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AT&T LTE...should iPhone say LTE or 4G?

Gix1k

Gix1k

macrumors 68040
Original poster
Jun 16, 2008
3,583
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I remember AT&T having 4G show up on the 4S when in fact it was 3G. My iPhone 5 says 4G and I believe it should say LTE. Reason I ask is because its taking forever to download apps over cellular. I did a speedtest and got this, which seems poor. Correct??

AD69A344-1EF2-4762-AF8E-C6C0C64AD662-539-00000010DD5F7AFF_zps38d831f3.jpg
 
It should say LTE. Make sure you're in an area with LTE and maybe try resetting your network settings (i had to do that before LTE showed up).
 
Gix1k said:
I remember AT&T having 4G show up on the 4S when in fact it was 3G. My iPhone 5 says 4G and I believe it should say LTE. Reason I ask is because its taking forever to download apps over cellular. I did a speedtest and got this, which seems poor. Correct??

Image
Click to expand...

It will only say LTE when your in an LTE area. If it says 4G then your in their 3G/HSPA+ area.

All aside, they shouldn't be allowed to call HSPA+ "4G". "H" would be more acceptable than "4G."
 
MattMJB0188 said:
It will only say LTE when your in an LTE area. If it says 4G then your in their 3G/HSPA+ area.

All aside, they shouldn't be allowed to call HSPA+ "4G". "H" would be more acceptable than "4G."
Click to expand...


Agreed it actually annoyes me that they can say 4g when it's not. But nonetheless. Like they all said. LTE. Might take some time to pop up- mine did
 
Also.... did you cut your old SIM or activate the new SIM inside the phone? Activating the new SIM will also activate the proper SOC codes on your AT&T account for LTE data. Using an LTE device without the proper plan will only allow for HSPA+ speeds.
 
I've tried everything so far – resetting network settings, reboots, waiting all day for LTE to appear... still nothing. Apparently, someone had success calling AT&T and they were able to fix it from their end. I'm on the phone with an AT&T rep as we speak, currently stuck hearing the "4G is the same as LTE" argument... except it's not... I'm trying to explain that this is a widespread problem and the two indicators are not the same... we'll see how this turns out.
 
When I set up my iPhone 5, it connected to "4G", even though my city has LTE according to AT&T's map. So I placed it back on Wifi to finish installing all of my updates to the phone.

I turned Wifi off again on my phone, and it connected to LTE for about a minute, and then it switched back to "4G", so I'm assuming their coverage isn't that great in this particular location, which sucks.
 
I am in a LTE city. Columbus, Ohio. How exactly do you reset network settings? I did move any sims. This is the one that came in the phone.
 
I'm in New York City and it still stated "4G" so I called up AT&T and it turned out my phone in their database was still listed as an iPhone 4S (my previous phone) that doesn't have LTE. They updated it and now it says "LTE".
 
The AT&T representative was useless. After speaking with his supervisor and other representatives, the best excuse they had was that I'm in New York City, lots of people are upgrading to an iPhone 5, and my data speeds are going to be slow even though I'm on LTE because so many other people are now on the same network.... They seemed to neglect the fact that my speedtest.net speeds were so slow because I wasn't even on LTE.

We hung up, I toggled the LTE switch a number of times, restarted my phone a few times (soft and hard restarts), and finally LTE appeared magically. It doesn't change the fact that AT&T still doesn't know what they're talking about.
 
If you are not getting LTE then you are not getting LTE plane and simple. Still though you should get very good speeds on AT&Ts 4g...everyone is getting hammered today across all carriers, expect speeds to be very slow for a couple days at least.

Verizon averaged me 40 down and 15 up for the last year on any LTE devices I had. Today before I returned the i5 I was f
Getting anywhere from 1-5 down at times, and never once went over 12mb.

Network is very busy , chill for a couple days
 
I've been getting LTE on and off today in San Francisco. At first it wasn't there, but now I've been seeing it a lot when outdoors and occasionally indoors.

I think the networks are just getting hammered to be honest.
 
thetaco25 said:
I've tried everything so far – resetting network settings, reboots, waiting all day for LTE to appear... still nothing. Apparently, someone had success calling AT&T and they were able to fix it from their end. I'm on the phone with an AT&T rep as we speak, currently stuck hearing the "4G is the same as LTE" argument... except it's not... I'm trying to explain that this is a widespread problem and the two indicators are not the same... we'll see how this turns out.
Click to expand...

man they use that as an argument? AT&T calls everything 4G its such a loose term
 
Well, the governing body recognizes HSPA+ as 4G, so why not call it 4G? It's just not 4G LTE. Heck, even LTE isn't really what they had in mind with original 4G anyway. Originally it was 100Mbps+
 
Damn!! Just went back to AT&T store and they said its not LTE here yet. Said by end of year. Oh well
 
Baldilocks said:
Well, the governing body recognizes HSPA+ as 4G, so why not call it 4G? It's just not 4G LTE. Heck, even LTE isn't really what they had in mind with original 4G anyway. Originally it was 100Mbps+
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Yeah, but isn't the governing body made up of the carriers? They could declare EDGE as 4G if they wanted to.
 
Gix1k said:
Damn!! Just went back to AT&T store and they said its not LTE here yet. Said by end of year. Oh well
Click to expand...

Could you be throttled by any chance? Looking at that original speed test, that's way too slow even for 3G although your 4G indicator would make it HSPA+ (I think, since you're not in LTE area yet).

When AT&T throttles, you get some pretty horrid slow speeds.
 
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