AT&T mobile really sucks

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Posted on 16 December 2007

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Coming from Italy, where I usually have full “bars” on my mobile phone’s signal strength indicator (even in remote places), I have to say my experience in the US has been really, really painful. The point is that I’m not saying that coverage is bad in the middle of nowhere, I’m saying that most of the time AT&T coverage was bad EVERYWHERE.

In Palo Alto, in my hotel’s room, making/receiving a phone call was terrible, almost impossible. Much cheaper and with a far better quality using the FF VOIP extension on my Macbook (the broadband connection was suberb, at least).

Outside of my hotel, terrible as well. In downtown Palo Alto was much better and in San Francisco pretty much better as well. I think I had bad coverage 80% of the time, taking into account the almost 2000 miles by car and that I visited different places (Palo Alto, Santa Clara, Mountain View, San Mateo, Pleasanton, Sunnyvale, Santa Cruz, Sacramento, San Francisco, Sausalito, Cupertino, Oakland, and different freeways).

Is it an exceptional event, or it is the usual condition you american have to put up with?

at&t, gsm coverage, luca filigheddu, luca filigheddu

This post was written by:

Luca Filigheddu - who has written 1967 posts on LucaFiligheddu.com.

Luca is currently CEO at Abbeynet, a company specialized in VoIP and Web 2.0.

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jeremy 11 months ago 1 point
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what phone were you using when you were here?

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Luca Filigheddu 11 months ago 1 point
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I was using a Nokia N95

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PhoneBoy 11 months ago 1 point
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Towers are a lot more spaced out here in the US, even in large metro areas. Where I live in Gig Harbor, my AT&T signal goes between three different towers. Going by what Google Maps tells me with their new tower-based location service, I am probably over 2km from the tower I connect to most often. Occasionally I connect to a nearer one, but it's 1.5km.

Even when I was driving through Tacoma, which is a bit larger of a city, I was surprised at how far apart the towers were spaced.

Not having a ton of towers and having them spaced out as far as they are leads to dropped calls, unusable signal in buildings, etc.

Part of the problem is we have a lot more NIMBY (not on my backyard) twits here in the US that refuse to put cell towers up because it "obstructs my view" or "we think they cause cancer in lab rats" or some other BS reason. Usually the higher median income prevalent in the area, the higher the NIMBY quotient is.

I say, screw 'em. Put those damned towers where I can see them. Everywhere! :)

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jeremy 11 months ago 1 point
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interesting. i know in california at&t had a joint network with t-mobile using 1900 band but they have transitioned to 850 band and the problem you describe sounds like a problem a friend of mine had with a phone that was only 1900 and it was searching for 850 but roaming off the 1900. california is one of at&t's best markets. i can see the phone maybe not working well in the hotel but no 80 percent of california. did you purchase an at&t sim while you were here or just use your service and roam here?

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Luca Filigheddu 11 months ago 1 point
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no, I was using my italian SIM. In most indoors places it was not working fine and I think the problem was the 1900, since to higher frequencies correspond worse indoor coverage.

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Dennis 10 months ago 1 point
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This is old, but for future reference your problem was likely that you were using a phone without 850 MHz support. AT&T operates on both 850 MHz and 1900 MHz; the 850 MHz coverage is extensive but the 1900 MHz coverage is vestigial.

If your phone only has 1900 MHz support, stick with T-Mobile. Their coverage isn't as good as AT&T but it is all at 1900 MHz.

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Luca Filigheddu 10 months ago 1 point
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Dennis I think you are right. I'm now using a T-Mobile SIM card and it works much better. I was surely using 1900 with AT&T; and with higher frequency indoor coverage is really bad too.

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