AT&T slowing EDGE to force customers to switch to 3G?
By Jacob Schulman 
posted Jan 7th 2009 2:55AM
posted Jan 7th 2009 2:55AM
Been holding on to that now-antique EDGE device to keep from extending your contract with AT&T? Well, if you've been experiencing some sluggishness -- and not just general EDGE sluggishness, mind you -- you might have more to blame than just those recent outages. Open for Business reports that AT&T has been quietly lowering EDGE signal strength to give more 3G love to all you iPhone 3G and Bold users. To add to the shadiness of the situation, AT&T reps are all offering up the same solution -- buy a 3G device. Unsurprisingly, AT&T's Mark Siegel has denied Open for Business's claims, and says that the mega-carrier is not requiring anyone to switch to a 3G phone. We'll put on our Sherlock Holmes outfits and try to do some digging, but it's not like we actually expect these guys to admit to a move that would definitely lead to a lot of backlash.[Via MobileBurn]
*open an umbrella*
Because there's gonna be a storm
And it's gonna be brown
I'll be strapping into my asbestos flame suit.
*straps in*
Alright, FLAME ON!
they really do need to upgrade to 3G because EDGE just plain sucks... but i dont like the idea of them forcing people to do so at an extra cost. AT&T's baseline should really be 3G as it is slow enough.
@SITEiNK:
Uhh... there's no extra cost for 3G service, other than the cost of a new handset.
seriously this blows balls...because sometimes i like turning off my 3G on my phone so i can conserve battery. esp if i know i'm gonna be away from chargers for a while
I don't even get 3G in my area... fuck AT&T.
thank god for the iPhone dev team ... T-Mobile Edge Go!
Shea,
Actually 3G data plans are more than the EDGE iPhone data plan was. $30 versus $20. Plus 3G iPhones don't come with a texting plan, so you need to pay more for that, too.
Definitely worth it, I'm just in no hurry to replace my 1st gen iPhone. Works just great. Noticed no EDGE problems yet.
That's because they didn't subsidize the phone as much-not becase the 3G data plan is more expensive.
Commies.
Bell has been doing this for years, no one seems to mind.... cough
I'm not surprised, it makes sense actually. It's AT&T.
What else does anyone expect from a company who has the Death Star for a frigging logo.
This is (yet again) why AT&T is the reason I will never, ever own an iPhone.
All phone companies rip you off.
There was an article a little while ago that revealed that SMS messages actually piggyback on normal pings to your phone from the tower. There is no additional cost to the carrier of sending an SMS. Yet they're still charging for them.
This is what they do.
"What else does anyone expect from a company who has the Death Star for a frigging logo."
This is a common mis-conception- the ATT logo is actually the MOON Kenobi referred to when he said "That's no moon- it's a space station!" However, the moon will be slowly dialed back and the Death Star put in it's stead to improve customer service.
I sure as hell hope they aren't doing this in markets which they don't offer 3G service to.
Not my damn fault you think Seattle and Minneapolis etc deserve real wireless data networks before my state AT&T.
as i said Bell has been doing it for quite some time, and they don't even offer 3G services.
YEP!!!
I noticed a couple months ago that my EDGE network seamed a lot slower then it use to. The signal was fine, but just slow. EDGE use to be fast in the bay area, but now its just as slow as it is in rural areas. :-(
Sure wish you guys could find some proof, but I can tell.
I use to turn off my 3G connection on my iPhone to conserve battery life when I know that I cannot charge it for an extended period. I also noticed a slower connection using Edge since last month so I now constantly turned on my 3G connection. I don't have an Edge before and after speed test but I did a 3G comparison now. Endgadget webpage loads 59 seconds using Edge vs 35 seconds using 3G. So I figure it's worth the battery sacrifice but I make sure I have chargers everywhere I go (office, car, travel bag and of course home)
But I really feel for owners of non-3G phone including my Mom and also for folks who live in areas with little or no 3G coverage. If it is indeed a fact that AT&T will encourage them to upgrade to a 3G phone, AT&T should at least offer partial (or full) subsidy to help them out especially in this hard economic times.
So the early iphone adopters got screwed twice , 200 dollar iphone price drop, and now stuck on edge . Most of those people are still locked into contracts from the first iphone. Thats real fair
If 3g had more coverage it might not be a big deal but 3g doesn't cover most places near me at all so i have no reason for 3g
Hmmm here I am, wondering why Engadget seems to be putting a lot of emphasis lately on AT&T service unavailabilities (when few people seem to actually experience the issues mentioned), now echoing these odd accusations of EDGE sneakery... Then my eyes wander up, and I see the "Engadget @ CES - presented by Sprint" banner. I am officially wondering a little less.
Yep, that's it. The first dollar they get in support from any major company and they can't write anything positive about anyone else. Good work, 5 gold stars.
Nice attention to detail.
Now you wouldn't happen to work for a company whose initials consist of the letters AT&T, would you Marc-O? ;-)
Just out of curiousity, how many EDGE users did you in fact poll to come to your most scientific conclusion: "...few people seem to actually experience the issues mentioned."?
One? Two?
'Cos it isn't like AT&T is Evil or anything, right? This is the company THAT VOLUNTEERED to violate the Constitution and spy on Americans without a warrant. Remember?
I'm not surprised. They also charge 7 large for a megabyte of text messages. >_>
On top of everything, 3G is unreliable where I am in mid-town Manhattan. My iPhone often loses the 3G connection and switches over to EDGE... It's almost always on EDGE in my apt!
And BTW, my average 3G DL speed (from Speedtest App) during the weekday is under 500 Kbits/s in Manhattan.
I was getting 1,500-1,700 Kbits/s in San Diego last week!
I would fire AT&T in an instant, if I could get the iPhone 3G to work on another network.
Ha... this is exactly what my phone does as well. Switches to EDGE when it can't reach 3G. And I've noticed lately that EDGE has been far less reliable than usual... As in "can't download crap" unreliable.
I hope their solution to this is to expand 3G service, otherwise I'll be pretty fncking qissed (as will others, no doubt)...
"antique"? I hardly believe a 2 month old phone from AT&T is antique. If they're not offering a clean swap for an edge to 3G phone, I'm sure some crafty lawyer will figure out a way for everyone to be able to cancel service with no penalty ETF fees.
on a positive note my 3g has been better lately.. ;)
This sort of ploy is so common with companies. Speaking as an Apple user, on repeated occasions, I have downloaded the latest OS X upgrade, only to have my hardware perform much slower. I recently 'upgraded' to OS X 10.5.6, and the whole user experience is approximately 25% slower than before. Not 10%, 25%. It is as if I am using an older computer. I own was is today the fastest highest spec Mac Mini that until this update was still fast enough for all my needs. I am convinced that this is an attempt by Apple to force the users of older hardware to upgrade their hardware. In my case, either to any forthcoming new faster Mac Mini and/or an iMac. Either way, I have noticed this pattern before when Apple were due to announce new hardware. I wonder if Microsoft users can report similar experienced? (Re AT&T, I am in the UK using an iPod Touch, so cannot vouch, but the networks here are just as crafty. Back in the good old days, you could use your mobile/cell phone as a modem with your laptop - and it worked very well. Today, they make this almost impossible, forcing you to purchase a USB 3G modem or similar and therefore subscribe to a second account.) What an evil crafty world we live in...
Thats kinda funny, since everyone else is having the opposite effects as you.
I installed Leopard on my G4 and its faster than Tiger.
Of course a business is gonna stop investing in one type of service if they have a redundancy in their product lines. This is something that happens quickly in consumer electronics and telecommunications as the tech changes quickly. They want new ppl to adopt the new product that they probably just spent a *bunch* load investing in so that it pays for itself quicker.
Early adopters of the iPhone really just got screwed on this one, although the original data package was much more of a steal.
Unfortunately 3G is already old and obama has already said there will be lots of catching up in the US as far as telecom is concerned. Expect a quick depreciation on this tech and lower prices. $20 for data is the sweet spot. Anymore is redunkulus.
Hmm, since they're switching the 850MHz band to 3G instead of EDGE, does this mean that the Android Dev1 Phone will now be able to run on AT&T's 3G Network?!
Well, I'm glad I don't have AT&T's data plan (I don't have its mobile service period). If I was told to get a 3G device to solve data speed problems, I'd punch the person and tell the person to cancel my plan. If they try to charge the ETF, I'd punch the person again and tell the person, "No, I you won't." Getting a 3G device would not solve the problem around here. There is no 3G service from AT&T.
Has engadget wrapped itself in tinfoil?
The problem is with spectrum, and HSPA is more efficiant with it then the older protocols used for GPRS and EDGE - its a finite resource and IMO better put to use on the current handsets. It was known that 2.5G was on the way out when the first iPhone was released, yet the sheep bought into it no matter.
They only have themselves to blame for this. The sooner the obsolete GSM/EDGE goes away, the sooner that the 3g coverage will suck less. Just be glad that in the states you dont have to put up with 2100MHz UMTS and its crap building penetration like we have to in NZ - the low band stuff is just coming online now from vodafone and its all telecom's new network will be supporting (no crappy GSM!)
:o
US phone companies are COMPLETELY out of hand in the amount of freedom they have with their businesses. Prices are extravagant, you're trapped in contracts, they charge you a kidney or two for a few minutes of roaming, and now this crap.
Wouldn't it be nice if someone actually looked into these abuses?
This can be legal grounds for canceling service early.
The whole article is misleading. They aren't forcing anything, but they are re balancing spectrum for 3g. However, that will still leave plenty of GSM on 850mhz and then some on 1900. They aren't going to run both 3g channels on 850, doesn't make sense to. This whole ordeal has already been going on for months. Places like indy, Pittsburgh, Detroit, D.C. area, have had 3g on 850, GSM coverage was fine.
AT&T is still building EDGE towers, they put up four in my county this year. 3G is only available in 3 towns in my state, they didn't add any new areas in the past year. Based on this, we probably won't get 3G service for 20 years since it took 20 years to get to this point. The old analog system covered a tremendously large land area, but AT&T lost 80% of their coverage area when they were required to shut analog off and they are still working to get that lost area served by something, which right now is EDGE.
AT&T's 3G coverage is hardly universal. I live in Illinois, and work primarily in rural areas. There's no AT&T 3G out here. The last time I looked at AT&T's coverage map there's pretty much coverage only in the Chicago area, and around Springfield (the state capitol), with large swaths of nothing in-between.
It seems unlikley to me that they'd be slowing Edge in those regions, as it's all they have to offer. If this phenomenon is a real story I'd be curious to see some side-by-side comparisons in areas where it's offered, and where it's not. Of course, it would have been good to have a baseline of the time period prior to this allegedly being started to make it a fair comparison.
I am by no means an apologist for AT&T - I love my (1st gen) iPhone, but hate AT&T's spotty coverage (even for phone service) in our area. This just seems unlikely to me, at least in areas where they don't yet offer Edge.
Its funny - a day before the original iphone was released, ATT put forth the StraightEDGE initiative - which increase the through-put of the standard. Now, they are slowing it down far below what original edge speeds are?
I believe they will have to update their website to reflect that the speeds of edge is "more shittier" than it was previously.
This worked in my favor, I had terrible signal at my home on my 3g. Now I have 5 bars. Shrug
my guess would be that they are lowering the EDGE service in areas where 3G exists, lowering edge service in areas where that is the only service that exists is dumb imho...luckily I have the prepaid iPhone and am sticking with that in the meantime. I still lose sleep every night knowing that the iPhone could've been on Verizon lol :(
Just got AT&T (w/o contract) for my BB Curve, but I'm in an area where 3G has been here for a year or two at least, suppose this is sorta a good thing, maybe they are moving more to the 1900mhz, which makes getting those fancy (well some of them) triband phones might be easier.
As for speeds, lower signal doesn't mean lower speed, at least if you are getting near full reception anyways, it'll probably be more important to those who are more around 1-3 bars.
There won't be any backlash .. a few years ago they committed a similarly shady move to get people off of 'digital'. I know i was one of them. They started charging an extra $5 dollars to remain on the "ancient service". The service that was adequate for my needs hence the reason i signed up for it in the beginning before the Cingular take over and re-badge. They lost a customer that month but i'm sure they could care less.
-sun
Sounds about right for AT&T Do it and deny. It just torqs me off because they took so long to get the Bold ot that I had to get the 8820 now they pull this crap. Thank God my 8820 is not under contract. I will be going to Verizon soon.
I suffered from the data outages here in New York City yesterday early in the morning. But checking my signal after the service came back, I noticed that my 3G service on my iPhone was much improved.
I work on an island off Manhattan that had almost no 3G coverage. Now I regularly get full bars. So I'm stoked.
Maybe if they had 3g in my area, I would switch to it .........
I'm with sethmo, give me the freakin option, and I would gladly take it. For the love of God, it's 2009! I should have video conferencing on my phone. And flying cars. Not on my phone, just flying cars.
I had been experiencing this since October or November. I was really happy using Google Maps on my W810i, until the EDGE service became very erratic (in L.A., San Diego and Bakersfield), sometimes it would work, most of the times it wouldn't. Although I didn't want to give up my W810i, and I didn't want to move from Pay as you Go, my wife forced me by giving me an iPhone for Christmas (nice).
Good thing for the areas for 3G and the people who can afford changing their phones now. Bad thing for the rest, and bad thing from AT&T.
Slowing down EDGE service would be fine if these idiots would build their 3G service out. I have been told my area is getting 3G service next month for the last year and a half. It would even be fine if they at least got it going in the larger towns, cities and along the interstate corridors. I think they are putting the cart before the horse, they want everyone to switch over to 3G but their 3G areas are spotty at best.
I live in a non-3G area and I haven't noticed any difference in my EDGE experience. But I can understand why At&t would want to do this.
Make Way for 3G and even 4G:
http://blog.xtego.com/2009/01/07/att_slowing_edge/
Considering that AT&T spent a ton of money a year and a half ago to upgrade all of their towers to EDGE class 12 for the original iPhone it doesn't make sense that they would be lowering it. Also, they still sell a handful of non 3G devices including at least 2 BlackBerry's. Wouldn't make sense to have high revenue BB customers who are data centric to have poor data coverage.
What does make sense is that as more people get 3G phones they need to balance their spectrum to accomodate the majority of their customers. Also, they are in the process of adding 850mhz to 3G in most markets that launched on 1900mhz for better coverage; this will obviously take some of that spectrum from GSM/EDGE.
IF they were lowering the class of EDGE being used that would be one thing, but they why spend the money to upgrade it in the first place; even if they lower it back down to Class 10 I'm pretty sure that would only effect original iPhone customers. If they are shifting spectrum to better accomidate the growing amount of 3G customers, causing a little more conjestion for the remaining EDGE customers at times then that is ultimately good customer service and smart business.
I have had 3G in my area for a couple of years now, but only got it at my house in December and at work last August. I never saw slower EDGE speeds in those areas. Have a 3G phone so not sure how it was where there was 3G.
Add in those Palm devices currently selling, they're all EDGE-only as well.
Just make sure to buy an unlocked device with the proper and current freqs (do the research) and you won't have to touch their stupid contracts! I don't mind their service, but I'm totally against a contract. Yes, I've paid a bit more for my devices, but it's more than paid off. Not only do I get a quality, unbranded device, I can take it on any GSM carrier in the world and I get the 3G speeds, wifi, (well, over all a hell of a lot more than the iPhone). Don't get me wrong, I love my Macs, but not the shady deal they have with AT&T.
and I agree with @wonderkid, it's a ploy to force migrate you to new technology. AT&T has force migrated many customers in it's existence and will continue to do it.
I have noticed a huge slowdown as well on my 1st gen iphone. This is not cool.
It's not as if we didn't know it was the death star!
So I just did a speedtest on my iPhone and i got 19kbps. I used to get between 150 and 200kbps on EDGE.
Something is definitely fishy...time to make a call to AT&T...
I just got 32kbps on mine in the Asheville area, no 3G till late 09 they say. I havn't tested it before but it definitely seems slower. WTF
Because we all know how absolutely wonderful AT&T's 3G coverage is. TBH, if AT&T were putting any effort into improving their 3G network, I wouldn't mind - but my 3G coverage while traveling around SoCal is terrible enough already.
waht about in places where there is no 3G coverage... this is totally uncalled for..
If the ENTIRE coverage area was 3G I could understand, but out in the boonies... i mean come on!
Tested a few more times and got 23,40,20, and 30kbps.
This is unacceptable. Even if this is to accomodate 3g you cant screw over your EDGE customers. They were still selling EDGE sets all of last year. The iPhone was sold until May! All those people are entitled to the services they signed up for.
Ok. Here's the deal. What ATT is doing is MOVING some of the EDGE service to the 1900mhz band to make room for the 3G service on the 850mhz band.
Why?
Because the 850mhz band signal can travel farther from the individual cell towers than 1900mhz can...and the farther away from a cell tower you get...the slower your data speed! This is really only going to affect those customers on the fringes of the ATT service map because their EDGE coverage footprint will no longer be as large. The well populated areas with more towers should be fine.
However, it seems to be a smart move on ATT's part because 3G (and LTE eventually) is the future of their network. Why not put the 3G service on the frequency band?
(And as a disclaimer, I don't have an iPhone or ATT)
I agree the losers are at&t customers since they obviously are forced to use at&t's home network when it's available...
I don't know about all of this 850MHz mess. AT&T doesn't own all of the 850MHz GSM licenses. Plus, they doesn't own any 850MHz licenses in 3G areas such as the Carolina coasts, Arizona, or Albuquerque, NM.
For example, the OKC metro alone has 850MHz licensed to at least two different companies: Alltel (on its roamer network; due to the ATTWS divestiture in '04), and at&t... it used to be four licenses before the Dobson & Edge Wireless buyouts. Alltel's roamer network also has a large portion of the 1900MHz bandwidth too (Dobson held no 1900MHz licenses in the continental US), so at&t has only their own network to force 3G to 850, and not a lot at that.
Alltel alone has a good chunk of GSM licenses in the US due to ATTWS divestitures, the Western Wireless buyout, and various other GSM license selloffs.
I seriously doubt AT&T has the ability to get any roamer networks to offer 3G coverage, and they definitely can't force EDGE only to 1.9GHz on them. Until then, at&t better decide to make some concession (in-market roaming, anybody?)
I get around 125Kbps on EDGE, but often can only get GPRS (or whatever that really slow technology is called) when I'm indoors.
Here is the deal AT&T. Before you start to kill off EDGE roll out HSDPA everywhere. Right now I am not in a 3G data area and wow is EDGE slow as hell. I need the EDGE data to be as fast as possible when I travel out of the tiny 3G data coverage area.
Also lets talk about AT&T keeping there voice network up. The other week I could surf the web on 3G but I could not make an Fing cell phone call. Come on AT&T I had 5 bars 3G yet no phone calls.
I can confirm this to be true. I've never accused EDGE of being anything but slow, but for the past 3-4 months, I've noticed further sluggishness and failure to activate errors. Something that almost never happened before the 3G came out.
I had AT&T and they seemed like a bunch of crooks at the time..... Does not surprise me that theyd be doing this.....
Something is definitely going on. I have been on lowercase "edge" for 2 days now. My uppercase EDGE, the stronger signal from what I understand, is never on. What's going on?
This is probably true. Cellphone companies do this kind of stuff. I remember when Movicom (Arg) made CDMA almost useless forcing customers to switch to GSM. Really sad.
I smile whenever i hear how badly messed up the mobile market is in the US, they are slowing down their network in order to make the users switch to more expensive contracts and still stay with the same provider. Damn, that is sick.
Don't even get me started about the type of phone you can buy being dependent on what provider you are with, but this is another story.
Apple should be shamed by being affiliated with such a company. They should use these kinds of activities to open the phones for use with all cellular providers. This is the only way we all can expect reasonable service support.
EDGE has gotten noticeably slower. I use an unlocked Touch Pro w/ the service and have only seen the speeds deteriorate in the west (CA, NV, AZ). I used to be able to tether my phone and not have to worry but now there is just no point.
I'm not dumping to a watered down Fuze for 3G either. Damn you AT&T! Having your service is like having a blanket that doesn't keep your feet warm.
They really should allow anyone with an existing EDGE device + contract to get a new phone as if the contract renewal period was already here. Instead they are forcing people to pay full price for the phone, bleh.
AT&T Customer - San Francisco Bay Area:
I'm pretty pissed - I have a crappy phone nothing special but lately calling, recieving calls, and text messages is not working well. When I went into the store they said, "It was their network that was causing this. Wait a week and if it doesn't get fixed then they'll give me a new simcard." If they know they are the problem I expect a credit for my troubles and lack of service!
You know what, while I don't like the sound of it, they only have so many resources to go around... If there is only so much bandwidth or transmission power for a given area or tower, then they should by all means focus on their 3G HSPA network which has been far inferior to the coverage of Verizon and Sprint's EVDO.
If it were up to me, I'd allow 1st gen iPhone users (and anyone else) to remove their data packages if they want to, and then dismantle the some or all of the EDGE infrastructure if it is taking up resources that could be used to improve their HSPA data network.
I live and work smack in the middle of Hollywood and I had never seen a single gap in EDGE coverage anywhere in the area until a couple weeks ago. The really aggravating thing is that it's not just a slower network, it's more *gaps in coverage* meaning no network at all in a lot of places.
Anyone have any concrete information on this? I have personally seen the speed on my 8125 drop from 110 KB/s to 40 KB/s for the past month of so. It's very noticeable when you have a SlingBox.
Since Feb 4th Fairfield County has been having protocol issues on edge.
Http seems to be working, imap is dead. Vpn's are extremely unstable if it connects at all.