropped to 4G. It's quite annoying.
For this reason I just pre-ordered my iPhone 6 on Verizon and I'm porting my number. Unlimited data is useless if your constantly put on a slower network or went over 5GB and you're getting throttled.
For this reason I just pre-ordered my iPhone 6 on Verizon and I'm porting my number. Unlimited data is useless if your constantly put on a slower network or went over 5GB and you're getting throttled.