What Are Those Bars on My iPhone?

By MG Siegler

Over the weekend I noticed something odd going on with my iPhone: It was working! That is to say I actually had signal in the SoMa district of San Francisco, which is something that I had basically given up on long ago. But it was working, and it was actually solid 3G service. Still, I chalked it up to a fluke. I had been screwed over by AT&T (T) too many times to get my hopes up. Maybe everyone in SoMa was just out of town, I thought.

But a few more days past as people started telling me they were noticing the same thing. It would go in and out at certain times, but for the most part, AT&T’s network actually seemed to be working in the area. Were we all going crazy? No, says AT&T, who I contacted to today to see what was going on that my service was actually working. “Improvements are underway,” is what I was told by a representative of the company after he asked around.

“Most of this is 850 MHz spectrum being added.” That is inline with recent reports about upgrades for AT&T GSM network. But those upgrades were scheduled to start in Atlanta first, as I said, I’m in San Francisco. I don’t want to get anyone’s hopes up (most of all mine), but it looks like AT&T may actually be taking the steps necessary to get its network working in the areas where service is particularly bad.

I’m told that this upgrade process (at least in San Francisco) will be continuing over the coming weeks. When that’s complete, AT&T is offering to give us a walk-through of the big changes they’re making to improve the network that we rip at just about every chance we get (which I think is fair, given what we pay for the service). I’m cautiously optimistic on this. Has anyone else been noticing better service on their iPhones or any other AT&T device? Let us know in the comments.

Original post

Comments

[Jon408:]

I don't know about anyone else, but I've never had "bad" ATT service yet. My wife, who is a passenger as we commute sometimes gets a dropped call along Hwy 85 as we enter the Sunnyvale area going north, but that's about it. And when we were in San Francisco with out of town friends seeing the sights, the phone showed us with a moving dot where we were at any give point in time on any given street.

Aug 19 10:03 AM

[Jim Heffernan:]

I live in the Boston neighborhood of Charlestown and have experienced the no bars phenomenon from AT&T. Recently, however, I do have to say I have noticed those crazy little bars appear while I'm home and I have been able to make a phone call without using the landline.

Aug 19 10:16 AM

[Old Developer:]

Most of my family use Verizon and not AT&T for wireless access. I will give AT&T credit for at least having a coverage map that is somewhere close to being correct or even conservative. Verizon's coverage map is so far from being correct it is a joke. AT&T's coverage map is from what I can tell from my step mother's AT&T phone conservative. She has a good cellphone signal where AT&T doesn't even claim to have coverage. My Verizon cellphone doesn't have a signal where Verizon claims to have good coverage all the time. "Can you hear me now?"

Aug 19 10:41 AM

[Cho Cha:]

I've had good 3g coverage in Dallas for about a year.

Aug 19 11:11 AM

[Woodyp:]

Nothing but more than ATT and iphone bashing by Seeking Alpha. It's getting kinda old.

Aug 19 11:18 AM

[Cheat Sheet:]

Very good. AT&T owe their customers improvements with the high cost of service they're charging for iPhones. I hope these new improvements are also laying down foundations for 4G.

Aug 19 02:15 PM

[mtkoren:]

When I got my iPhone just over 2 years ago, commuting every day from Chapel Hill to Durham (NC), I noticed in leaving Verizon and nervously starting to use AT&T that suddenly all the dropped calls (usually about 5) between home and work were now almost OK! Imagine that! And that is with Edge. You get to know every hole along the way and I was down from 5 to 1. So I don't know about other areas but this was an improvement. Now on the other hand, when visiting family in the hills outside Woodstock NY, Verizon has better coverage for sure, based on being in the car with other people.

Aug 19 10:48 PM

[mollytjm:]

my att service is better too since about 6 months ago. my guess is they're using all that new profit to improve service because they really like the profit and they must know it'll walk if they don't have the top rated service and iPhone is no longer theirs exclusively.
i have no complaints now and i live in a Philly suburb and use my iPhone everywhere and constantly...mostly not as a phone, but use the GPS and other apps a lot.

Aug 20 09:58 AM