Similar forum like this but for AT&T?

[MacinJosh]

Yikes, that sounds awful! Were you able to recover the loss without much hassle? I'd be really angry to have that happen, as would anyone, but I hope you didn't have much difficulty recovering your loss.

 

It really seems to depend on who the driver is, the area, and a bunch of different factors with these shipping companies. Some people have awful experiences with UPS, others with FedEx, though I'll say both seem much better than what I've heard of small shipping carriers on a few Amazon-related blogs I've read of people who've complained of their experiences with shippers. Most people on there like both UPS and FedEx, but have lots of bad stuff to say regarding smaller shippers Amazon sometimes uses instead of UPS and FedEx.

Oh yes, got the replacement the next day. Thankfully our fedex express driver is much better than the ground driver was.

 

 

Sent from my Gold iPhone 6s Plus 128GB using Tapatalk

[Arysyn]

Just to echo AJ's comments, things don't always work perfectly. Honestly, you should never move to Hawaii Things here break lots. Life on a volcano 2500 miles from land. Cell phones are pretty much the most reliable things here. There power is off more than a whores panties, roads frequently closed for 6 hours. Its just life. Tmo messed up sending my my current phone, because I was feeling particularly cheeky I did call them and wangle some credits but it didn't sour my experience. They're shipping tens of thousands of phones across a huge country in one day. Stuff is bound to go wrong and it probably wont get fixed quickly. Thats just a reality.

 

At work I see it every day, parts we overnight take a week to turn up. People send the wrong stuff, or to the wrong place or a courier delivers it to the wrong place so they can go home early. If I got upset about that kind of stuff I'd have jumped off the pali years ago. You prepare for others to screw up and when it happens just take a deep breath and carry on. **** happens. Honestly you do seem to be very unlucky or have expectations that are a little too high, these types of service are offered on a best effort basis and for good reason.

 

If you are wanting verizon service for tmobile money then you are bound to be disappointed. I have tmobile and have had sprint and verizon. I know the difference and I am happy now with tmobile (although they are getting worse). There is a trade off for sure, but we each make our own choice and don't get belligerent when our own choice bites us in the ass.

 

Every day we get is a good one because no matter how bad it may seem its a hell of a lot better than not getting another day. 

 

Hawaii looks very beautiful, but I wouldn't want to be so far offshore to where I could escape from a natural disaster, let alone an evil UPS or FedEx driver .

​

T-Mobile has resolved things, thankfully. Now have a direct contact with the information to contact her directly, not just the Executive Relations department. So, now those concerns of getting someone who isn't helpful and even worse than what should be for a customer service experience, is not an issue now. I still feel badly for people who have those experiences and would like for companies to at least try to offer their customers a more fair experience for the money. However, with what I've heard of T-Mobile with employee groups complaining, I wonder if maybe that had something to do with my bad experiences, if the employees we spoke with were upset at T-Mobile nd they weren't really trying in their jobs because of it. That is the impression I'm getting, as it was quite unusual, even for T-Mobile's Executive Relations department, which my mother has had plenty of positive interactions with.

[Arysyn]

Oh yes, got the replacement the next day. Thankfully our fedex express driver is much better than the ground driver was.

 

 

Sent from my Gold iPhone 6s Plus 128GB using Tapatalk

 

That is great you were able to get it resolved without an issue and have a better driver now. I know these shipping carriers certainly have their mix of both good and bad drivers, even the nightmarish ones I've seen videos of, where drivers do some awful things with peoples' packages.

[TheForce627]

Spotted some band 30 in downtown DC

 

http://imgur.com/a/AdVT0

[gusherb]

So out of curiosity, the other day I dug out my iPhone 3G (my first iPhone) and surprisingly it fired right up so I stuck my SIM card in and decided to see what was happening with AT&T's GSM service in my area since WCDMA has been moved to the PCS F block where I suspected GSM1900 used to reside. 

 

I found about 11 850 GSM channels all wedged in the guard bands and 2 of those were in the old AMPS control channel, just as suspected. And also as suspected I found no GSM1900. 

 

Today I'm in the city and borrowed a friends T-Mobile Note 3 on AT&T and used band selection to see if GSM1900 is gone in the city as well...and sure enough, it is. Only was able to pick up some weak GSM850 from a distant cell site. 

[red_dog007]

Reddit has a post of a +200Mbps speedtest on Staten Island. :-O

[Arysyn]

Reddit has a post of a +200Mbps speedtest on Staten Island. :-O

 

Wow, that is fast!

 

Is this on AT&T and is there any mention of what band of frequency it was obtained on?

[stealth]

Wow, that is fast!

 

Is this on AT&T and is there any mention of what band of frequency it was obtained on?

Its on howardforums also. His best was 202 down. Has a iphone 6s. They think it was x3ca. Band 12 + 2 + 30.

[gusherb]

Is WCDMA really prone to co-channel interference? The past few months something has been going on in about a 3-4 mile radius around my house that makes one of the two 850 channels completely useless on one of the towers frequently, and on two others sometimes. Not even a call can go through. Very sporadic like someone is running a cell jammer or perhaps co-channel interference. Any thoughts?

[gusherb]

AT&T has made the jump to "wideband" PCS LTE in the Chicago area as of sometime very early this morning. Now running at 15 MHz FDD.

 

 

I'm using an iPhone 6 which is CAT4 and can't aggregate more than 20 MHz DL so that has to be just B2:

 

[TheForce627]

AT&T is officially running 20x20 Band 2 LTE in the DC market

[Terrell352]

Since when does At&t have band 12 10x10?

 

Sent from my SM-N920P using Tapatalk

[JWMaloney]

Since when does At&t have band 12 10x10? 

 

That's MFBI identifying their band 17 deployment as band 12.

[gusherb]

I setup my brothers iP6S on GoPhone for him today and much to my surprise I found band 30 while sitting on my front porch. I couldn't believe it because the tower it came from is over 3 miles away and through lots of forest. Apparently AT&T out does Sprint in distance on every band, because I never saw band 41 reach further then a mile, maybe 1.5 miles at best. I had assumed B30 would be limited to about a mile based on my experiences with B41.

 

[caspar347]

I setup my brothers iP6S on GoPhone for him today and much to my surprise I found band 30 while sitting on my front porch. I couldn't believe it because the tower it came from is over 3 miles away and through lots of forest. Apparently AT&T out does Sprint in distance on every band, because I never saw band 41 reach further then a mile, maybe 1.5 miles at best. I had assumed B30 would be limited to about a mile based on my experiences with B41.

 

Yeah, not sure how they do it but AT&T band 4 routinely outreaches band 26 in my area. And it's only a 10x10 of band 4 so it shouldn't be a massive difference. They really push their gear to the limits.

[RAvirani]

Yeah, not sure how they do it but AT&T band 4 routinely outreaches band 26 in my area. And it's only a 10x10 of band 4 so it shouldn't be a massive difference. They really push their gear to the limits.

If sprint could increase power on their B26 so that it was 5-6dbm better everywhere, it would work wonders for coverage and reliability in general.

[Trip]

Yeah, not sure how they do it but AT&T band 4 routinely outreaches band 26 in my area. And it's only a 10x10 of band 4 so it shouldn't be a massive difference. They really push their gear to the limits.

 

In my experience in this area, all of the other carriers have better LTE reach than Sprint does, even on comparable bands.  In some of the more rural areas here, it seems worse than it does in the city; I lose LTE completely on Sprint as soon as I lose line of sight, even though those towers may have all three bands; meanwhile, AT&T and Verizon and even T-Mobile B2 have LTE available on some band, never falling to 3G.  (I'm thinking particularly of 29 south of Warrenton.)  Verizon's 10x10 PCS LTE, which is only on select towers, seems to go on forever and at good strength, often preventing me from seeing AWS or 700 on towers I don't have without toggling airplane mode.

 

It definitely seems to be a configuration or optimization issue, as I never had this problem when I visited the Shentel region.  I did see 3G from time to time, but it was in the really viciously rough terrain areas, and in those areas the other carriers were no better off.

 

- Trip

[caspar347]

In my experience in this area, all of the other carriers have better LTE reach than Sprint does, even on comparable bands. In some of the more rural areas here, it seems worse than it does in the city; I lose LTE completely on Sprint as soon as I lose line of sight, even though those towers may have all three bands; meanwhile, AT&T and Verizon and even T-Mobile B2 have LTE available on some band, never falling to 3G. (I'm thinking particularly of 29 south of Warrenton.) Verizon's 10x10 PCS LTE, which is only on select towers, seems to go on forever and at good strength, often preventing me from seeing AWS or 700 on towers I don't have without toggling airplane mode.

 

It definitely seems to be a configuration or optimization issue, as I never had this problem when I visited the Shentel region. I did see 3G from time to time, but it was in the really viciously rough terrain areas, and in those areas the other carriers were no better off.

 

- Trip

I used to chalk it up to Sprint using 5x5s and everyone else using 10x10s, but then once I got my Verizon moto E I started realizing that Verizon's second AWS carrier (a 5x5) performs just about as well as the larger first carrier. It's probably my biggest network gripe.

[gusherb]

I used to chalk it up to Sprint using 5x5s and everyone else using 10x10s, but then once I got my Verizon moto E I started realizing that Verizon's second AWS carrier (a 5x5) performs just about as well as the larger first carrier. It's probably my biggest network gripe.

I was just in Southwest Michigan where USCC squats on 700A and B leaving AT&T with just lower 700C and the coverage was fantastic on the 5x5 channel, very few towers and all forest. The only complaint was that speeds were sub 1 Mbps when the signal was weaker, miles from a tower, but it was still better then the HSPA alternative (actually HSPA worked ok but in general the latency is never as good as LTE)

[TheForce627]

It's crazy how far AT&T's band 2 reaches in my area. Even before moving to 20x20

[gusherb]

It's crazy how far AT&T's band 2 reaches in my area. Even before moving to 20x20

I wish we could get 20x20 B2 here. Not gonna happen since their PCS isn't all contiguous.

When it first went to 10x10 in the fall is when I first started experiencing band 2 at pretty good distances. Prior to that they had the threshold set at something like -112 dbm so I always fell to B17 pretty quickly, though once I was able to hold onto it about 2.5 miles from the tower when it was 5x5. When they went 15x15 is when it really started to shine though, going to that bandwidth made it stable enough that I can now stay connected all over town just about.

[TheForce627]

I wish we could get 20x20 B2 here. Not gonna happen since their PCS isn't all contiguous.

When it first went to 10x10 in the fall is when I first started experiencing band 2 at pretty good distances. Prior to that they had the threshold set at something like -112 dbm so I always fell to B17 pretty quickly, though once I was able to hold onto it about 2.5 miles from the tower when it was 5x5. When they went 15x15 is when it really started to shine though, going to that bandwidth made it stable enough that I can now stay connected all over town just about.

Even when it was 10x10 it was still close to matching B17 which is 10x10 here. Maybe they have the power turned up high or have really tuned their network well.

[gusherb]

Even when it was 10x10 it was still close to matching B17 which is 10x10 here. Maybe they have the power turned up high or have really tuned their network well.

Yeah at 10x10 I was still able to drive across town and hang onto B2 everywhere on a good day. Towers are 4-6 miles apart in a lot of places around where I am too which makes that fairly impressive. Now at 15x15 I'm almost always on B2 anytime I'm outdoors almost anywhere, and in fact at home my B2 signal is stronger then B17 sometimes now.

[Arysyn]

I've read about Verizon's new pricing plans and I'm expecting AT&T very well might follow with something quite similar. However, I'm thinking of how AT&T could do something new, yet different, all while still responding to Verizon's changes.

 

In the past, I haven't been supportive of the additional line charge being above $15 monthly. However, I'm now beginning to support the idea if it means reducing the per gb data charges. Meanwhile, I've also begun to look against having a flat per gb data charge I've otherwise been supportive of. I'm still not fond of data buckets though, but the concept of giving a large allowance intrigues me, charging less for it while more for the lines.

 

AT&T could do something unique by bridging the gap between data buckets and unlimited data by creating an affordable access plan that trades rollover data for lesser data cost. Despite Verizon adding their version of carryover data, I don't believe the feature will last once new innovative pricing plans become common from here on.

 

Edit Note on 7/18/2016 : I realized I posted this rate plan idea rather quickly, and didn't write all of this accordingly to what I have in mind for AT&T to implement as a counter to Verizon's recent plan changes, particularly the overage protection. So, my idea is for AT&T to have the starting rate be $75 monthly for the first line, which would get 5gb of high-speed data, then have 3mbps capped unlimited data thereafter. Other high-speed data plans with capped unlimited data would be $90 monthly/10gb, $105 monthly/15gb, $120 monthly/20gb, $135 monthly/25gb, $150 monthly/30gb, and so on. Shared data lines are $30 monthly for each additional line sharing data with the first line. An innovative idea I have which I'm unsure if this has been done before, is to have an option where an unlimited amount of lines on an account or even lines between accounts can share data between themselves in a shared data pool at $15 monthly for each line sharing data. 

[Arysyn]

I'm quite interested in the new Samsung Galaxy S7 Active on AT&T. My mother is going to an AT&T store later this morning to speak with a manager and have contact with them and retentions to work out a deal. If this doesn't yet again work out, I'll end up getting the Sony Xperia Z5 Premium while staying with T-Mobile. It'll be interesting to see what happens.