Slashdot Mirror
Major Problems with Cingular Network
Wabin writes "It looks like the Cingular GSM network is having serious trouble. My phone stopped working today completely, though my wife's was still able to make outgoing calls. Talking to tech support, they claimed some kind of massive failure across the country starting around 4PM yesterday and possibly a virus attack. Howard Forums is all abuzz, but there really doesn't seem to be any hard info. Glad I haven't totally given up the land line yet... redundancy is good."
Congular rolled over !
First power networks, now cell phone networks...PATCH YOUR WINDOWS!
Nope. Guess not :(
C - A language that combines the speed of assembly with the ease of use of assembly.
Perhaps "Cingular" refers to their redundancy plan?
Help, Pol...............has a gu............ill us all ........... address is 3 ..........Street....
...for added redundancy?
.sig Realistic fines for copyright in
The Cubs win their division and make the playoffs, leading to cell phone outages in the US, power outages all over Italy, and more hurricanes are coming. Better get ready for the rapture!
Lousy minor setbacks! This world sucks! -- Homer Simpson
Welchia took out my entire division wear I work ~about 1500 users. The firewalls were doing a good job of blocking the viruses until one of the upper management decided to take their laptop home and plug it into an open internet connection and get infected with it. After the returned to work it spread across the unpatched systems and caused so much network traffic that everything was down for days (some areas didn't have IT on sight to clean up the problems). Really makes you think just how vunerable you are to these.
I guess it is time to go back to smoke signals...
I noticed similar problems with the AT&T GSM network last week. And the week before. And for about six months, continuously, before that. I couldn't receive calls pretty much anywhere, and couldn't place calls anywhere. The problem stopped abruptly last week, but I believe it may have been coincedental to my signing up with Verizon, and swapping my Motorola GSM phone for an LG whatever-verizon-uses-that-isn't-GSM-phone.
If you live in the US, avoid GSM like the plague. Especially in Southern California. I was effectively unreachable when I had GSM. Now that I'm back to traditional service, I can almost see dropping the land line.
And of course, to make matters worse, my Motorola T720 would only try for so long to sign back on to the netowrk when it went out of range. After that it just stops, displays "Unregistered SIM", and is effecitvely shut off. So if you're out of range for 30 minutes, you're out of range all day!
</rant>
What has *science* done?!? -- Dr. Weird (ATHF)
Yeah...apparently the problem started in Atlanta. Something went out there, and it switched over to a backup in Chicago, and I guess it couldn't handle the extra traffic so there was a cascading failure? Wait a minute, this sounds familiar... This is only on Cingular's GSM, not their TDMA. Those with TDMA and GAIT phones are able to use the service normally. Also, it seems like its only around mid america to the east coast.
[Wavy lines back to the management meeting long long ago.]
Marketroid 1: We need to come up with a name for our company.
Marketroid 2: Yeah, and it needs to be snazzy... catchy... possibly spelled wrong.
Geek (sweating heavily): Big problem. We can't go live yet, our network has way too many singular points of failure. (A geek with poor grammar, who knew?)
Marketroid 1: That's awesome! Singular it is!
Marketroid 2: Or Cingular.
Marketroid 1: Genious. There's a new BMW for both of us for this one...
[wavy lines forward to present day.]
Edu. sig-line: Choose rhymes with lose. Chose rhymes with goes. Loose rhymes with goose.
Comparing? THEN use THAN.
I'm still without a connection, and when people call my number, they don't even get my voicemail... just a fast busy signal.
Damn you Cingular! I'm switching providers! Wait, I'm locked into a two year contract :-/ I knew that was a bad idea.
My Cingular (Chicago-area) phone quit receiving calls 10 days ago. After 3 days of their horrible tech support, I finally found a rep who said that their system had no record of my SIM card, and that the records must have "gotten lost." He re-entered them, and all was well for two days, and then the problem recurred. This time, I was told that it was a national problem that had occurred a couple of days earlier. During all of this, I've called *611 dozens of times, and the hold times are well above average. I used to work in one of Cingular's Call Center IT departments; I just emailed a friend who's still there to see what's going on...
Skynet has become self aware
This is why land lines are a MUST when you want to get back out of the Matrix.
N4st0r, trixx0r h0bb1tz0rz! Th3y st0l3 0ur pr3c10uzz!
Errrrr I mean )(/"%*!)( NO CARRIER !
No carrier jokes never die. They only go offline for a while.
You know, that ominous sounding message is actually:
Help, Polly - your receipe for turkey goulash has a gummy taste to it. Can I double the ingrediants so it will fill us all up? Oops, I've got to go, Bill is complaining that the computer's printer port's address is 3bc and I have to show him how to change it. Oh and you were right, Robert Ulrich played Jim Street in the original "SWAT" TV Show. Goodbye
myke
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
Go ahead and post your number here. We'll all test it for you...
I'm sure a phone slashdotting will help their network out a lot. =)
Cingular has been fine in Californa for the last two days. I've probably made 30 calles, and sent 20 messages. No problems.
No reason to lie.
As a matter of fact, about thirty seconds after loading this story I got a call on my Cingular GSM phone from one of my friends who also has a Cingular GSM phone.
There is an interesting story in the Atlanta Business Chronicle about Cingular getting hit with a $12M fine in California for the poor way that they ran their network and treated their customers.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
"If Deutsche Telecom can get it right in Germany, then why not in the US?"
Because the US is 4x the size of Western Europe and has less people.
"It's not like it's cheaper in the US, au contraire."
It actually is. At least when I looked into plans with major providers (Vodafone, T-Mobile) about a month ago, what we get in the US is far cheaper than what is offered in Europe.
For example:
T-Mobile Baisc Plus (USA)
$30
Do pay for incoming calls
300 Peak
Unlimited Off-Peak/Weekend (9pm-6am)
GPRS = $3 / mo for 1MB, $10 / mo for unlimited
No Long Distance In USA
No Roaming In USA, $.49 in North America, $.99 in Europe
T-Mobile Everyone 100 (UK)
21 GBP = $34.87
Don't pay for incoming calls
150 peak first year, 100 peak thereafter
0 Non-Peak
GPRS 0.75UK = $1.24 *per kilobyte*
No Long-Distance in UK
No Roaming in UK, 0.69GBP = $1.14 USD in rest of Europe
Let's recap
US Plan Advantages:
Cheaper
2x as many peak minutes
Unlimited (vs. 0) non-peak minutes
GPRS that's a lot cheaper
No long distance in a larger area
No roaming in a larger area
Cheaper to use in Canada/Mexico (by far) and even Europe
UK Plan Advantages:
Calling Party Pays
Frankly, I think that the US plan is a far better value. For $10 a month, you can even add unlimited calling *anytime* to other T-Mobile phones in the US (e.g. when I call my friends, it doesn't cost a thing).
I have found T-Mobile's coverage to be perfectly acceptable. I know that some experience signal issues, but, quite frankly, I have not had any problems. No, it's not universal, but it works damn well.
"why is it that i can go to the middle of nowhere in europe (scandinavia more precisely) with my t-mobile phone and get excellent coverage"
Ever been to Chimayo, NM? It's the middle of nowhere. Literally. There's 1 town within 20 miles. It has 900 people. And yet they have reliable T-Mobile GSM and GPRS service. This is not universal, but it's more common than you think.
One reason Sprint and Verizon phones get better converage is because of CDMA. CDMA *is* a better technology than GSM. It handles twice as many people per cell and the cells can be far larger (3x+). Add to that the faster data service and better call quality, and you begin to understand why CDMA is the preferred technology in the USA.
Post Summary:
- Mobile service *isn't* more expensive in the US. From my experience, it's cheaper in the US. Please show me otherwise.
- CPP is nice, but, quite frankly, it's becoming irrelivent in the US. From unlimited nights and weekends to the 600 peak minutes I get to the free calling to and from other T-Mobile phones, I have *never* run over my minute limit. And I call quite a bit. Also, in the US, calling a mobile phone is just like calling a local phone. It's free locally, and cheap long-distance ($.05/min).
- We have unlimited GPRS. I have yet to see an unlimited GPRS plan in Europe. If you know of one, please show it to me.
- We *do* have GSM. With SIM cards. 3 Providers. And GPRS. And 3G CDMA. The US has the largest 3G CDMA networks (Sprint and Verizon). 1XRTT may not be as fast as EVDO, but it *is* technically 3G.
So stop this line of "the US has primitive wireless". It hasn't been true for quite some time now.
redundancy is good.
So does that mean you will be picking up a mistress in addition to your wife?
Comparing Europe to America is a little silly, when we need hundreds of thousands of basestations to cover all of America. And then you we have the FCC only permitting so much spectrum per carrier. Cell sites are coming down in price, but its a little more expensive when you have to make it look like a tree, cactus, palm tree or church steepel.
Those billion dollar loans from foreign telcos are for infrastructure. First to cover North America with a high speed data network, wins.
At first I thought it was the phone, as it started to drop calls, not ring when people called, and then it started to automatically turn itself off. I went in to the the store owned by Cingluar, I was there for 5 minutes and I had a new handset. This was about the middle of August. Now, this handset is having the same problems and my Fiance's phone has had nothing but problems too. (Her's sets off alarm clocks and electronic devices).
I live and die by my Cell phone as I use it as my Only phone, business and personal because I am a consultant and often out to visit with clients on a daily basis and perfer to work from coffee shops when ever possible, and to have people call and the phone not even ring has cost me in terms of business and just generally annoying.
So I finally we both get fed up, so both my Fiance and I walk into store and politely complain about the handsets, and the rep camly states that "They have been having issues with their network and voice mail". I explain, that since this is my one and only phone and I use it for business purposes that I cannot afford to have this type of service and wanted to know about switching handsets. Well, we "couldn't trade in our handsets" and would cost us retail, about $250 - 300 depending on what model, to trade buy something else.
Then I asked him, "How much is it to terminate the agreement?" and he responded studdering $150. And I then replied, "So it would be cheaper for us to break the contract and go to Alltel, then?" and he responded with silence for a few seconds then answered "yes" and then explained that it was problems with the network, not the phones.
I then asked him, "Look at it from my perpective. I am a consulant and if someone can't reach me, I loose money. Even a small contract usually totals several thousand dollars." And then I got the "any time with new technology, system, there is going to be problems" and I said, "This isn't a new system. Europe has been using it for quite sometime. In fact I used it when I was there working/studing abroad this time last year and it was great, I had no problems, so why are you? Why are you requiring all customers trade up for new phones that don't work?" He didn't have an answer.
My Fiance and I then went to AT&T, which isn't much better from what I have heard and way more expensive, and Alltel, which is pretty close to that of Cingular as far as price goes (about $5 difference a month) and for my Fiance is actully a tad bit cheaper.
That was Thursday and I didn't want to make a judgement based on emotion, because I ticked at the rep that gave me the run around on why the network isn't working even though its not his fault, and looked at the fact of the time it would take to call all of my clients and tell them I have a new number and the fact it would cost me about $8.50 more a month with Altell and decided to stick it out for a bit, but things have only been getting worse.
My fiance tried to call me 4 times today, only 1 got through and i continue to drop calls left and right. Before, I rarely had dropped calls unless I was in the middle of the sticks, now I get them all the time.
Bottom line, after reading that this is not just a local problem and speaking with several other providers in the area, that Monday morning my fiance and I are going to go back to the Cingular dealer and break our contract. Yeah its going to cost us $300, but both of us use it for business (she's a wedding planner) and losing just one customer for either of us will be an oppertunity cost of way more than $150. At the very least I go get to expense the cost off my taxes as a business expense so, I guess I break even on paper.
The only thing that sucks, is I just had a new set of business cards printed...always my damn luck...
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
"Can you hear me YET?"
...actually happened at a company I worked at once.
We sold transcripts of TV shows, including the old "Phil Donahue" shows in the early '90s. There was a lady on the show who called herself "The Recipe Detective." She had a column in a small-town newspaper which was pretty popular there. She took famous foods and tried to figure out how they were made: Twinkies, Oreos, Kentucky Fried Chicken, things like that. Then she published her recipes so you could make them yourself. Donahue thought this would be popular on his show.
Oh, boy, and howdy.
The Recipe Detective made the same offer on the show that she did in her newspaper column: "Send me a self-addressed, stamped envelope, and I'll send you whichever recipe you want." This turned out to be the biggest mistake of her life. She got over a million replies. Just sending the envelopes back with an apology would have bankrupted her. So, the next time she was on the show she apologized to all the nice people who had written her and told them they could get the recipes and transcript by calling our company. And she gave our 800 number and address.
Thirty seconds later our phones began to ring.
We had two T-1s for our phone lines because the calls tended to come in spikes right after our number appeared on national television. (And you thought Voice Over Internet Protocol was a new thing.) The T-1s were maxed out within five seconds and stayed that way for a week. It turned out that not only had our own lines been overloaded, but our long-distance provider's cross-country fiber-optic lines had not had the capacity to carry that many calls. (Not that it mattered to our customers. A busy signal is a busy signal.)
Even the post office was slashdotted: The trays of mail (boy, did our delivery guy hate us!) filled up all the halls on one floor of our building.
We switched to MCI because they had special ways of dealing with these kinds of problems: They could put our overflow into a voice-mail service on which customers could leave a call-back number. If their cross-country capacity was exceeded they could take the calls in the every local region and store them in voice-mail there.
When Donahue reran the second Recipe Detective show, he gave us a heads-up it was coming. So we told MCI it was on its way. And we had extra people ready for the onslaught. It happened again, but we had all the special procedures in place. After 24 hours MCI called (we had set up a special line so they could get through). It seems their hard drives were almost full and could we please start listening to and removing our voice-mail messages? Well, not very easily since all our lines were still jammed with incoming calls (and MCI's voice-mail system was accessed by phone). So we hired people to work out of their own homes to listen to the voice-mail messages and compile gigantic lists of call-back numbers.
Eternal vigilance only works if you look in every direction.
First Suspect:You see, I told him to "Stop clowning and see to your work."
Second Suspect: But I thought he said to "Start downing the Cingular network."
Sprint guy just shakes his head.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
KISS MY ASS, CINGULAR!
This company is being mis-managed into the ground. They're so bad that I'm half-afraid to sign up with Verizon (which is very good around here) for fear that I will be part of a herd that overwhelms their network and end up in the same straits.
Avoid Cingular.
Consider how big a flap this outage is causing. Consider how many people feel their whole life has been turned upside down.
Now, ask yourself how many of those people's lives REALLY have been turned upside down.
For a small set of the population, having mobile communications is critical. But that set is MUCH smaller than the set of people who THINK mobile communications are critical. Folks, there are answering machines with remote playback and pay telephones. There is even the idea of WAITING - that this conversation can take place LATER.
I was on a business trip a while back. I was asked by one of our Marketing directors what my cell number was. "I don't have a cell." He was shocked. "I don't need one. When I am not traveling, I can make all the personal calls I want on the local autopatches. Business calls can damn well wait till I am in the office. When I am travelling on vacation, the only calls I need to make are to hotels to book a room, and those are toll free and I can use a payphone at a gas station. When I am traveling on business the company can damn well loan a phone to me."
I'm not a Luddite - quite the contrary, I help design test equipment for cell phone. I know too well what the systems look like. That is one of the reasons I don't have a phone.
For $DEITY's sake folks, unplug once in a while - you will find out that you live quite well without the phone!
www.eFax.com are spammers