

AT&T's network rocks, it's iPhone's problem - rkuester
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/13/business/13digi.html

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rufo
This seems like a poorly reasoned article to me.

I don't think anybody argues the point that AT&T has the fastest 3G network.
You can have the fastest network. It can have slightly more signal bars. It
can also be the one that drops calls the most. These things are not mutually
exclusive.

~~~
travisp
There is also more than signal bars. AT&T works fine at and near my home, but
it works awfully at one city I travel to. I get full 3g signal bars there, but
websites time out, except at night time, and many incoming calls don't get
through to me (going straight to voicemail).

So yes, technically I get great 3g signal there, but their network there
simply can't handle it.

~~~
dgreensp
Also, AT&T may have more places with 75%+ signal strength, but who has more
places with 50%+ signal strength, or more places with any signal strength?

All available evidence points to Verizon having better coverage, especially in
outlying areas, including this article's focus on speed rather than coverage,
and AT&T's commercials saying "What do you mean we don't have coverage? Pick
any city. We have coverage in Boston. We have coverage in San Francisco..."
Lame.

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gamble
Is there even a single other country where the iPhone has the problems it does
on AT&T? I've been using my 3G on Rogers here in Canada since it was released.
I've never seen a dropped call and Rogers' network is consistently faster than
the phone.

~~~
Maciek416
I've had exactly the same experience over here (Toronto, Canada, and also on
Rogers' 3G network).

I can't remember having ever dropped a call on my iPhone 3G and the network is
absolutely rock solid, and very very fast (using the Xtreme Labs speed test
app, for example).

The logic of this article in compelling at first but doesn't stand up to
evidence that the iPhone is quite good outside of AT&T.

~~~
EvilTrout
I'm on Fido (Rogers 3G Network) and my experience is the same. I've never had
a dropped call, and the phone is almost always fast.

I've also used it in Montreal with similar experiences. So either the Canadian
3G networks are especially good, or AT&T's network is crap.

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sachinag
Surely, someone has asked people _in other countries_ what their experiences
are with their iPhones on their carriers. Given that the rest of the world is
on GSM (Korea excluded), we should pretty well know whose fault it is.

~~~
mmastrac
Here's my anecdote. I'm an iPhone user in Canada o the Rogers network. My
signal is very strong everywhere. I rarely see any less than a perfect signal,
except when far away from metropolitan areas. Usually five bars, indoors and
out. I may have had a dropped call over the last year, but I couldn't tell you
when.

Last week I visited mountain view for Campfire One. In the three days I was
there, I had two calls dropped on me. One of them was dropped while walkig
around outside at the Googleplex. My signal often wavere between zero or two
bars and five bars for no explicable reason. I would occasionally lose signal
entirely inside buildings (my hotel room for one).

In my experience, a perfectly working iPhone in Canada becomes unreliable in
California. Take from that what you will.

~~~
ajg1977
But who was your roaming provider while in California? Was it AT&T? T-Mobile?

~~~
liscio
I can't speak for mmastrac, but in general Rogers devices roam onto AT&T as
their first choice. I've noticed similar lameness in AT&T's network while
traveling...

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blhack
I don't know how much AT&T's network "rocks".

I have a blackberry bold and most calls get dropped at least once during my
conversation (obviously this isn't true for calls that are <2-3 mins).

The 3G coverage is also dreadful. The phone will say "3g", but will time out
when opening webpages with the blackberry's browser, using google maps, or
trying to run the blackberry twitter app.

I get absolutely no service at my house. AT&T has been talking about a
portable cell station that you can buy, then pay a monthly fee to use (wtf,
at&t? You're going to offload traffic to _my_ network connection at home, then
charge me for the privilege of it?) for about a year now, but it hasn't
materialized (if it has, I haven't seen it).

I live in Phoenix, which is a pretty large city. I would understand these
things if I lived in a small town, but i don't. AT&T's coverage and their
unwillingness to admit that there is a problem and that they are fixing it is
unacceptable.

~~~
wooster
From the review martey linked (<http://paulstamatiou.com/review-
att-3g-microcell>), it looks like the price is currently either a one time
$150 payment or $50 + $20/month for unlimited calls while connected to the
femtocell. That seems really reasonable to me, and I'd love to get one of them
(in my apartment in SF, where I have extremely spotty reception from AT&T).

~~~
blhack
If it were $150 one-time I would buy one today. Sadly, they are not available
in my area (from what the link you supplied says).

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jwr
Ahem.

"AT&T is a client and Verizon is not, he added."

So much for objectivity.

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axod
iPhone user for 2 years, in the UK, on O2. Never had a single dropped call or
issue.

I've been to the US several times, and each time I'm amazed at the unreliable
nature of both mobile cellphone networks, _and_ landlines :/ The
infrastructure simply isn't there yet.

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Imprecate
There are areas where I get great data service when nobody else is around.
Then during peak hours data service is very slow or intermittent even though
my signal strength stays the same. I'm not a telecom engineer, but it seems
like they have too few towers for the number of subscribers in some areas or
they don't have enough bandwidth in their backhaul.

Maybe both AT&T and the iPhone are bad, at least in my case.

When I travel to less populated cities, 3G data is always extremely fast;
still I'd rather have a consistent 800 Kbps than 1500 when I'm lucky and 50
when I'm not.

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spoondan
But it's not just iPhone users. Wireless users _in general_ are unhappy with
AT&T's service. So if it's not the network, but a problem with the phones,
AT&T must have a uniquely awful line-up of hardware. That sounds like just as
big a problem for AT&T as network issues.

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gte910h
>He explained that his company’s tests of AT&T’s data network were done with
handsets other than the iPhone, which does not allow non-Apple programs like
his to run in the background.

Wow, that's a huge error.

The iPhone doesn't allow non-Apple programs to run in the background either.
This is a big issue for app development actually and we've been clamoring for
a background task API forever.

We get interrupted, and rerun fresh when a call comes in or a person leaves an
app for any reason (such as "executing" a URL such as a tel: or twitteriffic:)

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wglb
Wow. This is so contrary to my own personal experience. I have a droid and a
non-iphone at&t phone. The quality of verizon over the at&t one is
significant, and the coverage in the chicagoland area is vastly in favor of
verizon. If this weren't NYT, I would think there is some astroturfing going
on.

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blhack
Somebody is asleep at the wheel at nytimes. The video that they linked to for
"there's a map for that" is _awful_.

Here is a better version: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCbYTrYD5y8>

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spazmaster
I'm an iPhone user in the Netherlands, locked into T-Mobile. I frequently
experience dropped calls. I give T-Mobile the fault... hmmmm

~~~
Janteh
I get not signal in the house of my parents, my girlfriend and the most part
of the village I'm from (which is in the middle of the 'Randstad'). T-Mobile's
network sucks.

~~~
gte910h
That's ironic, it's great here (for iPhones) in the states.

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drhowarddrfine
It doesn't matter if there are any shortcomings with the iPhone or not. ATT
went into partnership with Apple over this and, if they can't handle what it
delivers, they should have discovered this beforehand.

