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AT&T Admits New York City iPhone Service Sucks
RevWaldo notes a post up at The Gothamist on AT&T's admission of its poor cell service in New York. "AT&T has realized that the first step towards recovery is admitting it has a problem. The phone giant has confessed that its New York City iPhone service is not up to par, according to a presentation slide published on Tom's Guide noting that the company's 3G Voice Composite Quality in the New York metro area — particularly in Manhattan — is below its performance objective. ... The slide does contain some good news for AT&T subscribers. Apparently, AT&T has had '[t]hree consecutive months of improvement'..."
Now if only they had some of that Luke Wilson money to invest in infrastructure.
The Pope is Catholic.
Goldfish like water
If I had an Ass, I'd call it Fanny Bottom, then I could slap my Ass; Fanny Bottom, on the Arse.
I am left wondering if the improvement stated is a result of consumers switching carriers from AT&T.
Who was that pointy-eared bastard?
I rarely get 3G data service during the week. Usually it's EDGE and not very fast EDGE at that.
Weekends are much better.
Anyone thinking of getting an iPad should really think about the real value of the 3G option - will it be worth anything in your area?
Now if they can just admit their service sucks everywhere else too, then they can take some of all that iPhone money and actually improve the service.
What's really amazing about AT&T and the iPhone is that if you are in a large crowd of people (such as a festival), the service becomes overwhelmed and you can't even make or receive a call.
Even just going to LA can make the phone get pretty unresponsive as it waits for a signal from the overloaded tower, so you can't really use it for much.
Thanks for finally fucking noticing. I've called to complain to ATT numerous times over the years and every single time i was given the following bullshit excuses:
- You need a new sim card
- Your phone might be damaged
- We don't see any problems in the area
So when is ATT going to give me my money back for diminished service?
I think the invisible hand of the market has its middle finger extended
--A wise old fart named SC0RN
They responded M-o-n-o-p-o-l-y
What's that graph supposed to represent without an y axis?
This is marketing disguised as an objective quality metric. Without showing the numbers, they've admitted to nothing, and promised nothing.
...is easy when you have 3 months of subscribers canceling their contracts.
I wonder if AT&T is having problems in New York and Chicago and some other large cities because they don't know who to bribe or what local bosses control what happens. There are fewer people standing in the way of upgrades like this in some places than in others.
as an aside, I have no interest in the iPad until it has 4G connectivity. What is up with that?
Because of course the iPhone is the only phone to use 3G voice. and of course non-iPhone type phones (those still exist!) are obsolete, old world and non-multitouch and therefore not worth acknowledging
...while it's data that is giving people fits. When I say "people" I mean "me."
I was in Downtown Manhattan /w AT&T service a few months ago - 3G service in general (Not just IPhone) wasn't just slow it was so slow that the effective result was it didn't work at all - don't waste your time trying slow. The experience was comparable to GSM data service (14.4k) of decades past. In contrast call quality was quite good and I never had any problems there.
Thankfully outside of the Metro area all was well in 3G land. At the time I suspected all of those massive Sprint displays in times square had some sort of magical influence over my data connection :)
Fastest 3G network in the country... Sure, as long as you don't count major metro areas or any of those other peskly 3G networks.
In other news, AT&T admits the sky is blue.
Uh. Yeah. We knew that already...
For the past three months more people in NYC are leaving AT&T than they are picking up as new subscribers?
Any insufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.
It sucks out on Long Island too! Hope they don't just focus on Manhattan. I mean it's ridiculous how bad AT&T service is in all facets. Sorely tempted to trade my beloved Iphone for a Nexus. I get so mad everytime I see what's his face from Old School talking about how fast their network is. Also so what if it's faster, you don't get any coverage anywhere! I mean really, I could have the fastest race car in the world, but if I can only drive it up and down my drive way it's pointless!
As I still cannot get a 3G nor an Edge signal to sustain itself for more than literally 10 seconds...
Right in front of City Hall in Downtown Manhattan. They *say* they've upgraded their NYC network and added capacity, but my signal strength (as noted by decibel, not bars) has remained absolutely consistently horrible everywhere in the Financial District, Gramercy Park, all of the Village, and both the Upper East and Upper West Sides.
Lies and more goddamn lies.
Wonder how well the iPad 3G will do in NYC when released.
It can only be a matter of time until AT&T admits that their service everywhere sucks. Right?
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I live in Manhattan, and I own an iPhone. Believe me, I know about all the problems. I complain a lot to my friends.
But they're clearly trying to climb on top of this. They're opening up about the problems, and they had that incident a month ago or so when they stopped selling iPhones. They're trying to figure it out.
I ran a dial-up ISP in the 90's. Tons of people came on to the net, and everyone in the business was trying like crazy to grow their phone banks and their networks to handle the new people. Back then everyone complained about their ISP -- it was hard to keep up.
That's what's happening now with wireless. Everyone is starting to use lots of data. Three years ago, almost no one used wireless net access. Three years from now, almost everyone in the city will want to be able to stream video to their phones at the same time. All of that infrastructure has to be built, and all of it has to be financed. Imagine if some other major chunk of infrastructure had to be built from the ground up -- electrical wiring, or roads, or whatever. It's a big job.
The transition is inevitably going to be bloody. We just need AT&T to be open about it, and to really step up and try to keep up with the growth. When they come clean like this, it's a very positive sign. And once everyone's online, and the growth stabilizes, things will get a lot better.
(I realize that no one will buy this. But I figured I'd put it out there anyway.)
They never say faster..."a better 3G experience" wtf that means.
Those ads are full of lies dancing around the issue.
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I remember reading in the consumerist that an AT&T consumer representative said "the phone is not offered to you because New York is not ready for the iPhone." They (temporarily) stopped selling one of the best selling phones in the country's biggest market! Isn't this already an admission that their service sucks? I guess it could be interpreted as AT&T blaming the iPhone and New Yorkers instead of their own network, but I think we all saw through the rep's thinly veiled admission.
http://consumerist.com/2009/12/att-customer-service-new-york-city-is-not-ready-for-the-iphone.html
My BlackBerry is on the Teleus carrier here in Canada. When I went down to NYC last summer my BlackBerry was a worthless POS. Just bringing up my email and replying was a challenge. Everywhere we went the signal was great but the service was horrid. The two places I noticed the biggest drops was at the MET on a Saturday afternoon and at a Yankee's game in the evening on the weekend. There was literally no service and I felt like when I used to try and dial into a busy ISP in the 90s. Even when you connect to a busy ISP you might not have any service. I paid alot of money to MY carrier so I could have bandwidth access in NYC and it was a waste of money. I wanted my money back but they refused. What a waste.
My HTC phone has fantastic service on AT&T. I have never had an issue, while iPhone users less than 10 feet away from me can't get a signal. Are they really so certain its the network?
the first step on the road to recovery.
For conscience is the wound, and there's naught to staunch it
I hear NYC and SanFran AT&T horror stories all the time, and then people jump on the bandwagon and say it sucks everywhere else too.
Well, works beautifully in Boston. Recent reports show that its faster and more reliable in Boston than Verizon as well. Believe me, I was a 12 year Verizon veteran and shied away from AT&T because of the 'stories' I heard. One day, work gave me an AT&T serviced BlackBerry and I swapped the sim card into an iPhone off EBay and was astounded that I got better and faster service than my Verizon account gave me.
Dropped Verizon and went AT&T within a week. Nary a problem since.
"Where is my mind?"
If you look at the full version of the slide, here:
http://media.bestofmicro.com/6/C/237396/original/att-q409-slide-1.jpg
One of the next 90 day fixes is "Deploy Ethernet to Cell sites to improve network backhaul".
As an NYC iphone customer I can almost forgive them for bad reception in the canyons of the city. So many tall buildings etc...
But come on, the bottleneck is also that they don't have enough bandwidth from the towers to the network?? WTF?
More than their network and pricing, their corporate culture is rotten.
I was using instant chat to ask question about getting a land line, and the douchebag on the other side was repeatedly urging me to press "submit order" button instead of answering questions.
Don't do business with this scumbag outfit.
I live in the Upper West Side of Manhattan and have never had any problems with my iPhone or ATT. I wonder if there are specific areas of Manhattan which get worse service from ATT. I'm guessing that downtown Manhattan may have more problems because that's where most people are during a work day (and are more likely to be using their phones).
Once Verizon starts selling IPhone and other high bandwidth phones you'll see their network slow there after. That's IF they catch the number of true smart phones AT&T is servicing.
There's a lot of things AT&T needs to improve on, but I don't think their coverage or technology is one of them. They just need to deliver what they're capable of more frequently.
Finally a voice of common sense.
It's also true that Verizon has outspent AT&T on investment in its wireless infrastructure over the last few years. AT&T's wireless network's capital expenditures from 2006 through September 2009 totaled $21.6 billion, versus $25.4 billion for Verizon and $16 billion for Sprint (including Sprint's investments in WiMax operator Clearwire). Per subscriber: Verizon - $353, AT&T - $308
But despite this, Verizon's 'high speed service' is not real high speed. It's a shame that AT&T has been so stingy in its investment. But had the iPhone come out on Verizon it would have been a disaster with no real high speed anywhere.
...or Domino's will sue you for copyright infringement.
rj
LOL. New York only has the best food, the most culture, the best nightlife, good public transportation, accessibility to basically anything you could imagine needing or wanting to buy, tons of young people and energy and the most well educated citizenry in the eastern United States.
Sure it's expensive, so yes, it's a terrible place to live if you can't afford it, and you can obviously live much better elsewhere on a middle class income if you've got kids and a family to support. But if you've got loads of money or are just moderately well off but are still young and single, there's no better place to be.
Very few days go by when I don't have a call dropped on my iPhone, just sitting here in my home office. And forget about when driving. Everyone I know in LA who has an iPhone complains about the very same thing. If you want to listen to a funny conversation, eavesdrop on a conversation between two iPhones. "Yeah, it's me again. The iPhone dropped the call again. Yeah, well.... hello? Hello?"
So far their answer? "Mark The Spot", an iPhone app that they want you to switch to and register a complaint about dropped calls instead of trying to call back the person whose call just dropped off. Why don't they look at their records and see the number of times I redialed a number within 30 seconds that I was just connected to?
I've been an Apple guy since the II, and make my living on the Mac platform. But another couple of months to shake out the Nexus and I'm moving. I like Apple but not willing to continue being punked by this Apple/AT&T alliance.
I had Verizon forever, since they were AirTouch.
I finally made the leap (of faith) to the iPhone last year after getting sick of the crappy crippled phones from Verizon. I was dreading the carrier change but its actually been great.
No dead spots yet -- Highland Park in St. Paul was a black hole for Verizon. Data seems faster, but the hardware comparison isnt really the same (Motorola Q Black vs. iPhone 3G & 3GS). Voice quality/availability as good or better than Verizon, AFAICT.
Really overall it's been a great transition. About the only gripe I have is rural North Dakota and extreme Northwestern Minnesota -- coverage there for voice is thin and data is low speed only, but AFAIK everyone up in that neck of the woods (all 300,000 of them over both states...) are some weird rural carrier (AlTel?) that is also CDMA. I'm only there a couple of times a year and all the places I stay have 802.11 so I can live without 3G for the most part 8 days a year.
My opinion, at least here, is that the anti-AT&T griping AND pro-Verizon is way overrated.
iPhone service sucks everywhere as it always has...because the iPhone sucks AIDS infected donkey balls! It always has and always will.
Perhaps it's not the iPhone that is causing all of these problems. Maybe it's all the people who haven't upgraded their phones in years. When they hit a cell with old-school GSM/GPRS, that means there's less capacity for UMTS/HSDPA phones.
Why not make at least one band (1900mHz) UMTS/HSDPA only, so that way one or two customers can't kill the bandwidth for 50.
about time these guys accepted the facts.