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AT&T Network Saturation the cause of all issues?

abnospam

abnospam

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jul 17, 2008
210
0
Hi All -

So I have had the phone for about 4 months now. The email is totally unreliable in any configuration, and I think I have come to the bottom of it. Sometimes data transfer on ATT's network just hangs. Doesn't matter how many bars you have, it simply hangs and times out. I know this from Safari, but now I think this may be why email is so slow and unreliable (compared to TMO-BB).

Has this been ATT's fault all along? My phone seems to work great on WiFi. Email refreshes in 10 secs, on 3G it often takes over 1 minute to get one new email refreshed in.

Not to mention the signal quality at my house in Chicago (60622) seems to change on a weekly basis like they are forever moving towers or having outages.

This also explains why some people say they have no troubles while others can't stand the phone. Is it all the network area you are in?
 
abnospam said:
Hi All -

So I have had the phone for about 4 months now. The email is totally unreliable in any configuration, and I think I have come to the bottom of it. Sometimes data transfer on ATT's network just hangs. Doesn't matter how many bars you have, it simply hangs and times out. I know this from Safari, but now I think this may be why email is so slow and unreliable (compared to TMO-BB).

Has this been ATT's fault all along? My phone seems to work great on WiFi. Email refreshes in 10 secs, on 3G it often takes over 1 minute to get one new email refreshed in.

Not to mention the signal quality at my house in Chicago (60622) seems to change on a weekly basis like they are forever moving towers or having outages.

This also explains why some people say they have no troubles while others can't stand the phone. Is it all the network area you are in?
Click to expand...

I thought this has all been covered before. Some areas are bad because there's so many people using up the bandwidth. That's why New York sucks and Boston and huge cities like that. Also, when there's a large gathering at a sports event, the network will go slow because everyone is connecting to the same towers.
 
TheSpaz said:
I thought this has all been covered before. Some areas are bad because there's so many people using up the bandwidth. That's why New York sucks and Boston and huge cities like that. Also, when there's a large gathering at a sports event, the network will go slow because everyone is connecting to the same towers.
Click to expand...

Yeah, but I don't think it is the signal bandwidth, but the towers backend bandwidth. I searched first and hadn't realized it was settled issue.

Has anyone used the iphone with 3g on another network in a big city with some experience to share?
 
andyblila said:
Bandwidth and atmospherics are the culprits IMO.
Click to expand...

I don't think so - my biggest complaint is with e-mail not downloading and it's corrected by force-quitting the mail app and re-starting it. Unless that's magically opening up additional bandwidth and bringing the hand of the Almighty down to clear the cloud cover - it's a inexcusable software issue. :D
 
It's part of the problem, probably a big part. AT&T probably didn't have that much 3G use prior to the iPhone 3G. Once that went on sale, their network gets slammed with a few million extra users. It was especially hard in places like New York.

I can tell you that I haven't had any problems with my EDGE service at any point. Thank you to AT&T for at least having that network pretty well done in this area.
 
TheSpaz said:
I thought this has all been covered before. Some areas are bad because there's so many people using up the bandwidth. That's why New York sucks and Boston and huge cities like that. Also, when there's a large gathering at a sports event, the network will go slow because everyone is connecting to the same towers.
Click to expand...

Well, I live in Chicago too (60618) and my data seems ok but the phone reception in my house sucks! If I go a couple blocks away, it is fine. I have had other phones with other providers and my reception was fine in the same house.

AT&T needs to focus their attention on the cities you listed because guess what, a TON OF THEIR CUSTOMERS LIVE THERE!

Seems like a lame excuse to say many people live there and that's the problem. Guess what, lot's of people drink water in big cities and I have never turned on my faucet to see that it doesn't work.

Fix the problem AT&T.:mad:
 
if it was all at&t's fault, wouldnt all users with 3G phones be experiencing these problems? youd think this would be a major issue if everyone was getting poor 3G service. however, on the internet i really only see iphone owners complaining. not denying that some areas of the country have terrible 3G service, but it just appears to be an iphone specific problem to me. just something to think about.
 
ruinfx said:
if it was all at&t's fault, wouldnt all users with 3G phones be experiencing these problems? youd think this would be a major issue if everyone was getting poor 3G service. however, on the internet i really only see iphone owners complaining. not denying that some areas of the country have terrible 3G service, but it just appears to be an iphone specific problem to me. just something to think about.
Click to expand...


The same phone 2-3 blocks away can get full 3G service. How can that be the phones fault?

It's the network.
 
Chicagomac08 said:
The same phone 2-3 blocks away can get full 3G service. How can that be the phones fault?

It's the network.
Click to expand...

if you read my post you would see that i am not denying some areas of the country have bad 3G service, and chicago might be one of them.

maybe i just dont see owners of other at&t 3G phones complaining on places like howardforums. its just whenever i come on here people are always complaining about their 3G service and i find it hard to believe macrumors is the only place people come to post about these things.
 
ruinfx said:
if you read my post you would see that i am not denying some areas of the country have bad 3G service, and chicago might be one of them.

maybe i just dont see owners of other at&t 3G phones complaining on places like howardforums. its just whenever i come on here people are always complaining about their 3G service and i find it hard to believe macrumors is the only place people come to post about these things.
Click to expand...

My neighbor has a 3G (I think it's an LG) and has the same exact problem.

It's the network.

The difference is that Mac people tend to be a little more passionate and the iPhone itself has demanded more attention. I don't think there is an LG rumors site but I could be wrong...
 
don't worry it is gonna get to that point where Network needs to drop your calls since so many people need to access it and there is not enought bandwidth. Since we are with ATT all they care about is to bring new phones and not spend a dime to imporve the pathetic network. I mean lets compare ATT and verizon. No reason they call it the most reliable network. ATT hasn't even introduced femtocell yet.
 
andyblila said:
If it was a phone problem, everyone would have it. It's a network problem.
Click to expand...

the same way you have people posting threads like "oh my iphone 3G does x" or "my iphone 3G doesnt do x". the responses are usually filled with people that have similar behavior to the OP and people that have the complete opposite to the OP. if anything the iphone is amazing to me because not all iphones have the same problem.

for example, back before the last update someone would start a thread about sms lag. then there would be posters saying "yea i have it too!" but there would also be posters saying "i have no sms lag!". not all iphones act the same.

anyways, i guess i just have a hard time believing its all at&t because i havent had issues with 3G coverage in the 2 states that i frequent.
 
Couple points...

The reason rebooting your email helps is that it shuts down your data connection and retries. Its like refreshing your browser on a slow site, the next time around sometimes it is faster.

It is the network as I have heard a lot of ATT people in chicago complain.

What I think is that voice data gets a much higher priority than regular data. Its a step child. So at the first sign of saturation, your data sucks but you can still make calls. In this day and age I think we need ATT to re-examine their Quality of Service rules around voice vs. data.
 
abnospam said:
What I think is that voice data gets a much higher priority than regular data. Its a step child. So at the first sign of saturation, your data sucks but you can still make calls. In this day and age I think we need ATT to re-examine their Quality of Service rules around voice vs. data.
Click to expand...
Isn't making calls more important than data. In an emergency I would rather call 911 over check email.
 
abnospam said:
Couple points...

The reason rebooting your email helps is that it shuts down your data connection and retries. Its like refreshing your browser on a slow site, the next time around sometimes it is faster.

It is the network as I have heard a lot of ATT people in chicago complain.

What I think is that voice data gets a much higher priority than regular data. Its a step child. So at the first sign of saturation, your data sucks but you can still make calls. In this day and age I think we need ATT to re-examine their Quality of Service rules around voice vs. data.
Click to expand...

i would probably agree with you that at&t is bad in chicago and thats why you have problems. i would not go as far as saying at&t causes ALL the issues though.
 
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