AT&T Admits New York City iPhone Service Sucks 144
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'..."
Unpaid bribes or union patronage? (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Re:Real Improvement? (Score:4, Insightful)
Probably. The sad part is that their network is at best mediocre everywhere else. Detroit or Chicago I also get lots of dropouts and keep dropping back to the Edge network instead of 3G. Even voice calls have problems everywhere on an AT&T network.
They need to upgrade and expand EVERYWHERE.
Re:As an ATT customer in manhattan.... (Score:5, Insightful)
So when is ATT going to give me my money back for diminished service?
As soon as it makes business sense for them to do so.
Re:That's why we roll with 4G ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes. The U.S. is really a 2nd World country when it comes to broadband and high-speed telecom. We don't like to outright admit it, but that is the truth compared to places like Sweden or S. Korea.
Re:As an ATT customer in manhattan.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Stop bashing AT&T for this! (Score:5, Insightful)
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.)
Re:Good -- maybe they will start to improve (Score:4, Insightful)
Sounds like one more reason not to go to LA. Not that anyone needed any more.
Re:Stop bashing AT&T for this! (Score:5, Insightful)
Only if you over sell and never say 'we are at capacity and can not take any more subscribers at this time'
Re:Stop bashing AT&T for this! (Score:3, Insightful)
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.)
If ATT had been honest about this of if they'd even shut up and not commented, nobody would be bashing anything. Everybody knows that building out a network takes time. But ATT has consistently been denying any issues whatsoever, claiming that its network was the fastest, most reliable, largest, most advanced, shiniest network on Earth, and that any customer who claimed otherwise was a lying, mentally retarded psychopath for suggesting so. Even to the point where its PR people were arguing openly with bloggers who had collected hundreds of reports from angry customers.
Re:That's why we roll with 4G ... (Score:3, Insightful)
No, I'm not confused. You just didn't understand my use of the analogy.
I was talking about the state of telecommunications, specifically related to broadband availability, speed and cost. I was doing it using the same scale you defined, but in relation not to political-economic strata but telecom.
Thus, I was just breaking down the levels of telecom in the world into three segments:
The first world being marked by places like Sweden and S. Korea, where things like 100 Mbit data to your home or office is cheap and available. Where 3G or better wireless coverage is pervasive, including not only 90%+ of the population, but the majority of the landmass as well.
The second world is marked by places like the U.S. and Canada, where there are large stretches of open land where the best you can get is ISDN or dial-up. They aren't all that populated, but there are still a lot of them. The high-speed networks that are available are overloaded and overpriced (in comparison), if not a generation behind the 1st World (as defined above) in speed and latency.
The third world is where you're lucky to get a decent data connection, or they're restricted to major metro areas and priced well out of the range of the locals. Also, bandwidth to the greater Internet is in short supply, expensive and quite possibly restricted.
* * *
Your first clue should have been the phrase "Soviet Union" in your definition. Last I checked, they dissolved a couple decades back. And while there are plenty of dictators, the communist ones are fairly few and far between now.
Re:Deploy Ethernet?!? (Score:3, Insightful)
Not that I'm backing them up, but just a measly 5 years ago, the most a phone could suck down the pipe was about 300kbps, tops. And nobody had phones that did that; a call only takes up 8-13. Now, they're sapped by phones like mine that can pull up to 7.2Mbit, and a LOT more people using data.
finally some balance (Score:3, Insightful)
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 [pcworld.com] 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.
Re:Real Improvement? (Score:1, Insightful)
While we're on the subject of whom is comparing apples to oranges, EV-DO Rev. A [wikipedia.org] (2.45 - 3.1 Mbps) is a considerably faster than EDGE [wikipedia.org] (theoretical maximum is 473.6 kbit/s).
Just saying.