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My speeds never go higher than 300 kbps on my Fuze, my Tilt, or BJ. Ive switched radios, ROMS, and sim cards but my speed continues to suck. The only other thing I can think of is that my speed is being limited. Does anyone know if they throttle speeds?
AT&T does not throttle download speeds. What you're experiencing is more than likely due to poor 3G reception in your area or an edge connection. Does your phone show a "3G" icon or an "E" icon?
If it is an E icon, you are connecting to EDGE, which means you probably won't get anything faster. If it says 3G, you've got a poor 3G connection and your area. Either way, there's not really anything you can do about it, unfortunately.
Sorry.
It doesnt matter what my location is. I live in NYC and have 3 - 5 bars of HSDPA everywhere I go. Turning off HSDPA and using 3g doesnt help either.
behrouz said:
It doesnt matter what my location is. I live in NYC and have 3 - 5 bars of HSDPA everywhere I go. Turning off HSDPA and using 3g doesnt help either.
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AT&T's 3G <i>is</i> HSDPA. By turning off HSDPA you're effectively disabling 3G. Keep HSDPA enabled and you should be all right.
Though you have a Touch Pro 2, which is a European model, and therefore not compatible with US 3G. The fix should work with a US Touch Pro, however.
Im using a Fuze. I plan on getting a TP2 when it (eventually) comes out. HSDPA and 3G are not the same. Enabling or disabling HSDPA disables HSDPA only and not 3G. Ive had the phone since November (and a tilt tweaked the ef out as well) and have done every tweak you could think of to it so Im not some dumb noob.
When youre used to getting pretty decent speeds (1000kbps-1500kbps) and all of a sudden cant even reach 350kbps regardless of device and location it makes you wonder wtf is going on.
i live in nyc myself and i think something is up with att network and they just not telling us cuz my speed do sometimes just decrease to crap randomly and sometimes it doesnt work at all period but thats very rare, sometimes annoying
Manhattan here. Can affirm the same. Used to be able to get over 2mbps on my Tilt. Now I'm impressed if I clear 800k at night. And during business hours the network is too slow to listen to a Sirius stream. Sometimes in edge territory and I too am no noob and have tried so many things I made a damn website about it.
I believe att is engaging in some kind of throttling or shaping or they are simply short on bandwidth, at least in our neighborhood, based on extensive testing, the biggest clues being better performance the further away from business hours. And the situation appears to be getting steadily worse. Put it this way, several months ago I wasn't experimenting with header compression and packet MTU sizes just to listen to Howard. Now I have to go with the low bandwidth stream.
Not cool, at&t, step your game up. We're noticing.
In addition to testing all the different radios and different devices I've used a variety of testing methods, reliable ones, and I even paid up for the isp.cingular wap which ain't better at the moment.
HSDPA is a type of 3G connection. It's the kind AT&T uses for their network.
To quote from AT&T's website:
"The AT&T 3G network uses HSDPA/UMTS technology (High Speed Downlink Packet Access/Universal Mobile Telephone System), which makes it possible to enjoy a variety of feature-rich wireless services. It also gives AT&T the advantage of offering simultaneous voice and data services. That means you can talk and use the Internet at the same time. How's that for multitasking?"
To use 3G on AT&T, you must have HSDPA enabled. As for your signal crapping out like that, what's probably happening is just a network bog down. In major metros, when a lot of people are connecting, it can cause speeds all around to drop. It's just the nature of cellular technology.
And I'm not out of my element, btw. I work for AT&T.
xxbadsushixx, I hope you are right. This would only go to prove the whole, post count shows how smart you are, theory that everyone seems to have.
but to not make a useless post: I also believe that it has to do with where you live, and whether you are in a metro or rural area. Here in Orlando, if I am downtown on a friday night, 700+k is rare. When I get to my house 1000+k is easy.
computer double-posted. please delete.
livehigh said:
xxbadsushixx, I hope you are right. This would only go to prove the whole, post count shows how smart you are, theory that everyone seems to have.
but to not make a useless post: I also believe that it has to do with where you live, and whether you are in a metro or rural area. Here in Orlando, if I am downtown on a friday night, 700+k is rare. When I get to my house 1000+k is easy.
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That's normal. I actually had the same issue, and customer complaints about it. I did some research, and it basically comes down to a single tower has a set bandwith. Lets pretend a tower has a max connection of 50mbps. if 50 people connect to it, they're pulling 1mbps each. if 100 people connect, they're pulling 500kbps each. It all comes down to what kind of load the tower can handle. If a tower gets too bogged down, it can hand off excess connections to another nearby tower, but if a single area has a significant number of connections, everyone suffers.
Think of it as going into a crowded coffee shop and everyone is using the wifi. Too many people connecting and using it at once, speed drops. That's almost exactly what's happening now to you guys.
For the record, my connection pulls about 500kbps at work, but at home almost 1.5mbps at home.
HSDPA and 3G ARE NOT the same..HSDPA is in essence 3.5 G..look it up and test it out..use the disable hsdpa regedit or use advanced config...and disable HSDPA..youl notice you wont (well in the past before speeeds went down the drain) get above 600kbps but enable HSDPA and you would hit iver 1mb..so they are different in every way...also this isnt att throttling..this all happened with the iphone 3g came out..i noticed the day it came out and the only time id get back full bandwidth (over 1mb) was at 4 am lol..sooo thank the iphone 3g users for stealing our bandwidth and soon att will push out 4g which will be wimax i think...but hsdpa is upto 7.5mbps even though att hasnt utilized the protocols speed capabilities because they need to upgrade all their towersbut they are only utilizing 3.5mb hspda right now
xxbadsushixx said:
That's normal. I actually had the same issue, and customer complaints about it. I did some research, and it basically comes down to a single tower has a set bandwith. Lets pretend a tower has a max connection of 50mbps. if 50 people connect to it, they're pulling 1mbps each. if 100 people connect, they're pulling 500kbps each. It all comes down to what kind of load the tower can handle. If a tower gets too bogged down, it can hand off excess connections to another nearby tower, but if a single area has a significant number of connections, everyone suffers.
Think of it as going into a crowded coffee shop and everyone is using the wifi. Too many people connecting and using it at once, speed drops. That's almost exactly what's happening now to you guys.
For the record, my connection pulls about 500kbps at work, but at home almost 1.5mbps at home.
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If that was the case I wouldn't be so upset but its not. For example I was in a part of the city I don't usually hang around last night and opened up google maps (in a very drunk stupor) I had to wait an unacceptably long time for it find a route and load up the images. Granted it was NYC but it was also 4AM(!). Just how many iPhone users are chewing through data at 4am?
I believe att throttles 3g. My fuze has never produced a d/l speed above 350-450. Placing same sim in n-95-3 shows 1400 in the same location. Just my observation. Can't prove it. But I believe it.
u guys are confusing hsupa with HSPDA with HSUPA they are different,
HSUPA is faster than HSPDA, wich is the same as 3g
Unlocking the HSUPA is makes the connection noticeablly faster.. It is disabled by default on the FUZE
wiki it up if u need to:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Speed_Packet_Access
lol hsupa IS FOR uplink ONLY hence the U instead of a D..same as uoploading..so yes web pages may load faster but speed tests and downloads will show nop change in downlink speed
You are all crazy
3G is UMTS...max speed of 384 if I remeber correctly.
3G can also be HSDPA if enabled in your area. Currently I believe this to be capped on phones at 1.2 and on laptop cards at 1.6. This also might change is you use isp.cingular...the tower may think you are a laptop card.
Think of the two HSxPA protocols as tower based upload/download compression algorithms for UMTS and you'll pretty much have a grasp of it. While not strictly correct in the truest sense of the definition, using this analogy will help understand 3G and 3.5G.
If you have no HSxPA, but a 3G connection then your raphael displays 3G all the time. HSDPA only enabled is indicated by an "H" icon appearing when your device is actually downloading data. Both HSDPA and HSUPA will be shown by a constant "H" being displayed.
AT&T's network works just fine with these protocols turned off.
A friend of mine had mentioned she was picking up a spotty signal for 4G on Central Ave in Colonie/Albany this week.
Anyone else in the area notice this? I'm kind of excited for it to get turned on. I'd love to see what kind of speed I get at work.
A friend of mine just got the Thunderbolt and he was getting 4G signal yesterday in the Colonie Sand Creek Rd area, albeit spotty, as well. Most apps were completely downloaded and installed before I even got to pulling down the notification bar to open it. Crazy fast.
Pretty sweet to see an Albany, NY post. It looks they have 4g up along a stretch of central ave. I can get it on i-90 near exit 4-5, and on central in west gate area to the boarder with Colonie. It seems to extend to Washington ave.
Hopefully they expand it out soon.
Unfortunately I think the 4g outage delayed things a little.
I work right near the airport so I'm hoping that it will cover around there. I live off of exit 7 on the northway so if it reaches me at my home, I'll be even more pumped.
madzozs said:
I work right near the airport so I'm hoping that it will cover around there. I live off of exit 7 on the northway so if it reaches me at my home, I'll be even more pumped.
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Yeah I live near the hospitals. I don't use a ton of internet at home, so if it gets to me I'm floating the idea of ditching the cable modem and just tethering when necessary.
I've been getting about 12 Mbps down, 2 Mbps up in the 4 g area's...With my cable modem I get 6 Mbps down 1 Mbps up...
They're doing testing in Syracuse, too.
Sent from my ThunderBolt using Tapatalk
4G is up and currently in testing for the Albany area. I know it extends out to Amsterdam not sure how much further past it will go but it seems like it'll cover a good stretch from Albany to Amsterdam and points south and north.
Ok, so I have T-Mobile unlimited data in Las Vegas and for the most part, LTE is very strong here.
I normally use Cox internet but I'm usually late with my payment and right now I'm shut off so I use my phone to tether. It's weird, the signal is strong all around the Las Vegas valley, but specifically at my house it's hit or miss. They said I wasn't being throttled, but I can go up the street and get fast speeds like 15+mbps down.
I haven't been tethering in a while lately (only a week) because I had my home internet on for 4 months, but now it's disconnected again. But tonight for the first time I noticed that when I run a speedtest on my phone, I'm getting fast speeds, like 10Mbps + down. I go to youtube on my phone, and no issues. No buffering.
However, I have wireless tether setup, and have tried tethering via USB. I have an android OS user agent switcher on my browser (though before this made no difference) and for some reason my connection is like dial up. Actually like worse. I can't even run a speedtest on my PC. Pages load, but it's slow as hell.
Why would my phone internet be blazing fast but my tethered PC is slow as a snail? This just started happening tonight
Nurmi_CEO said:
Ok, so I have T-Mobile unlimited data in Las Vegas and for the most part, LTE is very strong here.
I normally use Cox internet but I'm usually late with my payment and right now I'm shut off so I use my phone to tether. It's weird, the signal is strong all around the Las Vegas valley, but specifically at my house it's hit or miss. They said I wasn't being throttled, but I can go up the street and get fast speeds like 15+mbps down.
I haven't been tethering in a while lately (only a week) because I had my home internet on for 4 months, but now it's disconnected again. But tonight for the first time I noticed that when I run a speedtest on my phone, I'm getting fast speeds, like 10Mbps + down. I go to youtube on my phone, and no issues. No buffering.
However, I have wireless tether setup, and have tried tethering via USB. I have an android OS user agent switcher on my browser (though before this made no difference) and for some reason my connection is like dial up. Actually like worse. I can't even run a speedtest on my PC. Pages load, but it's slow as hell.
Why would my phone internet be blazing fast but my tethered PC is slow as a snail? This just started happening tonight
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Suspiciously sounds like throttling to me.
Well I guess I'll see if the issue comes back tonight when my internet tends to slow down....but I just had the problem even a few moments ago in the morning hours. I decided to flash another rom, and low and behold, seems to have fixed it. BTW the phone is a Nexus 5 and I can't remember which rom was on there, but I switched to Blisspop and now my tethered internet is blazing fast.
Hey all - so I'm grandfathered unlimited on Verizon and *love* my unlimited 4g. At my girlfriend's house (right near an interstate), the data is absolutely rocking. But at my house, about two miles away, I usually have decent signal (half or a bit better), but the internet seriously struggles. For instance right now I've got my phone on Pandora and am wifi hotspotting to my laptop, where I'm FB Messenging. Every 30 seconds or so, my laptop says that my hotspot has no internet connection, and I have to wait 30 seconds or so for it to come back. I've just paused Pandora and at least I can chat uninterrupted now. Seems like I should at least be able to do these two things successfully...
Is there anything at all I can do to help it?
Many thanks!
thetastycat said:
Hey all - so I'm grandfathered unlimited on Verizon and *love* my unlimited 4g. At my girlfriend's house (right near an interstate), the data is absolutely rocking. But at my house, about two miles away, I usually have decent signal (half or a bit better), but the internet seriously struggles. For instance right now I've got my phone on Pandora and am wifi hotspotting to my laptop, where I'm FB Messenging. Every 30 seconds or so, my laptop says that my hotspot has no internet connection, and I have to wait 30 seconds or so for it to come back. I've just paused Pandora and at least I can chat uninterrupted now. Seems like I should at least be able to do these two things successfully...
Is there anything at all I can do to help it?
Many thanks!
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You'll probably have to move in with your girlfriend
Maybe the area in which you live is extremely congested or there aren't enough/any cell towers nearby.
Nothing you can do about that.
Haha - fair enough!! Just so weird that the connection just stops working even though I've got decent service showing. Is there any merit to any of the "signal booster" stuff you can buy? Can't really see how any of that could work...
thetastycat said:
Haha - fair enough!! Just so weird that the connection just stops working even though I've got decent service showing. Is there any merit to any of the "signal booster" stuff you can buy? Can't really see how any of that could work...
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They're of no use whatsoever. Even worse than all those "cleaner" apps out there (thats supposed to say something).
If you live in an apartment/building with multiple walls/thick walls, that might impact signal strength and speed. You'll probably have to check out various locations inside your house (or even outside) and see where the reception is best. Near open windows good.
I’m not sure this is the place to ask or if someone who knows the board better can move this.
I’m using cell phones as rural internet because there’s nothing here other than signing a 2-year contract and using satellite internet, and there’s a fiber-optic project supposedly under a year away.
I recently got moved (Straight Talk) from AT&T towers to T-Mobile. Uptime is around 30%, and after observing and trying to use for a week or so I figured out: Some towers work, some don’t. I can see a signal strength in “about phone” around -115 dbm when there’s no internet, that’s more like -92 when it works. I can fairly reliably get on a working tower for a couple minutes by:
Go into Airplane Mode (Android 5.02) for a minute, turning the radio off, then back on. Turn the wifi hotspot back on. On the computer drop and reestablish the connections to the phone’s AP (ifdown, wait, ifup), ping something to test. Slightly cumbersome and it switches back fairly soon. Sometimes minutes, sometimes hours. How busy the phone system is may affect this.
This particular phone is rooted so I could edit some text files if I knew which. I don’t know if the weak signal tower doesn’t work just because of the weak signal or if it’s located someplace without internet. If I could choose a preferred tower, or blacklist the bad one, or set the minimum acceptable signal to like -100 dbm, those would all work. There are probably apps for this. Or maybe it’s control the phone companies don’t want you to have.
ab1jx said:
I’m not sure this is the place to ask or if someone who knows the board better can move this.
I’m using cell phones as rural internet because there’s nothing here other than signing a 2-year contract and using satellite internet, and there’s a fiber-optic project supposedly under a year away.
I recently got moved (Straight Talk) from AT&T towers to T-Mobile. Uptime is around 30%, and after observing and trying to use for a week or so I figured out: Some towers work, some don’t. I can see a signal strength in “about phone” around -115 dbm when there’s no internet, that’s more like -92 when it works. I can fairly reliably get on a working tower for a couple minutes by:
Go into Airplane Mode for a minute, turning the radio off, then back on. Turn the wifi hotspot back on. On the computer drop and reestablish the connections to the phone’s AP (ifdown, wait, ifup), ping something to test. Slightly cumbersome and it switches back fairly soon. Sometimes minutes, sometimes hours. How busy the phone system is may affect this.
This particular phone is rooted so I could edit some text files if I knew which. I don’t know if the weak signal tower doesn’t work just because of the weak signal or if it’s located someplace without internet. If I could choose a preferred tower, or blacklist the bad one, or set the minimum acceptable signal to like -100 dbm, those would all work. There are probably apps for this. Or maybe it’s control the phone companies don’t want you to have.
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It may be possible to exclude certain towers, but for all intents and purposes, it is not possible to include/select/lock-in specific towers. Here is why, if the tools and methods to do so were readily available, then, inevitably more people would use those tools and methods. The more people were to use those tools/methods, the more unstable the whole network would become because the system would not be able to shift the load between towers to equalize/stabilize the network as a whole.
This is because the system works by balancing load, sometimes a signal can be weaker than another but, at the same time, also be faster than other. Stronger signal does not always equal faster speeds.
The concept would be similar to having more than one router/wifi signal at home, then, having everyone in the house and any/all neighbors that are in range, all connected to the same signal/router. The signal they are all connected to would be slow and unstable, the system must have the ability to "bounce" everyone around between all of the routers in order to keep performance at optimum levels "across the board". If everyone is "locked" to the one signal/router, the system can't manage itself, which leads to degradation.
Poor signal in rural areas can be expected, there isn't much you can do about it. The towers are positioned to provide coverage to as many customers as possible from their location. Also, some of the issue in rural areas is a "line of sight" thing. The lay of the land can be a hindrance to signal.
I also live in a rural area of a rural town. I get crappy signal when using cellular network, more down time than up time. I deal with having a decent(but still slow) signal for 1-2 minutes and then when the phone's system runs the next wifi/cellular data re-scan to search for better signal, everything stalls as if I'm getting no signal and it doesn't resume until it either keeps the connection it already has or it just drops out completely for 5-8 minutes until the next time the re-scan can find a signal to connect to. Then the cycle starts over with decent signal for 1-2 minutes or so, until the next re-scan, anyway. I have to turn of mobile data when at home because the virtually continuous re-scanning drains the battery and the device runs warmer than it should normally.
Sent from my SM-S767VL using Tapatalk
OK, thanks. Line of sight - I'm at 1600 Feet elevation, people driving by stop to use the cell service before they go back into the next valley.
I've been with Straight Talk since 2015, originally using AT&T towers, I think we used 13 GB of data last month. AT&T worked very well, I'd say faster than satellite internet. Verizon is also an option.
A weak signal isn't the same weakness for everyone, some people will actually be closer to it. And the population density isn't very high around here. Lat 42.65, lon -72.83. I pay about $60/month for "unlimited data", some fraction of that must end up going to T-Mobile. If the county weren't going to be getting fiber optic networking soon I'd expect the money might go into building out cell systems to handle the load. There seems to be no scaling back and limiting everyone to some number of KB/sec, with that number decreasing as more people use it. My data's either in service or it isn't. -115 dbm is weak by everything I've seen.
I also have a Huawei E3372 modem I can put my SIM into. I bought a pair of small gain external antennas with 3 meter cords. I'd need to get those up high and run something like a Raspberry Pi as a router.
ab1jx said:
OK, thanks. Line of sight - I'm at 1600 Feet elevation, people driving by stop to use the cell service before they go back into the next valley.
I've been with Straight Talk since 2015, originally using AT&T towers, I think we used 13 GB of data last month. AT&T worked very well, I'd say faster than satellite internet. Verizon is also an option.
A weak signal isn't the same weakness for everyone, some people will actually be closer to it. And the population density isn't very high around here. Lat 42.65, lon -72.83. I pay about $60/month for "unlimited data", some fraction of that must end up going to T-Mobile. If the county weren't going to be getting fiber optic networking soon I'd expect the money might go into building out cell systems to handle the load. There seems to be no scaling back and limiting everyone to some number of KB/sec, with that number decreasing as more people use it. My data's either in service or it isn't. -115 dbm is weak by everything I've seen.
I also have a Huawei E3372 modem I can put my SIM into. I bought a pair of small gain external antennas with 3 meter cords. I'd need to get those up high and run something like a Raspberry Pi as a router.
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I am on Straight Talk also, but I'm on the Verizon side. In my opinion, the Verizon side is little better and has somewhat better coverage than the T-Mobile, Sprint or AT&T side. Other than when at home, I get perfect signal strength, the only reason I get crappy signal is I'm one of the ones dealing with line of sight. I'm several miles outside of town in a low-lying area between two hills.
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I should try Verizon. They're the default for landlines here but I got the impression they only did contract phones. I have 3 working Motorola XT1527s plus my modem, not interested in some contract phone. This T-mobile experience is my first other than AT&T. There's a website where you can download APK files to sideload, that runs through T-Mobile last I knew.
I think I've figured out how to talk to a human at Straight Talk. Call during east coast business hours, and in the 2nd menu mention data issues. The night/weekend people never seem to accomplish anything. They're eager to help bit they're most effective at the bulk of common issues like billing or changing a SIM. Took me over 10 phone calls last time to get anywhere.