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AT&T service - new york and new jersey awful!

M

macaco74

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jan 11, 2008
225
12
I just got the iphone 3g and love the device but the service, i find, is awful.

Coming from verizon, I have never had a dropped call or call failed but having had the iphone for less than a week I have seen approximately 50% of my calls fail or drop. I was in queens yesterday and could not make a phone call, check mail, receive weather updates, nothing. According the the coverage map is is all dark orange.

Is this what I can expect?

I have confirmed I have 30 days to continue to try the service, if this continues, as much as it will pain me, I will have to return the device and not cancel my verizon line.
 
macaco74 said:
I just got the iphone 3g and love the device but the service, i find, is awful.

Coming from verizon, I have never had a dropped call or call failed but having had the iphone for less than a week I have seen approximately 50% of my calls fail or drop. I was in queens yesterday and could not make a phone call, check mail, receive weather updates, nothing. According the the coverage map is is all dark orange.

Is this what I can expect?

I have confirmed I have 30 days to continue to try the service, if this continues, as much as it will pain me, I will have to return the device and not cancel my verizon line.
Click to expand...

Where you at? I'm in Orange County and it totally depends on where you are.

I had verizon before getting the iphone in Nov and it's definatly worse. Verizon in general has the best service and network. AT&T is pretty horrible. They bought out Cellular One last year and took over there towers in the NY area so i'm sure that's part of the problem.

Supposedly they are rolling out 3G around here by the end of the year so it might get better.
 
macaco74 said:
I just got the iphone 3g and love the device but the service, i find, is awful.

Coming from verizon, I have never had a dropped call or call failed but having had the iphone for less than a week I have seen approximately 50% of my calls fail or drop. I was in queens yesterday and could not make a phone call, check mail, receive weather updates, nothing. According the the coverage map is is all dark orange.

Is this what I can expect?

I have confirmed I have 30 days to continue to try the service, if this continues, as much as it will pain me, I will have to return the device and not cancel my verizon line.
Click to expand...

I am from the same area and Verizon is absolutely the better provider here. I switched from Verizon to AT&T for the first iPhone and definitely noticed the difference. Its not THAT BAD and I was able to deal with it. I felt the trade off was having such an awesome phone and it outweighed the negative with the mediocre AT&T service. I still havn't upgraded to the 3g but from what I have been reading is the 3g voice is much better then voice from the first phone. Also, I never felt that the service was so bad that I had to switch back to verizon.
 
How is it in upstate like the albany area? My friends got it and they never complain but most ppl here have verizon witch i hate.
 
i read somewhere that in our area (im from the ny/nj area as well) the 3g netowrk has been weak since friday. dont really remember what it said was the cause, or when it will be fixed, but if i were you i would just relax and try turning off 3g in the mean time. a friend of mine with the 3g is doing this in the mean time and has experienced better reception since. i know it sucks you are sacrificing the main reason to buy an iphone 3g, but it will be resolved soon enough.
 
Thats wierd, I constantly go from NYC to Brooklyn and to Queens and I've found AT&Ts service much better than Verizon here in NYC. I even have full bars in the basement. My friends that have Verizon need to borrow my phone to makes calls because they have no service...and I have been with At&T for 3 years and probably have gotten like 10 dropped calls altogether. So I have no idea whats going with your service.

3G is another story though...I think ATT is having trouble with that...but just use EDGE when your not browsing the internet it should be just fine...
 
I work in Albany and live in the burbs 6 miles from Albany. I switched from Verizon a few months back when the 1st gen refurbs first became available.

I love the phone but the coverage is very spotty. I get 2 or 3 bars in downtown Albany and sometimes the coverage disappears completely. At home I get 1 or 2 bars but at my sister's home less than 2 miles down the road I get ZERO bars.

Meanwhile my wife and kids are still on Verizon and their coverage is outstanding it seems wherever we go.

I stopped by the ATT store in Glenmont a couple weeks ago and the store manager said that a new cell tower is going up in Slingerlands in August which should help local service.
 
that's strange... verizon has historically had the best service in the ny/nj area, but no longer. i live in suburban nj, and had voicestream/t-mobile until i got the iphone last week. t-mobile was always pretty spotty in hunterdon county until a couple years back, when it improved dramatically. and att is just fantastic for me now... really no difference in reception between att and verizon in hunterdon county, new brunswick, or any place in nj/ny that i've been.

besides reception, here are the other differences (all in favor of att/t-mobile):

gsm phones (can be used overseas)
sim cards (can easily start using a different phone, and save contacts on it)
MUCH better data rates (especially t-mobile)
much better text rates
much better voice rates
better international text capability (gsm - gsm, less lost messages)
phones can be purchased online or overseas and used w/o going to a store
iphone (att, obviously)
i can use more mobile to mobile minutes with att subscriber friends than verizon's in network (wasn't true in the past)

so for me at least, it's pretty heavily in favor of a gsm operator, especially seeing as how the networks are pretty much the same these days. in the past, maybe not, but now att is just as good as verizon. and att also now has 850 band operating in many places... places that verizon doesn't even have a network.
 
took a suggestion and turned off the 3G. Service much more stable now - will use 3G sparingly going forward and enjoy the new phone!

Thanks for all the replies!
 
no reception at all

I recently switched from Verizon to AT&T just to have the Iphone 3g, much like many of you on this forum, and to my dismay, I started to have no reception in and around a mile from my home. I live in Forest Hills, Queens, New York, which is definitely in the coverage area but I have to travel more than a mile to get reception. To make things worse, my wife also switched with me and now we both do not have reception. Luckily there is a 30 day cancellation/refund policy which I will be looking more closely at, unless AT&T can fix whatever problems they are having in that area.
 
*sigh*

Have you all noticed the trend here? That this is happening with your iPhone when you have 3G enabled?

It is already a known issue that there is a problem with poor reception using 3G on the iPhone. Apple is working on a fix for it, as noted in a number of threads here. All I can say is sit back and wait. The same is happening for people around the planet, let alone where you live, so it isn't just ATT that is having this problem, it is every network that Apple is using for their 3G iPhone as well.

It's being worked on, so let's all just sit back and wait. There's not much else we can do.

BL.
 
I'm moving from Fort Lauderdale, FL to New York City this Saturday... 3G coverage is so great here in FL! I don't want to loose it =(
 
I live in Huntington Beach, CA and work in Aliso Viejo, CA. With 3g turned on, half of my calls have dropped. So, I turn 3G off when I'm not surfing the web and the service has been a lot better. I hope they come out with a fix thought because I shouldn't have to "turn 3G off" all the time when this is, supposedly, a 3G phone.

I must add that with 3G turned off, the battery life is excellent.
 
dog352 said:
I live in Huntington Beach, CA and work in Aliso Viejo, CA. With 3g turned on, half of my calls have dropped. So, I turn 3G off when I'm not surfing the web and the service has been a lot better. I hope they come out with a fix thought because I shouldn't have to "turn 3G off" all the time when this is, supposedly, a 3G phone.
Click to expand...

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/545951/

This should give you insight on what is happening.

BL.
 
AT&T service in the NYC area has been bad for years. No surprise. Verizon used to suck, too, but, really cleaned house and improved everything, and are now a lot better than AT&T.

What a shame Apple gave AT&T an iPhone monopoly in the US. They don't deserve it at all.
 
Trajectory said:
AT&T service in the NYC area has been bad for years. No surprise. Verizon used to suck, too, but, really cleaned house and improved everything, and are now a lot better than AT&T.

What a shame Apple gave AT&T an iPhone monopoly in the US. They don't deserve it at all.
Click to expand...

Who would you say has the best in NYC?
 
I have a 3G Samsung in the New York City area, and the reception is good but not great. You might have one of those crappy reception iPhones, because while I occasionally drop a call during longer phone calls, I've never had no service in Queens or not been able to make a call.
 
I just got back from visiting NY and I have to say I was really disappointed with the coverage. Here in NC, I have GREAT coverage and speed. In NY, it was ridiculous. The speed surfing was pretty bad. When trying to use Google maps, it would take at least 2-3 minutes before it would load. I wanted to find the address of the Apple store (wanted to see it myself) and just going to Apple's website and navigating to find the full address took forever and I finally gave up and just kept asking around. I did notice that in some areas, it did work better (like Westchester) but in the city it was bad.
 
South NJ AT&T service had been good.

Both my BlackJack (first one) and iPhone EDGE and iPhone 3G have service at my home, while Verizon did not.
 
i missed this thread, so I'll throw in my usual Jersey City complaint. EDGE is practically dead in Jersey City (I'm at Harborside, right across the river from downtown NYC). Really slow speeds, usually around 20-40 kbps, sometimes worse or totally dead.
 
I live in Forest Hills, Queens and was away over the weekend on LI. When I got back I noticed I could not pick up 3G signal and that switching between 3G and Edge was not working well resulting in times where my phone would say "no service". Turning off 3G and going back to Edge was the quick fix. I called AT&T last night and they told me there were several towers out in my area and that I should wait till later today to see if it has been resolved. If it has not they asked me to call them again tonight and report it again. There were several heavy thunderstorms on Friday and maybe something got fried? I know its not my iPhone 3G because it worked well on LI this weekend and also worked well in Westchester today. I hope AT&T gets this resolved ASAP.
 
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