3G and my trip from PA to Rhode Is - ATT is at fault period

C

cc999

macrumors 6502
I took my iphone on my business trip from PA to RI Here is what I have discovered:

Speed tests using http://i.dslr.net/tinyspeedtest.html

PA:
Traveling N on I81 to Rt 84 E
Wilkes Barre Area: 627,401,615,709,622, 722, 874 (yesterday in this area I had full 4 bars 3G and no connection for data, today all is ok)

NY State
Rt 84 E
Edge 109
3G 758, 841, 1004

Conn
Rt 84 E
Danbury 3G 183, 344
Furthur East 1082,1060,764,915,1243
Waterbury 3G 1099, 767,925 (exit 25) 1418
stopped on rt 691 in Conn 4 3G readings in a row: 1310, 1363, 1332, 1238

RI
Lincoln RI
3G 68 thats right 68 terrible, switched off to Edge now 176

3G in RI is apparently down just like last night in Wilkes Barre PA. Large cities have overload problems. ATT better address this issue and stop blaming the iphone. Seems their 3G network is overloaded certain times of the day causing the 3G connection to crawl or not connect at all. I am now convinced its the network not the iphone.

Any input or additions welcomed.

I will also provide an update tomorrow night on my return route.

Charlie C
 
cc999 said:
Here is what I have discovered:
Click to expand...

I assume your research included plenty of manually toggling 3G on/off, and/or toggling Airplane Mode? In the past week or so, I have experienced multiple instances of what appeared to be bad signal, but in fact were merely the iPhone not picking up the signal. A restart of 3G via Airplane Mode toggle put me back in business 9 times out of 10.

If you didn't do these things, your data means very little.
 
Yes

MCDJ absolutely did the airplane toggle and on/off of the 3G. I still had NO data with 4 bars on 3G network in 2 instances.
 
I think it's both the phone and AT&T, with it being mostly AT&T. Don't forget that even more basic then testing speeds...the iPhone seems to register a weaker signal than another phone next to it. iPhone gets one bar, other phone gets five.

Or I might be missing something.
 
You should put more effort into other things then speedtests quite frankly. Why not just enjoy life and not worry about 3G speed?
 
slidetounlock said:
You should put more effort into other things then speedtests quite frankly. Why not just enjoy life and not worry about 3G speed?
Click to expand...

I'm guessing he, like most people, are capable of being interested in more than one thing at a time without risk of overloading his enjoyment of life.
 
trying

All I was trying to do is determine if my iphone was defective. I happen to have a 16G Blk thats has no cracks, no light leaks, no lint under glass, no dead pixels or any other of the common complaints we all read about in the forums. My 3G was hit or miss and had me wondering if it was the phone or the service. I am sure ATT will get the 3G in order. I will be keeping my iphone and not looking to exchange.

In the end I just wanted to share the info I have found with all the good people on this forum....
 
I live and work in Philadelphia and when I have 4~5 bars of 3g and nonexistant web page loading I know it's the network.

However, when I'm at home and my phone drops calls due to the crappy 3g signal in my house, or says call failed when I try to dial, or shows "no service" but then i manually turn off 3g and bam 5 full bars of edge. Then that's the not the network, that's the OS of my phone.

So yes I'm double screwed having an iPhone and philly so I just grab my ilube bend over and say be gentle.
 
Ironically there was an outage/disruption for 3G/GPRS services throughout NY/CT/RI since yesterday 9pm EST...

I get these (sometimes I think annoying) e-mails from AT&T (our DATA provider) because I'm on the IT e-mail group for my company. ;)

Oh yeah, they're very common, usually get up to 10 e-mails from them of some sort of disruption or outages throughout the 50 states we have offices in. :apple:
 
Lightbrazer said:
I live and work in Philadelphia and when I have 4~5 bars of 3g and nonexistant web page loading I know it's the network.

However, when I'm at home and my phone drops calls due to the crappy 3g signal in my house, or says call failed when I try to dial, or shows "no service" but then i manually turn off 3g and bam 5 full bars of edge. Then that's the not the network, that's the OS of my phone.

So yes I'm double screwed having an iPhone and philly so I just grab my ilube bend over and say be gentle.
Click to expand...

Wait, isn't it possible that where you work has 4-5 bars and at home you have no 3G coverage? (EDGE and 3G aren't the same coverage necessarily)
 
vrflyer said:
Ironically there was an outage/disruption for 3G/GPRS services throughout NY/CT/RI since yesterday 9pm EST...

I get these (sometimes I think annoying) e-mails from AT&T (our DATA provider) because I'm on the IT e-mail group for my company. ;)

Oh yeah, they're very common, usually get up to 10 e-mails from them of some sort of disruption or outages throughout the 50 states we have offices in. :apple:
Click to expand...
I experienced 3G data disruption late Monday afternoon/early evening (5:30pm - 7:30pm) in CT, and most of the afternoon today from New Haven to Hartford, CT, (highways 91-691-84 corridors) and finally called AT&T Wireless to find out if there was a general outage. They were very thorough in investigating my concern, and, after about 20 minutes, asked me to power down my iPhone, restart it, browse and email after the restart to see if the problem cleared, and said they would call me back in about 15 minutes. I did as requested, and they did as promised. Lo & behold, all came back alive and well. When they called back, I indicated that I had the latest iPhone software load, and asked what they 'pushed' to my iPhone 3G. They said the push had nothing to do with the Apple software, that it was network related. They also said it affected all AT&T 3G phones, not just the iPhone 3G. While I believe the issues are network capacity related, I do think AT&T is working to resolve the problems. It does not hurt to call and report a persistent problem. The squeaky wheel will get greased.
 
info

Say What thats excellent info. What do you think happened when you powered down and then restarted? I wonder if there is cell info that is cleared out a a cache????
 
I ran into a similar experience.

I was traveling all last week for business. I was in Austin Tx for 3 days and the 3G service was incredible. Full bars, no drop calls, and excellent speed.

Spent 2 hours in Vegas on a layover. Same experience. Not a single issue, 4 to 5 Bars of 3G, no dropped calls, and quick speed on data. Land in Norther California. 1 to 2 bars of 3g, switch over to Edge and dropped calls. Through out the 3 days I was there.

Ran into someone at my Hotel that claimed to be working for AT&T. He said all the markets I was in previous have been solid after a few weeks after launch. They didn't expect the demands this phone created.

The rest of the major markets are overloaded and can't handle the bandwidth needs that the Iphone is creating. NorCal and even SoCal are going to be like this for a while. (I only asked because that tends to be where I spend most of my time)

He said that they are having to drop users to 2.5? because it's creating too much demand.

Not sure how legit this guy was, but he was using a corp issued laptop, air-card, and I did peak over at his email and his signature on his email was ATT.

This isn't truly affecting my way of life or my experience with my phone, but it was really nice actually seeing how well this phone can work when it's in the ideal network or service.:eek:
 
Coverage

Two questions:

1 - Does anyone know if there is an expanded year end map showing all current and future 3G coverage.

2 - Can the 3G coverage in overloaded areas be addressed or is it beyond that point and just too saturated?
 
I currently live in Providence, RI. While I have full bars through most of the city, 3G just seems unreliabe since around the release of the last apple update (I'm not saying it's related to the update, just that I noticed 3G, and even GPS, being really sketchy since about that time). It's really frustrating. I really hope ATT fixes the issues. It's just pretty frustrating.

(BTW: Toggling airplane mode or resetting the phone does not solve this. Performed a restore too, also did not work)
 
cc999 said:
MCDJ absolutely did the airplane toggle and on/off of the 3G. I still had NO data with 4 bars on 3G network in 2 instances.
Click to expand...
The no data thing has been the case for me ever since my first 3G test with 2.0.2, which was immediately after the 2.0.2 upgrade. Never had a problem before that. I've also noticed problems with very reduced/unreliable edge and GPS as well, neither of which had any trouble whatsoever before 2.0.2. So I wouldn't put all eggs in the AT&T basket, unless their network started screwing up seconds after I updated to 2.0.2.
 
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