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AT&T enhancing their Signal Strength??

RonHC

RonHC

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Apr 27, 2010
996
7
The first week i had my iPhone 4, i had about 1 bar
Right now i am having 3 bars which is what i usually get and sometimes 5 bars which never happened with my iPhone 3G. :D

I heard that AT&T is enhancing their signal strength because of the overflow of the new iPhone 4 which could make sense but what about you?
 
yes el stevebo did a stealth ninja remote update and fixed your phone. non issue :D
 
Yeah from when I turn my phone on Tim about 11am I'm in the 600-1400kbs then 11 to 10pm I'm about 100kbps or less. Then after that my 3G works great
 
-aggie- said:
IDK if AT&T is doing anything, but has anyone run speediest and got 1.5 Mbps upload speeds? I used to get maybe 300-400 kbps. On wifi, I’ve never got above 700.
Click to expand...

Right now I'm getting 0.82mbps down, and 1.47 up. During the day I rock a whopping 0.47mbps down, and about a 0.74mbps up. Upload speeds have seemed to be faster compared to my 3G. Sending a MMS takes about half the time it did on my 3G. On wifi I just blow those numbers away.
 
This makes no sense. I always get 0 bars at my house (no really I have to do the whole waving arm in air thing to send a text) and now I have 3 bars? How can they just "do something? and send out more signal... I'm confused.
 
My reception has gotten so much better: my phone isn't losing reception anymore... I also messed sound with bluetooth on my phone for a couple days.....
 
-aggie- said:
IDK if AT&T is doing anything, but has anyone run speedtest and got 1.5 Mbps upload speeds? I used to get maybe 300-400 kbps. On wifi, I’ve never got above 700.
Click to expand...

This is what i got

4 Bars - Living Room
IMG_0018.png



1 Bar - My Room
IMG_0017.png
 
iMJustAGuy said:
This makes no sense. I always get 0 bars at my house (no really I have to do the whole waving arm in air thing to send a text) and now I have 3 bars? How can they just "do something? and send out more signal... I'm confused.
Click to expand...

Yes, they could:

  • Add another cell site near you.
  • Adjust or fix the antennas on a current tower.
  • Adjust the output power on a current tower.
  • Add a frequency that penetrates your walls better.

However, be prepared to see fewer bars again when Apple puts out their "signal bar fix" in a few weeks.
 
-aggie- said:
IDK if AT&T is doing anything, but has anyone run speedtest and got 1.5 Mbps upload speeds? I used to get maybe 300-400 kbps. On wifi, I’ve never got above 700.
Click to expand...

You mean before the iPhone 4? iPhone 4 supports HSUPA and will do about 4x faster uploads than the 3GS.
 
They GREATLY improved the speed near my work this week.

It had always been around 1.2 - 1.7 Mb/s. Yesterday I ran a few tests and was getting over 3.5 every time!
 
After picking mine up at noon, I have full 3G signal at work just like i had on my 3G earlier in the day. However the 4 won't load anything unless I switch to edge. What a piece of crap, may return today.
 
-aggie- said:
IDK if AT&T is doing anything, but has anyone run speedtest and got 1.5 Mbps upload speeds? I used to get maybe 300-400 kbps. On wifi, I’ve never got above 700.
Click to expand...

I'm getting 3G download of 2.368 and upload of 1.269, way better than I ever got on my iP3G.
 
yeah, 3G reception is still absolutely atrocious in my room. 4-5 bars, no data. tried loading Speed Test and it didn't even get past 'finding server'.
 
The higher upload speeds are due to AT&T adding HSUPA. The U in HSUPA means upload.

The higher download speeds are due to AT&T going from 7.2MBPS HSDPA (any guess as to what the D means?) to 14.4MBPS HSDPA.

As far as seeing more bars, it could be:

* AT&T has increased power output (not necessarily smart, I'll get to that)

* You're more careful in how you hold it

The reason why you wouldn't necessarily just increase TX power is that it can change your handoff points to the neighboring cells, and in some cases increase the footprint size of the cell, actually INCREASING the amount of data and voice that it needs to carry, which could wind up being a disaster.

This sort of stuff needs to be planned and replanned and then done and then checked thrice after it was done.

They may have switched on a different band (850), that's likely I think, IIRC that was one of their actions on making their network better.

FYI, adding cell sites is usually a multi-year affair, it's not done quickly.
 
My slow 3G speeds all of a sudden are really quick. So they did something or it's just a fluke I hope never goes away.
 
BklynKid said:
You mean before the iPhone 4? iPhone 4 supports HSUPA and will do about 4x faster uploads than the 3GS.
Click to expand...

Well, that explains that then. I don’t really care about upload speed so much. After I posted above I got 5.1 Mbps down late last night on my iPhone 4 (I had never got above 1.2 Mbps on my 3G). Now, I’m back to crawling at 200 kbps. My fastest wifi is in the 2 Mbps range, so if this gets fixed to where it is consistent, it’ll be nice (too bad I can’t tether it…yet).
 
I saw an AT&T engineer standing at the base of a cell tower turning a large knob clockwise.

But who knows, could have been anything.
 
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