Many AT&T iPhone Users Unable to Download Apps and Stream Music Over LTE

[mantan]

That's normal for AT&T for the last year or so all over the western US.

Their network is woefully overloaded and I doubt they'll be able to fix it for years. But they're an oligopoly and have no real incentive to fix anything quickly.

Everybody and their mom watching videos on their phones and tablets was an easily foreseeable problem, and they probably knew it was coming, but again, as an oligopoly, had no reason to care.

They've got hundreds of millions of reasons to care. I know it's easy to just take pot shots at AT&T (or Verizon). But both networks spend a ton of money consistently trying to build out networks ahead of demand. Data use has mushroomed in the last 10 years. Everybody expects to stream everything right now no matter where they are. Smartphones went from some hardcore tech people to grandma in the waiting room streaming Netflix.

Every big carrier knows if they fall significantly behind in service, they'll lose customers.

 

[MUWarrior10]

Experiencing this here in the Chicagoland area.

 

[tmiw]

AT&T has a problem: T-Mobile, Verizon, Sprint people, "AT&T sucks!"

T-Mobile has a problem: AT&T, Verizon, Sprint people, "T-Mobile sucks!"

Verizon has a problem: AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile people, "Verizon sucks!"

Sprint has a problem: AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, Sprint, "Sprint sucks!"

Get the picture??

Sprint has gotten a lot better though. I'm not going to be posting 100mbps+ LTE speed test results using them any time soon but it works well enough around here. Of course, YMMV.

My comment above was mostly an observation about MR's reporting, not Sprint's overall quality.

 

[noidpr]

Thanks for posting this, this is also happening on my Company ATT Fiber which leads me to thinks is something with ATT Internally.

 

[archstan]

Something similar happened last month to customers of Movistar, the largest carrier and ISP in Spain. Downloads on 300Mb fibre lines were taking hours. With a VPN activated they worked at normal speed. I believe there was some problem with ISP peering to the Apple content delivery systems. It took a few days to fix on the ISP side, nothing to do with iOS

 

[hazeydavey]

Phew, thought I was crazy! I have an AT&T wireless card that I tethered my T-Mobile 6S + to yesterday. Was trying to update and download apps, nothing happened...via the wireless card. Once untethered, DLd in seconds on the Tmobile LTE.

Weird weird weird.

 

[kingpushup]

Same here with Australian carriers, American carriers aren't alone, however the issue is getting looked at and some of it was fixed like Apple Music but app updates is still getting sorted

Possibly some background preloading preference? I am on AT&T no problem, knock on wood. But Apple mentioned desire to preload items like music for when you may lose coverage (maybe app updates accidentally got grouped, or maybe opening App Store is really connected to music store and so massive music buffering??)

but I am having zero troubles, sensing very tiny percent of customers are having trouble.

Has anyone scientifically tested a bit for alternatives: download the Winnie the Pooh book from iBookstore, do a 10GB download speed test from a couple sites, verify the wifi/cellular settings to see if issue is a tenacious router, or maybe it's Facebook again etc?

 

[Labrat561]

The lesson of this? Don't use a carrier that has "Telegraph" as part of its name (American Telephone & Telegraph - AT&T)

I'm in trouble my bank has a stagecoach!

 

[iOSFangirl6001]

For me the issue has been happening since around iOS 9 Beta 4 and been growing increasingly frequent with each update 9 9.1 Beta 1 and Beta 2

 

[webbuzz]

No issues with Apple Music on my iPad Air or 6 Plus, App updates seem to be slow.

Chicago

 

[SlipperySlop]

ATT sucks. Why people still have them as their carrier is beyond me.

Well, let's see. My friend with Verizon has frequent times when he is being called, but his phone doesn't ring. Hasn't happened to me with ATT. Um..Verizon doesn't have a signal where I work in a major city, but ATT does. Ummm...data and voice at the same time with ATT. Rarely get a dropped connection with ATT.

Now, please tell us why you think ATT "sucks". If you can't, you have severely damaged whatever credibility you may have had, assuming you had any to begin with, which I doubt given the nature of your statement. We're waiting and listening....

 

[rfahey79]

This is where AT&T comes in that speeds are affected by time of day, traffic, location, trees, alignment of the earth to the moon, sun reflecting off satellite dishes. when in truth some exec forgot to pay a power bill somewhere.

 

[macduke]

I love how the article notes SEVERAL times that this is probably not AT&T's fault. I think it just shows how terrible AT&T is, and how little trust we have in them, that this needs to be reiterated. Even so, I'm going with this is probably AT&T's fault because screw AT&T, haha.

 

[lazyrighteye]

Denver, CO resident here. Both my wife and me are experiencing all sorts of LTE issues.
She, on an iPhone 6 (OS 8.4 - I think).
Me, on an iPhone 6 (OS (9.1 beta 3).
We've both been seeing issues with data syncing between watches, phones and laptops. Our Calendars can show varying events depending on the device being used. Same with Messages - not the same across all devices. My hunch is it an iCloud issue as most of my services seems to have some form of wonkiness. But maybe an LTE thing. I've not been abel to effectively A/B anything yet.

 

[acctman]

All more reason to be on Verizon

 

[spikemorales]

I had my iPhone 6 Plus on Friday and began to experience latency issues since, I upgraded to iOS 9.
I picked up the new iPhone 6S Plus and continue to experience the same latency issues over the past couple days here in South Florida.
I have never had speed or latency issues with AT&T in the past.
I upgraded immediately yesterday as soon as 9.02 was available and I can honestly say that I've seen an improvement but certain apps continue to experience latency.

 

[avanpelt]

I'm wondering if AT&T is throttling their U-verse customers too? I have their Gigabit fiber service and I've noticed that sometimes it takes a ridiculous amount of time to update an app on my iPhone 6.

The other day it took 5 minutes to download and install a 50 MB app update. And I usually get about 350-400 Mbps up and down on my iPhone 6 when connected over Wi-Fi to my network. It seems like the issue comes and goes. Sometimes, I'll have multiple apps to update and the large apps download super quickly and the small apps take considerably longer to download than they should. I haven't been able to find any rhyme or reason to it.

 

[/dev/toaster]

I have been cursing the music app for a few days because of this, now it all makes sense. *sigh*

 

[melissa55]

ATT sucks. Why people still have them as their carrier is beyond me.

Actually AT&T is not bad ,I have better signal with them here in Los Angeles than I did with verizon. AND voice quality is much better . Signal in buildings stays on lte while verizon would drop down to slooooow 3G . Only thing I can complain about is them doing stupid stuff like this not letting us download stuff over lte ,other than that is not bad at all even when u travel I been to San Francisco, vegas,Arizona so far had strong coverage all the way to those places.Everywhere verizon has had coverage so has att.

 

[/dev/toaster]

ATT sucks. Why people still have them as their carrier is beyond me.

I am grandfathered into the unlimited plan and AT&T was the only provider for an iPhone for a long time. Kinda stuck with it.

 

[avanpelt]

All more reason to be on Verizon View attachment 588723

Not necessarily. I just switched from Verizon to AT&T and from my limited testing, AT&T smokes Verizon in terms of throughput around the Mall of Georgia (which appears to be close to where you are). I was lucky to get 25 Mbps down with Verizon LTE in the mall area. The first speed test I ran on AT&T by the mall pulled 65 Mbps down. Now, if they're throttling in certain instances, of course, that's a whole different story.

 

[soupcan]

I had a similar issue yesterday when trying to upgrade to iOS 9.0.2 and El Capitan. Changing the DNS server worked. Apple's servers don't like talking to providers' servers right now.

 

[ihonda]

Was getting pissed earlier at my LTE when it took 25mins to install a 40mb app. Att issues in Ohio.

 

[dtich]

Article Link: Many AT&T iPhone Users Unable to Download Apps and Stream Music Over LTE

i've actually seen this LTE not dl'ing apps thing for a couple/few weeks. not sure if i was on beta and that's why, but i remember noting it when it happened. glad this is seeing some light here. fix soon please.

in nyc.

 

[ihonda]

Obvious issue