AT&T's 3G Network Struggling to Keep Up?

[MacRumors]

Posters on Howard forums are reporting slower than expected AT&T 3G internet connectivity in several markets across the country. These observations have been made on a variety of 3G-enabled devices.

AT&T's 3G network is said to offer download speeds up to 1.4Mbps, but recent customer testing has shown fluctuating speeds as low as 200Kbps, even in areas that previously had solid 3G coverage.

Of course, some have suggested that this could be the related to the launch of the iPhone 3G on AT&T's network just last week, but this remains speculative. Some users in our own forums have also noticed slower than expected speeds at times as well.

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[sistim turbo]

how can i test my speed?

[theheadguy]

Originally Posted by sistim turbo

how can i test my speed?

uh, google "iphone speed test" from your iphone.

yes, it's not as impressive as they made it out to be. oh well; who expected to be blown away? honestly...

[Speedtoy]

Ive worked with Telco's that also provide the toy called IP.

They generally suck at it, and somewhere, in some conference room, is some product manager with a stack of slides that determined exactly how many bits & bytes each user would consume per billing period based on some crappy survey done by someone like Boston Consulting Group (example only because ive had to explain to them NUMEROUS times things like the difference between IP peering and transport) who polled god knows who from some mailing list without asking if they even used a phone like an iphone..and golly, these users are not averaging out their alloted bits & bytes evenly across all 2,678,400 seconds in a billing period!

So therefore AT&T wont change anything, because the consultants data makes sense, and the PM's plan to offer every iphone user 10Kbps over every second of the day is accurate.


Anyone else bitter about working in phone companies in here?

[ACbc]

I'd say this makes sense. I picked up my iPhone today and wasn't super impressed with the 3g speed (still faster than edge). And my guess is all the iPhone users in Boston right now are going nuts. Hopefully it won't be this bad when I move to Florida at the end of the month.

[Rocketman]

1.

cite:

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthre...517057&page=11

post 271

July 11, 9:55am:

The internet, and large company server farms, are not ready for large scale international software centric rollouts yet.

All I can say is thank goodness Apple highly crippled initial product supplies to insanely small unit numbers per location, or it would actually be worse.

Anybody want to guess how long it will take to reach product sales "equilibrium"?

I say 2-3 weeks.

July 25 to August 1 was the prediction.

2.

cite:

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthre...53#post5434953

Message #7 May 13, 2008 (came true)

I agree. I hope ATT is sourcing UNIX boxes for nodes from Apple!

Blackberry is an ATT friendly thing as well, but they have back end services to compliment the palmtop and network front end.

Oh, wait, Apple owns the former Worldcom telco center. THEY could offer Blackberry (crackberry) like back end services too.


Rocketman

cite:
http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/a...a-data-center/

[Mike2128]

Ya, so far, 3G speeds have been worse for me than EDGE was on the old iPhone.

[DrKeys]

Originally Posted by Mike2128

Ya, so far, 3G speeds have been worse for me than EDGE was on the old iPhone.

same here, iphone 3G = 50kbps, iphone Edge = 178kbps.... plus at the same spot... i get 4-5 bars on edge, when i switch to 3G on the same spot, signal drops down to 1 bar.

Something is fishy

[iphone529]

This is total Bull, When i turn off 3G i get a great signal and am able to make calls, with 3G on I cant make a call and have no signal I am standing in the same spot while doing this.

while in the same spot with my GF's 3G phone she gets full signal. So what does this tell us.


ITS NOT AT&T, IT'S APPLE. This iPhone 3G is not so 3G.

[njchris]

The post says as low as 200Kpbs? Try much lower, like around 50 and sometimes less.

Full 3G bars and I get 50

I'm glad AT&T is charging us an extra $10 a month for the opportunity.

[Fuchal]

Originally Posted by iphone529

This is total Bull, When i turn off 3G i get a great signal and am able to make calls, with 3G on I cant make a call and have no signal I am standing in the same spot while doing this.

while in the same spot with my GF's 3G phone she gets full signal. So what does this tell us.


ITS NOT AT&T, IT'S APPLE. This iPhone 3G is not so 3G.

It tells us you don't have any 3G signal

[spork183]

overload. Give it a few days. If Att doesn't fix it... Course, the downside comes if it doesn't pick up. I'm sure we all have faith in ATT of course.

[SinCityJets]

Las Vegas, NV

3G Speed - 149.7 kbps
Edge Speed - 245.3 kbps

Conducted at www.iphonespeedtest.com

This is not a joke.

$10 extra a month for........???

[Aznsensation45]

Originally Posted by spork183

...I'm sure we all have faith in ATT of course.

GAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!! funniest joke i've heard yet.

[speedbumpnv]

this could be true for some people. i was getting faster download speed over EDGE today than 3G, i even did a test one right after the other at work today, see below.






the other issue is actual coverage. ATT map only shows coverage or no coverage. the other coverage map shows a degree of coverage. while most of my area (las vegas) is shown to have 3G coverage, its minimal, 1-3 bars average. i will get 4-5 in some locations, my office being one of them. this compared to EDGE where i got 5 bars nearly everywhere.

[jamesdean74]

I am in Bradenton Florida, and I have been averaging 1.7 to 2.4 Mbps on my 3g, it's fast, though AT&T just deployed it here so maybe that has something to do with it, but so far I am impressed! And no, that's not my wifi, I tested it with wifi off!

[wakerider017]

Wow,

I went to testmyiphone.com today and did like 1.67Mbps on 4 bars of 3G.

Tampa, FL


Fast enough anything I do on my mobile device

[speedbumpnv]

does anyone know if UMTS and HSDPA are deployed together or are there some markets that only have UMTS and other that have both?

[conshok26]

i'm in buffalo ny and earlier was was getting around 120 on average. i just restored my phone now it's around 250-300. it's better but it could just be because it's later in the day. i'm really hoping this is just temporary and that speeds will be back up to what they should be.

[somnambulysteri]

I've been trying to decide whether or not to upgrade to the 3g from the first generation phone and went into an ATT store in Emeryville, CA today to compare. I opened up several different websites with my Edge phone sitting right next to the 3g display model and out of about seven or eight tries, the two phones were exactly tied or the 3g downloaded the page a second or two faster. I have to say I'm not yet sold on this one...

[mike12806]

I get wild fluctuations, from under 200 kbps to over 800 kbps? This is with full bars of 3G coverage too. Maybe ATT is still adding capacity, ala their "Fine Edge" initiative in the days leading up to and after iphone 1.0.

[DiamondMac]

Originally Posted by DrKeys

same here, iphone 3G = 50kbps, iphone Edge = 178kbps.... plus at the same spot... i get 4-5 bars on edge, when i switch to 3G on the same spot, signal drops down to 1 bar.

Something is fishy

Wow, that is bad

I have heard that Chicago for some reason is incredibly slow while other cities are seeing exceptional speeds such as Atlanta, Orleans, and Jacksonville

[okrelayer]

i live in a 3g area. Almost everywhere i go there is 3g. Whenever i am in 3g it is SO much faster than edge. However, at my work, the 3g network is very weak, so i turn it off, and it goes to edge giving me 3 bars. You would think the network would switch to edge by it self, however i can deal.

My work has wifi, so i can connect through that (though its a pain going through the whole cisco log in bs every time, but its faster than edge.)

[larrymarshall2]

I am in the south loop of Chicago right now and my results at 11:33pm (less traffic perhaps?) after 5 speed readings averaged are:

3G: 400kbps
Edge: 330kbps

I need to test during the day. I am also located inside a building with 1 bar on 3G and EDGE.

[appledamian]

yep my 3g speed is very bad too