AT&T throttling all data at peak hours

[oplix]

I work in midtown manhattan and I have noticed that at certain hours, specifically at noon, data starts to slow down considerably. In my experience I don't notice much difference in seeing people use their cell phones during these specific hours but I do think that AT&T is throttling during these hours in advance to prevent network strain. Has anyone else noticed significant slow downs starting at noon?

 

[soco]

Throttling, or not being able to handle? There's a difference.

 

[sweetbrat]

I agree with Mr. Pink. I think it's more likely that more people are using their phones at that time, even though you're not seeing them. Noon is quite a popular time for lunch. Usage goes up, speeds go down. I don't think it has anything to do with throttling.

 

[verwon]

There is going to be an increase of people using their phones at noon, because that's lunch time. Just because you don't see it, doesn't mean it isn't happening.

 

[scaredpoet]

Yeah, noon to 3 pm is pretty much the witching hour for most wireless networks, not just AT&T. It's lunch time, and while most people have to sparingly and illicitly check their phones for personal email/twitter/facebook updates during work ours, they can openly do it during their lunch break.

And they are probably doing some sort of network management when usage is high, because they'd rather the speed of individual connections be a bit slower, to a bunch of people complaining that they can't get on at all. Which would you prefer?

As an aside: this is yet another reason I feel it was a bad move to change the 4S' functionality so that the user can't manually turn off 3G and drop to EDGE. Back in the days when AT&T's 3G was at its worst in NYC and California, you could at least drop to EDGE and get a slow-but-usable signal.

 

[KPOM]

Throttling, or not being able to handle? There's a difference.

It's the network not being able to handle the load. Almost like clockwork in my office in Midtown, I stop getting e-mails around 9:00am and sometimes need to turn my Nexus One hotspot on (it runs on T-Mobile) so my iPhone can keep updating. In the evening, once activity dies down, it works on 3G again. Wednesday, when there were fewer people working, 3G data was just fine for me.

IIRC, my Blackberry was slightly better (still not great), but it uses a different APN, and I didn't use it to connect to the web as much.

Interestingly, I am able to get calls and texts since it shows 3-4 bars of signal. It even shows the 3G symbol, but when the network is overloaded, data often slows to a crawl and the e-mail client just keeps spinning in circles trying to fetch data.

 

[SilentLoner]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A405 Safari/7534.48.3)

It's the same in Chicago loop area