Possible that certain cell towers are causing reception issues?

There's been a good amount of speculation that the issue is somehow location based (meaning - based on strength of signal).

 

Possible, waiting for someone to come in and spew the

"Fundamental hardware flawz!"

I really wish the mods of this forum would clean this place up and migrate ALL reception related posts into ONE GIANT THREAD.

This forum is a mess IMO.

 

Not only possible, but highly likely in fact. In conjunction with some baseband tweaks in iOS4 by Apple, AT&T has been rolling out a change to tower hardware/software that is believed to be related to this issue. This change was not fully implemented (i.e. not all towers updated) when iOS4 was released.

Now I may well be here in a week or two sitting down to a large serving of crow but I'm willing to bet heavily that this issue can and will be addressed in software, not with any kind of IP4 recall or replacement campaign.

 

So AT&T is fixing an issue with the multiple networks in 5 different countries that offer iPhone 4?

They sure are busy.

 

It could certainly be tower position, relative location to tower, the frequencies of the tower, or the phone reacting to other towers/signals.

It could be possible if ATT (or the companies it has eaten) is an incumbent wireless provider you may have access to different spectrum, and thus perform differently.

Not sure, however, you explain problems with MicroCell, unless the problem is related to the 1900 MHz spectrum, and that's what problem areas happen to be using.

One constant, however, is the iPhone 4 appears to suffer significantly more than other devices.

 

There are all kinds of differences between cell towers in different locations. Every cell carrier uses more than one vendor or supplier, and over the years have built base stations using different equipment and different manufacturers as time has passed and contracts change hands. It's possible to have old-generation Lucent equipment in one location, newer Alcatel-Lucent stuff in another, Nokia in some other place, etc.

Even if you had two base stations using exactly the same gear in two different places, they're going to behave differently. Antenna panels are tweaked for optimal aiming based on the environment they're in. CDMA and WCDMA/UMTS/HSPA cells "breathe" differently in different places, altering their power levels based on how many users are in an area. And a lot of times they use different frequencies. It's even possible for AT&T to have 850Mhz in one town and 1900Mhz in the next town over due to licensing.

So yeah, all of this stuff can affect how any phone interacts with the network.

 

Given that any issue is going to be entirely within the baseband code - it could be that the handling of some frequencies is weaker than others ... the iphone is a penta-band device and its meant to be capable of switching frequencies ... so if your home tower is a 1800mhz one and at work its a newer 850mhz one it might be the way the iPhone is dealing with signal bands

Who knows ... Apple hopefully and they'll either continue to deny or release an update in due course .... we can do little

People who think 'ZOMG!!! Hardwarz is borken! Refund NAO!!" should do just that ... take the device back and leave ... i'm being patient as i seem to be ok 99% of the time (can't seem to replicate issue in certain locations also)