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AT&T 3G Upgrades Degrade 2G Signal Strength
Timothy R. Butler writes "Much to the chagrin of owners of various 2G cell phones on AT&T Mobility's network, including the highly visible (and originally highly expensive) first-generation iPhone, we have discovered that AT&T has been quietly adjusting its network in ways that degrade 2G network performance as it has sought to build out its next-generation 3G network. Many of the phones affected, including BlackBerry devices, are still well within their two-year contract period."
Just a few months ago, I upgraded to the AT&T version of the Palm Centro. I was a little disappointed to learn that the AT&T version of the Centro doesn't support 3g while the Sprint version does. If AT&T was going to upgrade to 3g at the expense of 2g, they should have made as many 3g offerings available as possible. I've noticed as well that my signal strength has seemed poorer in many areas of Missouri lately than it was when I first purchased my Centro, but I'd never associated it with anything AT&T had done.
You do realize that the "many" are currently 2/2.5G phone users? Users locked into a contract that means you can't upgrade (without paying a pretty nasty chunk of change)?
"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
Friendly -- T-Mobile will even unlock one phone every 90 days for you, for free.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
This is nothing new. When AT&T and Cingular merged, They started "not repairing" the AT&T towers. When I called about the problem, I was told that when Cingular took over the towers, they were not given the passwords to maintain them (an obvious lie), but that if I wanted to sign a new 2 year contract, I could start receiving a signal again with a plan that had less minutes and cost more per month. After much arguing, they eventually just let me cancel my current plan with them and I moved to Verizon. (Yes, I know that they are evil too.)
I found it unbelievable that anyone would pay more, receive less, and sign a new contract with a company that just failed to live up to their old contract. Unfortunately, my pessimistic view of the general public was once again shown to be overly optimistic.
Read the article again. This isn't an device interference issue, but rather an issue where AT&T is moving EDGE/GSM to a higher frequency band that has inferior characteristics to other bands that AT&T used to use for EDGE. The problem is that the higher frequency doesn't offer the same signal strength in certain places, so EDGE users who've been switched to the 1900mhz band will notice a lower signal in certain areas.
If you read your contract with ATT, you will realize that any such lawsuit will have to go to arbitration, with a phone-industry appointed panel of phone industry lobbyists.
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WHO ATE MY BREAKFAST PANTS?
Wow, thanks LoadWB. I had the same problem as you with my TDMA service back in 2006. After being with AT&T Wireless and then Cingular since 1999, my service abruptly became very flaky. Near my house I would lose service for hours at a time, when otherwise I would have an exceptionally strong signal. If I walked a few blocks away from my house my service would resume again, though at poor signal strength. As quickly as the problem appeared it would go away for several days. The frequency and predictability of the problem gradually increased until I had no service every single evening when I returned home from work.
I called Cingular (or AT&T, I can't remember which it was at the time) regularly and spent hours both on hold and troubleshooting with their customer service representatives. They sent me a used phone, the same antiquated model as mine, to try out. It had the exact same problem. Throughout it all they denied vehemently that there were any issues with their service or any specific tower(s). Naturally, their suggestion was to sign up for a new 2 year contract with a GSM phone.
At the time I strongly suspected that they were intentionally degrading the service to weed out the old technology, but not until I read your post just now did I get any degree of confirmation. You were lucky to eventually get through to someone who was truthful with you. I have no problem with changing technology, but feel that it is unacceptable to intentionally degrade the service your customers are paying for with no warning, no explanation, and no positive incentive to move to the new technology. This was the treatment they were giving me after subscribing to their service for 7 years.
I decided to complain with my wallet, so rather than sign up again with AT&T I switched to T-Mobile. Of course then I had endless problems with T-Mobile charging me for hundreds of phantom text messages and I ended up dropping them shortly thereafter. Sadly, I'm back with AT&T now. At least my 2 year contract is up so now I can try to find a competent, honest provider if such a thing exists in the US.
Instead, every provider offers exactly one plan, and all four have identical terms and prices: $60/mo for 5GB of data.
What in the world are you talking about? I went to check your facts and the very first carrier that I checked had a $50/month data card plan with unlimited data.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
I stand corrected; T-Mobile's offer is reasonably good, and gives the others some competition.
AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon all do offer only the same $60/mo, 5-GB limit plan for data cards, though. Well, Verizon also offers a useless 50-MB limit one, for $40/mo.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
T-mobile tries harder than the others, but t-mobile is blessed with the worst network coverage. T-mobile survives by having the best customer service, and enlightened data plan policies.
The customer service folks are actually helpful, they will discuss how to configure unlocked iphones and other phones on t-mobile. They also unlock t-mobile purchased phones in 90 days, even sooner in most cases, etc.
AT&T has the absolutely worst customer service. All the other carriers ('cept for T-mobile) are pretty evil. I would not be surprised at any informal price fixing... everyone is locked in anyways. But network quality is very important also, and T-mobile doesn't do well there.
I only switched to T-mobile when they allowed their phones to do calls over the wifi network as well as the cell tower network. The coverage isn't great, but you can supplement it by placing wifi points where you use the cell phone the most... it actually is better for use in some rural areas. But my blood pressure is much lower whenever I deal with customer service, that's priceless!