My connection in Midtown is shaky during the day, no question. Moving 20 feet in one direction or the other can make all the difference. I just assume the towers are overloaded. One thing I can say is that voice is never a problem, even when data is bogged down.
My issue last night was really different though (not even slow loading, just doing absolutely nothing).
The AT&T rep told me there was a tower issue and even told me where that tower is located. My signal picked up when I was about a block in the opposite direction this morning, so it seems to make sense.
Yes, that's often my experience. The last two days, I have walked down to a "reliable" spot and still got no data (though voice usually works). I also have a Nexus One running on T-Mobile, so when things got really bad, I turned on the Wi-Fi hot spot and synced up my iPhone to that.
Naturally, I was at the Apple Store on 5th Avenue, ran SpeedTest, and found that I had a 10Mbps connection (not much slower than my Time Warner Cable broadband connection at home), so it would be almost useless to take it to a Genius Bar.
For now, I'm chalking it up to AT&T's "craptastic" overloaded 3G network. I plan to get the LTE-equipped iPhone 5 next year when it comes out (I'll sell my unlocked 4S then). Hopefully AT&T has built it up by then, and it works even half as well as advertised.
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That would be due to the #ows ... Just a guess if you hit their comms first things may settle down.
I'm in Midtown. At least up until now, those of us up here wouldn't even know there was an "occupy" protest going on downtown if we didn't watch the news. Odd, since a lot of the big investment banks are actually located here.