Does AT&T ever Reset their towers?

[michael31986]

it seems that sometimes like once maybe a month or something i wont have many bars, but it seems like its just at&t that is like maybe fixing their towers or resetting them and makes everyones reception decrease for a few.

is this true?

does at&t ever do maintenance and that could decrease reception by a little.

 

[michael31986]

anyone have any info on this?

 

[scaredpoet]

All of the cell carriers go through periodic maintenance on their network. Everything from software updates, to checking for trouble, to replacing faulty equipment can happen on a regular basis.

With 3G (and CDMA), there's also a phenomenon called cell breathing, and because of it, you'll notice fluctuation a bit more if you're on 3G. It's a characteristic of W/CDMA caused by usage patterns, and the fact that "noise" can increase on a cell as more people use it. As that "noise" increases, the effective range of the cell decreases, causing a drop in bars.

One last thing: people are going to find out real quick that the signal strength indicator isn't going to mean the same thing on 3G as it does on EDGE/GSM. 3G and CDMA are a whole different way of transmitting and receiving, and so a simple indicator like bars isn't going to be as useful as it used to be on the GSM network. It won't be totally useless, but it will be more crude.

 

[Nicolecat]

When you're saying reception loss...are all variables the same in both instances?

Same location?...same phone?...etc.

 

[kdarling]

Yes. Same phone, etc.

As stated above, the more users in a cell, the more "noise" and thus you have to be closer to a tower to get or keep a connection. (The effective footprint of the tower "shrinks".)

In a properly covered setup, this is okay, as your phone will simply change to a different tower.

CDMA carriers are used to this and plan accordingly. GSM carriers, who have to switch to a version of CDMA for 3G, could have to add more cells to prevent drops or loss of data rates.

 

[bmwpowere36m3]

I've noticed similar results recently. I was browsing the web on my iPhone and when I tried to load the google homepage, it literally (no joke) took over a minute to load. Then proceeding to check the news section, it just stopped and said, "the server stop responding". I've had this happen quit often on 3G with "good" signal (3-5 bars). THen I switched to Edge, 5 bars again and google loaded in ~15 seconds and every page loaded fine...WTF

Are we paying $ 10 more a month for slower internet