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Losing Verizon Data Access

S

snowfall

macrumors member
Original poster
Mar 18, 2005
92
0
My new Verizon iPhone lost access to data over Verizon for a few days, which was fixed by power cycling the phone. Anyone else have this happen to them on either the CDMA or GSM iPhone 4?

I hadn't noticed because I was on WiFi most of the time, but noticed that the cellular data connection wasn't working any where. Unfortunately I missed several voice mails as a result.

I spoke with a genius bar rep and he said that it happens sometimes and doesn't indicate a problem with the phone or iOS. He also suggested that I should make it a habit to reboot the phone or switch it in and out of airplane mode.

The rep was really helpful, but it sure sounds like a bug to me...
 
I just started seeing the same thing today after the carrier update, with a couple differences. My experience is that the network connection was fine until the phone went to sleep. Once it woke up, the network showed "Searching..." and it wasn't able to connect to a cell network at all. It wasn't just limited to data over the cell network. I couldn't make calls either. Powering the phone off and on corrected the problem until the phone went to sleep again.

I called tech support and eventually got to an analyst who had me do two things. First she had me check the network settings (Settings - General - Network) and suggested that I turn on Data Roaming. After turning that on, I called *228 and re-registered the phone on the network by selecting option 1. That seemed to clear up the problem.

I've had the Data Roaming option turned off since day one so the carrier update may have changed something that requires that option to be turned on in my area. I tried turning off Data Roaming and can verify that the problem comes back.

I'd be curious to see what resolves the problem for other people.
 
I didn't completely lose data, but during the iPad 2 event, I attempted to follow coverage of it on Safari and other apps. Although I could load websites, I could not launch a streaming audio/video, even though it had just worked fine a little bit prior. I didn't try power cycling the phone, although that probably would have done the trick.

The connection was back to normal in about 15 minutes, but I was very furious to lose that live coverage during that time. Quite honestly, I don't use my phone much off of wifi, so I definitely haven't gotten to experience many problems because of that.
 
Applejuiced said:
Many others with the Verizon iphone have been reporting the same.
The latest carrier update seems to have fixed it for most.
I'd give that a try and see if it makes a difference.
Click to expand...

Thanks, I'll give this a try, though it may be hard to quickly see if it makes much of a difference.

gryphon00 said:
I called tech support and eventually got to an analyst who had me do two things. First she had me check the network settings (Settings - General - Network) and suggested that I turn on Data Roaming. After turning that on, I called *228 and re-registered the phone on the network by selecting option 1. That seemed to clear up the problem.

I've had the Data Roaming option turned off since day one so the carrier update may have changed something that requires that option to be turned on in my area. I tried turning off Data Roaming and can verify that the problem comes back.

I'd be curious to see what resolves the problem for other people.
Click to expand...

That's... weird. Why would you need data roaming on?

Something mistakenly triggers the phone to believe it's out of network when it's not and then it doesn't check again to see if it is? That would kind of make sense: phone figures out your in france and doesn't waste bandwidth or money trying to repeatedly find Verizon.

Don't accidentally leave the country.

Just checked, my phone was already updated to Verizon 10.1, not sure when that happened.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
snowfall said:
That's... weird. Why would you need data roaming on?

Something mistakenly triggers the phone to believe it's out of network when it's not and then it doesn't check again to see if it is? That would kind of make sense: phone figures out your in france and doesn't waste bandwidth or money trying to repeatedly find Verizon.

Don't accidentally leave the country.
Click to expand...

This was exactly my reaction when she asked me to turn it on. I asked what data roaming actually did for me and why I needed it turned on now after not having it turned on before the update and the only response she gave was "Well you have the unlimited data so there's not any reason to have it off." I got the impression that either she didn't know or she was avoiding the question for some reason.
 
The same thing happened to me this week. After the carrier update. I just did a reset network settings inside of iOS and I was good to go.
 
snowfall said:
My new Verizon iPhone lost access to data over Verizon for a few days, which was fixed by power cycling the phone. Anyone else have this happen to them on either the CDMA or GSM iPhone 4?

I hadn't noticed because I was on WiFi most of the time, but noticed that the cellular data connection wasn't working any where. Unfortunately I missed several voice mails as a result.

I spoke with a genius bar rep and he said that it happens sometimes and doesn't indicate a problem with the phone or iOS. He also suggested that I should make it a habit to reboot the phone or switch it in and out of airplane mode.

The rep was really helpful, but it sure sounds like a bug to me...
Click to expand...

Applejuiced said:
Many others with the Verizon iphone have been reporting the same.
The latest carrier update seems to have fixed it for most.
I'd give that a try and see if it makes a difference.
Click to expand...

I have go prefCe this comment by saying I am an AT&T customer.. Having said that- Verizon sucks. please do a search on my posts to learn more about my experience. I actually used oh carriers simultaneously.
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_5 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8E128 Safari/6533.18.5)

How often should I reboot my Verizon iPhone? I use it on wifi at home and 3G connection at work.
 
Geffen said:
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_5 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8E128 Safari/6533.18.5)

How often should I reboot my Verizon iPhone? I use it on wifi at home and 3G connection at work.
Click to expand...

You don't *have* to restart it.
Just do it if it starts being buggy.

How is this possible though? Doesn't Verizon have the most reliable network? They should probably give everyone MicroCells or something. :rolleyes:
 
The annoying thing is that I didn't get voicemail notifiers. Do the phones need to deliver visual voicemail over their own data networks and not wifi?

That's bad, because I won't notice the data connection isn't working because I'll be on WiFi most of the time.

My best guess is from gryphon00's comment about being told to use data roaming to fix the problem. Maybe Apple's data roaming detection doesn't work perfectly with Verizon's network.
 
JamesMB said:
I could be mistaken, but that statement leads me to believe that you don't understand what the data roaming feature is.
Click to expand...

Turning data roaming off is intended to keep from you using data on networks (overseas) where you would have to pay big bucks. I'm speculating that through some interaction between the iPhone and the Verizon network, the iPhone believes it is on such a network and turns data off (if you have the Data Roaming switch set to off).

Since it thinks your overseas it doesn't bother to check again until you either power cycle the phone, or cycle it through airplane mode (the recommendation of the genius I spoke to). Setting Data Roaming to on obviates the issue because it will always try to connect to a network.

What do you understand Data Roaming to be for?
 
snowfall said:
Turning data roaming off is intended to keep from you using data on networks (overseas) where you would have to pay big bucks. I'm speculating that through some interaction between the iPhone and the Verizon network, the iPhone believes it is on such a network and turns data off (if you have the Data Roaming switch set to off).

Since it thinks your overseas it doesn't bother to check again until you either power cycle the phone, or cycle it through airplane mode (the recommendation of the genius I spoke to). Setting Data Roaming to on obviates the issue because it will always try to connect to a network.

What do you understand Data Roaming to be for?
Click to expand...
It is for roaming between carriers, it doesn't make any difference whether you are overseas or not. The phone knows that you are not out of the country as soon as it connects to a tower. That said, your speculation does seem plausible though. But, if that was the case, I would certainly think that Verizon would be pointing the finger at Apple, and I haven't heard or read that anywhere.
 

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Still haven't seen an official post on the 10.1 carrier update (haven't they heard of change logs?), but lots of folks are quoting one contributor on the Verizon Wireless forums.

All it does is change how the phone behaves regarding data roaming: before the update, with data roaming off you only get data on the VzW network. After the update, you can also get data on their partner networks (you can roam on Sprint, US Cellular, ACS, etc, etc at no charge as part of your VzW service) with the data roaming setting turned off.That’s the only thing it changes. If you’re not in one of the “extended network” areas, it won’t affect you and is not worth worrying about.
Click to expand...

If that's true, then you can roam on other domestic networks with data roaming turned off.

There may not enough people suffering from this issue to cause finger-pointing... but my speculations aren't worth very much, be nice to see something official.
 
snowfall said:
Still haven't seen an official post on the 10.1 carrier update (haven't they heard of change logs?), but lots of folks are quoting one contributor on the Verizon Wireless forums.



If that's true, then you can roam on other domestic networks with data roaming turned off.

There may not enough people suffering from this issue to cause finger-pointing... but my speculations aren't worth very much, be nice to see something official.
Click to expand...
The quote that you posted, is the way that I understand that it works. If indeed, that is the case, then your speculation would seem to be spot on.
 
It doesn't stop you from wracking up huge data bills overseas. You have to turn off cellular data, amongst other things, to stop the data bills from piling up.

snowfall said:
Turning data roaming off is intended to keep from you using data on networks (overseas) where you would have to pay big bucks.
Click to expand...
 
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