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AT&T FAIL in lower Manhattan -- again and again - Page 2

post #31 of 61
10/16/09 at 8:05am
And in this corner:
http://www.marco.org/207058863


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post #32 of 61
10/16/09 at 1:06pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Sam Posten View Post
And in this corner:
http://www.marco.org/207058863

 
Sounds plausible to me.  But even a T-Mobile iPhone (while retaining AT&T) will be a huge improvement over AT&T only.  Competition will spur AT&T to improve, some users going to T-Mobile will lighten the strain on their network, and T-Mobile itself will have a tremendous incentive to win the 4G LTE race given that they now have the most coveted phone.  T-Mobile's parent company has deep pockets -- they could afford the being a serious player in the 4G race if they went for it.

Unfortunately Sprint is in a total cul-de-sac between CDMA and WiMax with no LTE plans -- thus they will never get the iPhone.

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post #33 of 61
10/16/09 at 2:03pm
Does T-Mobile have their own network? Sprint, I'm told, has a mixture of their own network and leasing from Verizon. If T-Mobile is similar, and as the fourth largest network I wouldn't be surprised, do they lease from AT&T at all? If so, could T-Mobile getting an iPhone actually worsen AT&T's problems?

As for Verizon. Sigh. I look forward to seeing their Android phones, though I still expect to switch to AT&T next year for an iPhone.
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post #34 of 61
10/17/09 at 7:29pm
http://phones.verizonwireless.com/motorola/droid/?cmp=OTC-Droid-redirect1

I signed up. I still think Android is a mythical beast; I've never seen one in the wild. But if Verizon somehow gets it right...
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post #35 of 61
10/18/09 at 10:02am
These are not the droid you are looking for.

;)
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post #36 of 61
10/18/09 at 10:03am
Actuallly, its really funny.  As @gruber notes, Droid is licensed from Lucasarts!

http://daringfireball.net/linked/2009/10/17/verizon-droid
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post #37 of 61
10/18/09 at 10:57am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by DaveF View Post

Does T-Mobile have their own network? Sprint, I'm told, has a mixture of their own network and leasing from Verizon. If T-Mobile is similar, and as the fourth largest network I wouldn't be surprised, do they lease from AT&T at all? If so, could T-Mobile getting an iPhone actually worsen AT&T's problems?

T-Mobile's 3G network is actually on a totally different frequency from AT&Ts, so no, there is no possibility of a T-Mobile iPhone worsening AT&T's problems.
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post #38 of 61
12/9/09 at 10:16am
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post #39 of 61
12/11/09 at 3:22pm
Thread Starter 
 The question is whether AT&T will fix it for the number of iPhone customers they have today, or for the number of iPhone customers they will have after the Xmas selling season + future growth after that.  It is my impression that they continually play catch-up -- they are never skating to where the puck is going to be.  They keep being shocked, shocked by the iPhone's popularity.

I won't believe it until I see it.  

As for charging more, they won't unless they are suicidal or all major carriers raise their data plans in concert in which case the Justice Dept. anti-trust divsion will be all over them. Not gonna happen.
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post #40 of 61
12/27/09 at 8:20pm
iPhone no longer sold in NYC? Problem solved?
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post #41 of 61
12/28/09 at 4:57am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by DaveF View Post

iPhone no longer sold in NYC? Problem solved?
Remember back in the day a bunch of analysts claiming the original iPhone was a massive flop because AT&T activations were running millions behind Apple's sales figures and thus must be rotting in a warehouse somewhere?  Of course that was false, they were being exported to China, Russia, etc.

The exact same thing is STILL happening, which is why AT&T pulled the on-line sales plug for NYC (brick and mortar iPhones are readily available).  The math is simple: iPhone 3GS = $199 + $175 AT&T ETF + activation fee (maybe they can skip that by never activating) ~~ $400.  A factory unlocked, no contract iPhone in Hong Kong is $800+.  With a locked, crippled iPhone in China selling for $1000+ what's happening here is simple iPhone arbitrage.

So why throttle NYC on-line sales in particular?  Because that's where most people traveling back and forth stay/live.  Again if you think back to times when there were iPhone shortages/lines they were the most acute in NYC -- this is where the export action is.  Why on-line vs. brick and mortar?  I guess it it easier to game AT&T on-line than in person.  Also Apple obviously doesn't care, because they get their AT&T subsidy no matter what, and have zero warranty costs for exports, so they'll happily sell them from Apple Stores.

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post #42 of 61
12/28/09 at 6:23am
Interesting.
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post #43 of 61
12/28/09 at 6:31am
Great analysis Ted, I think you are on the right track.  Arbitrage indeed!
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post #44 of 61
1/6/10 at 10:15am
Thread Starter 
 I shouldn't speak too soon, but the first three work days of 2010 there has been a BIG improvement in my lower Manhattan service -- and this is a time of year where last year AT&T was just dying after everyone fired up their Xmas gift iPhones.  I just ran a test using the SpeedTest.net iPhone App and my best down speed we 1.9Mbps -- not bad at all, faster than my Verizon DSL at home...  Lets see if it keeps up.

Of course AT&T's recent "we have finished upgrading to 7.2Mbps, too bad we don't have the backhaul" announcement was a joke.  Call us when you do have the backhaul...and have turned on the promised in 2009 tethering.
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post #45 of 61
6/28/10 at 10:42am
Thread Starter 

http://www.macrumors.com/iphone/2010/06/28/atandt-announces-completion-of-3g-enhancement-project-in-new-york-city/

 

I see this as bad news -- there has been a slow deterioration since the service jump in the beginning of the year.  And with waves of new iPad and iPhone customers coming on board, things will go downhill fast if AT&T is dumb enough to think that's its job in Manhattan/NYC is done.

 

Maybe they are planning for the day iPhone exclusivity ends and two thirds of the users leave for other carriers.  Yup, that may be the only way to finally fix AT&T's network.

 

AT&T -- detached from reality.

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post #46 of 61
7/2/10 at 9:46am

Marco sez it really is better.

http://www.marco.org/751562428

 

Every time I've been in Manhattan (Mostly a circuit between Penn Station, Apple Store, B&H and the Javitts) in the last year I've had good to great service.

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post #47 of 61
11/15/10 at 12:21pm
Thread Starter 

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ted Todorov View Post

http://www.macrumors.com/iphone/2010/06/28/atandt-announces-completion-of-3g-enhancement-project-in-new-york-city/

 

I see this as bad news -- there has been a slow deterioration since the service jump in the beginning of the year.  And with waves of new iPad and iPhone customers coming on board, things will go downhill fast if AT&T is dumb enough to think that's its job in Manhattan/NYC is done.

 

Maybe they are planning for the day iPhone exclusivity ends and two thirds of the users leave for other carriers.  Yup, that may be the only way to finally fix AT&T's network.

 

AT&T -- detached from reality.

Looks like I was right to assume the worst.  AT&T in lower Manhattan is becoming awful again.  Service dropping out altogether multiple times a day.  Even when it seems to be stable at full bars it isn't really working -- I just had to retry 3 times over 30minutes to get one lousy text message out.  Total disaster. And this is before the Christmas iPad/iPhone rush which anecdotal evidence suggests will be huge.

 

 Right in time for Verizon getting the iPhone early next year.  If AT&T doesn't get their crap together yesterday, the exodus to Verizon in NYC is going to be epic.  

 

WAKE UP, AT&T!
 

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post #48 of 61
12/7/10 at 6:49am

Think this will get their attention?

 

http://www.9to5mac.com/40546/consumer-reports-absolutely-destroys-att

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post #49 of 61
12/7/10 at 6:22pm

At the bottom of the brief article, the writer wonders about this:

 

"2. Chicken or the Egg?  Is AT&T’s network so bad because it is the sole supplier of the data-hungry iPhone?  Or the flip side: How insane is it that the iPhone has had the kind of success it has had only being available on the nation’s worst network."

 

Well, I don't have the article handy now, but I recently came across some other article w/ a study that showed that Verizon's average smartphone user actually had significantly higher data usage than the average AT&T smartphone user (something like 200MB/month vs 150MB/month), which probably makes sense especially of late w/ Android smartphones doing Flash, etc.  Of course, that may also be true at least in places like NYC (and SF) where AT&T customers have a harder time getting solid, consistent data access -- I wonder how much NYC/SF/etc areas drag down the average for AT&T. tongue.gif    And it seems like the total number of smartphone customers between the two aren't quite that different at this point even though Verizon doesn't have the iPhone yet.

 

RE: the AT&T spokesperson's comment about "hard data from independent drive tests confirms AT&T has the nation’s fastest mobile broadband network", I'd have to ask where is that hard data available for us to see (and scrutinize, etc).  Maybe they do provide that in full detail on their web site, etc. (and might even prove to be meaningful and reliable as nationwide average), but it sure doesn't explain much for NYC as far as I can tell -- maybe the worst parts of NYC counts as some sort of outlier for their study and somehow gets substantially discounted (or even removed) in their conclusion... tongue.gif

 

_Man_

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post #50 of 61
12/8/10 at 6:16am
Thread Starter 

I do believe that AT&T has the fastest network nationwide -- it would be hard not to, because Verizon's CDMA is slower than GSM-3G by definition, and T-Mobile has a much smaller footprint.

 

The problem is that AT&T has continually failed in NYC & SF where 95%+ of the press and opinion makers are.  They have an excuse for SF (Very hard to get permits for new towers, blah, blah -- though even there Verizon seems to have had the foresight to get those hard to obtain towers).  AT&T has no excuse for NYC, and to me it points to either stupidity at the top or deep corporate disfunction -- underlings lying to upper management that NYC has been "fixed" and upper management being gullible enough to believe it.   That or they genuinely don't understand network capacity is a moving target.  

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post #51 of 61
12/15/10 at 5:28pm

AT&T's rep isn't so hot in L.A. as well. So if you piss off L.A., NYC and SF...well I guess you can't be too surprised when you're loudly criticized on the web and in the press.

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post #52 of 61
6/4/11 at 6:48pm

Going to NYC on vacation next month. Staying near Times Square. Will my AT&T iPhone be usable? (thanks)

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post #53 of 61
6/5/11 at 1:05am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by DaveF View Post

Going to NYC on vacation next month. Staying near Times Square. Will my AT&T iPhone be usable? (thanks)

Yes, you will do fine -- nothing to worry about.
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post #54 of 61
6/6/11 at 8:09am

Dave,

 

I live just outside of NYC.  I go into the city

often and never have any problems with my AT&T service.

 

In fact, AT&T has recently done a lot of upgrading

to city service over the past year.

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post #55 of 61
6/6/11 at 8:40am

Good to hear re: NYC. I hope they do the same for Los Angeles. Recently I used a friend's Verizon iPhone in my apartment complex and in the park near my house. In areas where I get 1 or 2 bars (or no signal at all) her iPhone got 4-5 bars and no dropped calls.

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post #56 of 61
6/6/11 at 8:44am

It all depends on your area.

 

For instance, here in central NJ, I get a much better

signal on my AT&T iphone than my brother's VERIZON

iPhone.

 

 

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post #57 of 61
6/6/11 at 9:08am

Thx. Good to hear.

 

Related to iPhones and the Big Apple: any recommended apps / sites for understanding the subway system? My wife is finding that NYC's subway system is a terrible mess compared to DC's; needlessly difficult to determine routes to get from A to B.

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post #58 of 61
6/6/11 at 9:13am

Dave,

 

You got me on a good day.

 

I recommend:  City Transit, a $2.99 app which

I use all the time when in the city.

 

There is also one called New York Subway map

which is free, but I have not tested.  It gets good

reviews on iTunes.

 

If you have free time, contact me. Would be happy

to meet you. I am usually off on a Sunday/Monday

if you want to do sightseeing.  Not holding you to it

as I know you are on vacation.

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post #59 of 61
6/12/11 at 2:48pm

Ron - sent you a PM :)

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post #60 of 61
6/12/11 at 6:47pm
Thread Starter 

iTrans NYC is great!  Total life saver -- aside from an excellent map, it has the actual subway schedule (life saver for off-peak riding), plus all up to date service alerts.  Maybe there are others as good, but I doubt it.

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