AT&T Service NYC - Has it gotten better now that Veriz/Sprint carries iPhone?

[onthecouchagain]

ATT users, have their service gotten better in New York City since Verizon and Sprint acquired iPhones? Is there any indication of the number of people who migrated to Veriz or Sprint? My understanding is that it's not as massive of a migration as expected.

How's the ATT service now with supposedly less iPhone users on their network? How is the 4S' improved antennae helping with keeping signal?

 

[FreakinEurekan]

Can't speak to NYC, but I don't know that there was any (or much) expectation of a net loss for AT&T. Certainly some current iPhone users were waiting to switch to Verizon or Sprint, but AT&T's iPhone user base has not stopped growing. I would expect many new iPhones to be activated on AT&T (new as in people who did not have iPhones anywhere previously, not necessarily new AT&T customers) - to the point that users leaving AT&T for another carrier would be little more than a rounding error in the statistics.

Given the significant operational advantage of GSM with the iPhones, your best hope for improved performance in NYC is AT&T leveraging HSPA+ and improving backhaul capacity - not hoping for a reduction in users

Fortunately out here in "fly-over country" the AT&T network has been quite satisfactory - a dramatic improvement since activating my iPhone 3G in 2008. I now routinely see 3Mbps speeds on my iPhone 4, not bad for a town of 2,500 in the middle of the NW Arkansas Ozark mountains.

 

[mach]

I can't say specifically if it has to do with Verizon getting the 4 or Sprint getting the 4S, but as an AT&T user in NYC (midtown, west village, soho, east village primarily) I will say service has definitely improved since I joined in 2009. It's still not great, but definitely better.

Speeds, especially on the 4S with HSPA+, are pretty good. I get 1-2Mbps in manhattan and 5-7Mbps down in queens. Definitely noticeably faster at loading pages, map data, facebook, etc than my 3GS.

In some buildings, and in midtown during the day, service may be very low, or it may say you have service but you'll be unable to place a call or send a message, and this can get very frustrating, but it doesn't happen enough to make me want to switch to a different carrier.

Overall I am fine with AT&T's service. Data speeds are generally impressive and definitely faster than Verizon and Sprint's 3G, and even keeps up with my friend's Droid Bionic on LTE loading data (a good testament of browser and hardware optimization and efficiency!) despite its higher capability of raw download speed.

If I ever have a problem, I make sure to send a report (or two) with the Mark the Spot app. Hopefully the more complaints they get about spotty coverage, the more likely they will be to work on improving our service here.

 

[film major]

I have the 4S here in NYC. I work in midtown and I do notice that data can be slow at times. But, the call quality is much better with the 4S. My roommate has the 4 and he used to have horrible call quality in my apartment. With the 4S I have had no problems.

 

[WannaGoMac]

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