AT&T slowing EDGE to force customers to switch to 3G?
By Jacob Schulman 
posted January 7th 2009 2:55AM
posted January 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]
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.