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glocke12

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jan 7, 2008
999
7
Pretty weird...the past two weeks in areas where I normally have strng 3G reception vie been seeing more and more of the edge network...anyone else?
 
I've been experiencing something similar except my 3G doesn't completely go away it just drops down to the lowest bar and its also dropping calls more frequently.
 
I get it all the time. Littleton to the Denver area. I can be sitting at my desk, know I have 3G one minute, then my iPhone drops down to EDGE, and I wont eve move it. (Also, dropping down makes my monitor sound like its about to explode). In Denver it's bad sometimes. One building I go in for college, its like a black hole. And I'm even next to windows. 1 bar EDGE as soon as walk in. Freakin brutal.
 
Yes! The past two days exactly as you describe. The last time this happened they were updating the back haul. I assume this is something similar.
 
I am, where before I was getting 2-3 bars of 3G in my office (Boston Ma), I'm now going to edge.
 
I think you're seeing AT&T rolling out upgrades to towers or increasing backhaul or replacing routers or something, as I experienced this a couple months ago. Places in which I previously would have five bars of 3G coverage suddenly were three bars of Edge, and this was corroborated by several friends in town with iPhones.. It was like this for about a day-and-a-half, and then it was right back to normal.
 
Funny...

Pretty weird...the past two weeks in areas where I normally have strng 3G reception vie been seeing more and more of the edge network...anyone else?

I think it's funny that several responses appear to assume that Glocke12 is in America, despite no obvious clues in his/her post or public profile. And no-one asks where he/she is...

So - where are you?

I'm in (the original) Norwich, UK, and could also have answered 'Yes - we've been having terrible problems over the last couple of weeks, including a full outage last night, and only edge available for most of this morning'.

cobie454 said:
I've been experiencing something similar except my 3G doesn't completely go away it just drops down to the lowest bar and its also dropping calls more frequently.

I was told by O2 in the UK that the bars have nothing to do with 3G - it's only an indication of phone reception, not of strength of 3G. Has anyone else heard that? Or are they wrong?

Regards,

TT
 
I was told by O2 in the UK that the bars have nothing to do with 3G - it's only an indication of phone reception, not of strength of 3G. Has anyone else heard that? Or are they wrong?

No of course they're not! The bars are simply an approximate indication of signal strength. This, like any form of transmission, can vary according to atmospheric conditions, location etc.
 
Mine says 3G at all times, but has been at edge speed quite often. Checking the latency lately has been very long and painfully slow.
Then again, I have full bars and dropped calls often, so me thinks what iPhone reports as status on the phone itself may not represent accurate data...

Makes it look good and strong though...
 
I noticed it quite a bit in the LA/Long Beach/LAX area last week when I was out there. I have no clue if that's normal or not, though.

As for locally, I'm just noticing a general degradation in service...places where I used to have 5 bars of 3G ALWAYS are now down to 2-3 bars on a good day. Tremendously annoying.

Oh, and this is something else I noticed-- I've taken to using the Mark the Spot app to b*tch to AT&T every single time I have problems (which has been often, lately). If, say, I've just dropped a call and am down to 1 bar of 3G, as soon as my report gets sent, the signal meter spikes up to 4-5 bars. Every single time. Funny (or not).
 
I'm on orange in the UK and forever losing 3G signal in my home and get suck on gprs with my 3G iPhone. I am considering switching to O2 as they have given me better results when testing other sim cards
 
Oh, and this is something else I noticed-- I've taken to using the Mark the Spot app to b*tch to AT&T every single time I have problems (which has been often, lately). If, say, I've just dropped a call and am down to 1 bar of 3G, as soon as my report gets sent, the signal meter spikes up to 4-5 bars. Every single time. Funny (or not).

FWIW, just went from 1 bar of Edge to 5 bars of 3G after I reported a data failure. That's the biggest swing I've seen so far.
 
This randomly happened to me a few weeks ago. I unlocked my phone and noticed the 'E' at top of the screen instead of 3G. It lasted about a minute or two until it went back to 3G.
 
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