AT&T Announces 850 MHz 3G Coverage Improvements in New York City and Other Markets

[CharBroiled20s]

AT&T makes my iPhone purchase SO bittersweet I often regret buying it.

I wouldn't go so far as saying I regret buying my 3GS since it's a vast upgrade from my 1st gen iPhone, but I was rocking T-Mobile on that 1st gen and everything about the carrier was better.... I mean EVERYTHING.

Their network didn't drop calls, the coverage in Chicago was fantastic just about everywhere but basements and their people are an absolute dream to deal with.

Now that I've got AT&T I drop calls constantly, the 3g only works in certain places (and one of the 3g dead zones is right at the Michigan Ave. Apple Store.... It's totally ridiculous... the phone says 3g, but you can't receive data at all.

I wish I could take this beautiful phone to Verizon... no, no... actually! I wish T-Mobile's 3g network was compatible... thats what I really wish...

I miss not being treated like dirt on the bottom of someone's shoe.

 

[CharBroiled20s]

Has it actually helped? Cuz my phone still drains the battery by just being on at work because of the low signal going in and out.

And the 3G network has been a total joke, it's hardly any faster than the edge network.

I totally disagree with the speed statement.... the 3g is LOADS faster... when it works....

I will agree that it's no where near fast enough and the actual availability is WAY LESS than they'd have you believe...

I HATE AT&T so much..... Their people are completely unknowledgeable and usually rude... Hold times are ridiculously long when you call in, and they cost WAY too much... I mean way too much. My identical plan on T-Mobile cost me 80 bux (ok, I actually had 200 minutes more on the T-Mobile plan, but no rollover) - on AT&T it's $130.00.....

There needs to be carrier independance legislation passed.... Everyone would win except perhaps AT&T.. but who cares! EFF AT&T!!!

 

[CharBroiled20s]

When will AT&T announce MMS!

When they've made people wait long enough that we're willing to pay EVEN MORE MONEY to get it.... I swear thats their plan.

 

[iAmLegend]

AT&T service still blows in the Wall Street area. My Verizon envy continues

 

[CharBroiled20s]

When is the official last day of summer? If AT&T said MMS was coming this summer, and they don't meet their own deadline, I see a class action suit coming. Subscribers signed a contract partially based on the promise of MMS by end of summer. I, for one, will be looking for a rebate and/or termination of contract.

Me too... I talked my best friend's mom into getting the iPhone... her 2 reasons for not getting it was no video (which the 3gs and/or cycorder fixed) and no MMS features... She had a crappy free flip phone before her iPhone & she loves it almost as much as I do, but she's TICKED about no MMS...

Did anyone pickup my theme here?

I DESPISE AT&T!

 

[CharBroiled20s]

I've been getting great 3G in Chicago since a few months ago. I never got 3G at my house before then and there were holes in a nearby town that no longer exist.

They're working on it. They dropped the ball before but at least some improvements are being made.

Dude, seriously? What part are you in?

Colonoscopy > AT&T

 

[CharBroiled20s]

They should offer some sort of way to make calls from the IPhone via your wifi connection at home, but use your minutes. This way if you don't have good coverage at home, you can use your wifi and have full signal. I know TMobile offers this on a select few handsets (the flip Blackberry) and even make it unlimited calling via wifi. I don't mind if they make you use your minutes, but the option of wifi calling should be part of the IPhone.

I got that for my mom's T-Mobile Crackberry! WiFi UMA calling ROCKS!

Unfortunately, iPhone doesn't support UMA

 

[aristobrat]

I got that for my mom's T-Mobile Crackberry! WiFi UMA calling ROCKS!

Unfortunately, iPhone doesn't support UMA

UMA's definitely cool. I think AT&T's approach is to release their microcell. Any AT&T phone authorized by the microcell owner will be able to take advantage of its increased coverage. So no special plans with unlimited UMA calls, and you do have to buy the microcell, but it won't require a phone that supports UMA.

 

[AidenShaw]

I never got 3G at my house before then and there were holes in a nearby town that no longer exist.

Holy crap - did the AT&T Death Star destroy the whole town that no longer exists?

It would have been more PC to put up some cell towers, rather than vaporize the whole town!
____

But, vaporizing the town is just pointing the death star at it and pushing the "vaporize" button. Cell towers cost money.

 

[CharBroiled20s]

3G has never worked properly on the iPhone, it is false advertising and no one cares. I am in Colorado and it SUCKS here. Constantly hear an echo, switches between 3G and Edge every two minutes, regardless of signal bars being FULL. When is somebody going to successfully sue Apple and make a huge dent to make them follow federal law in regards to false advertising.

Dude, I'm 90% sure it's AT&T's inability to provide proper coverage that's ruining your experience... When I have a good 3g signal it really is LOADS better than EDGE.

I'm fortunate that my home gets good 3g coverage.... My businesses (in other parts of the city) aren't quite so lucky... Same phone, different areas of the city, VASTLY different experience.

That said, it IS false advertising. AT&T's inneptitude reflects unbelievably poorly on Apple.... For a company as detail oriented as Apple seems to be, this level of carrier incompetence can't continue to be ignored.

 

[CharBroiled20s]

UMA's definitely cool. I think AT&T's approach is to release their microcell. Any AT&T phone authorized by the microcell owner will be able to take advantage of its increased coverage. So no special plans with unlimited UMA calls, and you do have to buy the microcell, but it won't require a phone that supports UMA.

Ok, even the name "microcell" sounds cool... I wonder what the ETA on something like that is... They REALLY need to do something to make people happier... I'll run screaming from AT&T as soon as the iPhone is elsewhere

Have you seen those commercials for the Verizon credit card shaped cellular WiFi hotspot for up to 5 computers on TV? That's a fricken brilliant idea.

 

[CharBroiled20s]

No it didn't. All AT&T had to do was enable to very simple setting on everyones account that had a iPhone and push a new carrier file, that's all. It had nothing to do with network upgrades. AT&T is just lazy.

They're not JUST LAZY!

They're INEPT, GREEDY, RUDE, DECEPTIVE... and oh yes, LAZY

 

[CharBroiled20s]

Yes...and iPhone users will also use MMS to send videos. This will exponentially increase the traffic on the network.

I put some of the blame on Apple. Why did they only choose one US Provider? Well.....I know why...to increase the kickbacks.

Le Sigh... I agree 100% with your assessment... iPhone on more than 1 carrier would benefit everyone and it really is partly Apple's fault for extending the exclusivity contract... really bad move on their part and not worth the negative PR

 

[CharBroiled20s]

As an ATT person explained to me, coverage for travel and business corridors is the priority, as the # of users is high. Just look at the # of cell phones that pass a point on a major thoroughfare in an hour, and it's a big number. In neighborhoods, it's very low: few users and sparse traffic.

In neighborhoods, if you have strong cell coverage, you'll unplug your land line and ATT will lose money, so they will drag their feet on that.

sure sure... let them keep dragging their feet... right to the end of the exclusivity contract.... when 20,000 people jump ship they'll wish they treated us better.

 

[compuguy1088]

I got that for my mom's T-Mobile Crackberry! WiFi UMA calling ROCKS!

Unfortunately, iPhone doesn't support UMA

I really don't get why the iPhone couldn't support UMA? I'm guessing all it would take is a modification software-side on the phone?

 

[whatever]

I must be lucky

My trusty first generation iPhone works great. Having used phones from all carriers (except TMobile, but they have no coverage on the East coast), the new AT&T has been the best.

I have never dropped a call and have noticed a dramatic speed improvement after the 3G iPhones came out, it may be that everyone is using 3G and only a few of us are on Edge now, I don't know. But I've been all around San Francisco (including out on the bay on a boat) and have never dropped or missed a call.

I travel quite a bit for work and the only place I've encountered connection problems is on the runway at Logan Airport.

In the last couple of months I have tested my iPhone in the following places Hawaii, Florida, Texas, Arizona, NY, CA and MA and it's worked great. I'm off to Utah and Oklahoma in ten days, it will be interesting how it works there.

 

[CharBroiled20s]

I really don't get why the iPhone couldn't support UMA? I'm guessing all it would take is a modification software-side on the phone?

Yes and no

They'd have to write an updated baseband with UMA protocol support and some API's for the iPhone OS... After all, the phone has to know how to handle the swap... During the switch (for calls already in session) both the cell network and a WiFi internet connection are running concurrently until data is synchronous between both connections, then the cellular connection is dropped.

Unfortunately AT&T would need to have a UNC (UMA Network Controller) running to authenticate the user who's trying to connect over WiFi... The UNC is what actually performs the handover from the cellular network to a public network like the internet and back again...

Its a nice transparent process for the end user because all the hard work needed to route the packet data is done "server side".

Anyway, it's AT&T so it'll never happen

 

[Parky]

When is the official last day of summer? If AT&T said MMS was coming this summer, and they don't meet their own deadline, I see a class action suit coming. Subscribers signed a contract partially based on the promise of MMS by end of summer. I, for one, will be looking for a rebate and/or termination of contract.

Typical! Get a life....

 

[MorphingDragon]

Who wants a fresh Unlocked iPhone 3GS fresh from NZ?

 

[christian_k]

I don't believe that at all. Why is it that EVERY other AT$T phone I've ever had has had the ability to send and receive MMS?!?

I understand that they expect usage on the network to increase. I mean look that the number of mobile uploads to YouTube 400% in the first week of the iPhone 3GS release, but still. . .

Back in 2002 - when MMS was launched in Europe there was no HSDPA or UMTS, not even EDGE. First generation MMS devices often only supported GPRS class 2 (up to 14,4 kbit/s upload and 28,8 kbit/s download). Even under that conditons, MMS worked quite well. It was given very low priotity on the network, so sending a 300 KB message (that is the maximum even today) could take 10 minutes, but this was no problem because every MMS phone could do that in the background.

Is quality be the problem? What video can you put in 300 KB? Most MMS Videos look terrible even on small phone screens. Some 20 seconds at 176x144 @ 10 FPS with AMR-narrow-band audio give a very bad user experience on an iPhone...

Christian

 

[seamuskrat]

IME Central NJ is lousy service

I live in Central Jersey and work in North Jersey and on my drive along the Garden State Parkway signal varies from awesome do nothing.

At work, I step 10 feet inside and I get no bars while Sprint and Verizon have full bars almost everywhere. Its a drag. Folks love my iPhone but always ask When is it coming to Verizon.

I would love to see real evidence ATT beefed up NJ towers. But for now, for me its mediocre at best.

 

[smeagol]

Yeh, sure AT&T, good one. I'll believe it when I see it, you've been pissing in our eyes and called it rain for some time now so why should I just believe your press release?

 

[bretm]

Wow, I guess we're lucky in ATL. This was the home of BellSouth, which was a major contributor to the Cingular network, then AT&T. Atlanta has always been a Cingular town and the 3g here now tops 2.2 Mb/sec. I often turn off WiFi at home because it is spotty throughout my house, but 3g covers it all and outside. It gets very frustrating when your phone barely grabs onto wifi, but it doesn't really have enough to get to the Internet.

 

[Xenomorph]

3G may not always be available where I'm at, but when it is, it works great.

At work, I sometimes turn off WiFi access because 3G may be quicker, depending on where I'm at in the building. However, there are a lots of weird things at my work that interfere with the signal, so my phone switches between 3G, EDGE, WiFi and NoService several times a day as I walk around.

I chose to switch to AT&T (and pay their higher prices) because of their superior cellular coverage in the St. Louis area.
I've had Sprint since the 1990s, and they seem to have towers only installed by highways and nowhere else. Nothing like being at home with "Searching for Service" on my phone.

With AT&T, I get full bars at home. I also live right down the street from one of their big antennas (line of sight!), so that helps.

 

[NoExpectations]

2 Sides to Every Story

AT&T has enough blame, but what about Apple? It takes years to expand a Wireless Network. Given that.......

1. What forecast did Apple give AT&T as far as projected US sales of iPhones and estimated average bandwidth per user? I bet it was far lower than anyone had ever expected. Without accurate projections, how could any wireless carrier build out a capable network ahead of the demand? Remember, too, that when the iPhone first came out, the APP Store was not even on anyone's radar. Apple kept adding features without first checking for network capacity.

2. Why did Apple choose just one US Wireless Carrier? Remember, this was Apple's decision, not AT&T's. We all know the reason why....higher subsidies from a single carrier (versus multiple carriers). So all that money that could have been used by AT&T to expand the network is sitting in Apple's bank accounts.