Horrendous AT&T cell service
- Thread starter JHZR2
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iPhone 8S. She probably has a 14. That is why I tried Mint/T Mobile.
I switched to T Mobile. Never happier. Even put my flipper phone on plan, for $15 more. I’m satisfied. TELLO service in my area is horrible.
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I was wondering why my verizon 5G was so bad, worse than before I had 5G. Because I don’t pay $10/mo extra for 5G. I live in Phila metro and there are so many places there’s no coverage. Like inside my son’s elementary school. There isn’t anywhere on the map that isn’t solid red for coverage.
Glad it worked out for you. I think I remember when you were going to switch? Heck sometimes I cant remember what I did yesterday *LOL*
5G is the worst advertising scam/excuse to raise rates ever seen in the cell phone industry. They're killing 4G/LTE to make room for 5G, which is useless across most of the nation, and ruining service in all scenarios, just to be able to say "look, we have 5G, now you need to pay more".
And in AT&T's case they don't actually have 5G in the majority of their coverage area's, they have the fake 5G+ I believe they call it. We're grandfathered into AT&T with an older cheap limited data plan that's 4G/LTE only, and it's still working reasonably well in our area... while our friends and family, with the shiny new expensive 5G plans, are complaining like everyone else about the terrible service now. I'll never pay for 5G.
Correct me if I am wrong, but don't 5G phones and plans also use 4G when 5G isn't available? I can state that 4G and 5G run side by side here... My plan also says nothing about 4G or 5G, its just service...
I switched before my afib procedure cause TELLO Royally sucks. May explore Cricket as still hunting a good battery life flip phone.
We had cricket when AT&T first took them over. I have nothing but good to say about them too. For years, we had four telephones on the cricket family plan.
Now the disclaimer that was years ago maybe just guessing five years so I don’t know if anything changed since then
I've had cricket for ~5yrs now. We currently have 5 lines of unlimited everything for $125/mo all-in. The only difference between today and years ago is, if you need to call cricket, you might be on hold for some time. Years ago your call went right through to someone. The service is still good. If I'm not mistaken some phones may use verizon towers with cricket. Most use AT&T.
That’s weird-Tello uses T-Mobile’s network, there’s been literally zero difference here between Mint & Tello-other than Tello’s basically fee & tax free service. Unlimited call & text, 500 MB of high speed data (which we don’t use/need), for $9.12/month.
I looked into it, but having an unlimited everything work phone, I really didn’t need 2 Magenta Plus lines. But, after I retire, it may be a different story once I use my fairly huge Tracfone balance.
You are correct, your phone will choose LTE(4g) or 5g depending which single is better. In theory.
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Like alarmguy said, in theory. In reality the phone has to decide which frequency to use, and quite often the phone will choose 5G because it thinks the signal is stronger, even if the throughput is so weak the 5G is unusable.
Many people end up forcing their phones to 4G/LTE only, to keep a stable signal and preserve battery life
5G is only good when your extremely close to the signal, with nothing in between (unlike 4G/LTE). And it's a battery killer on a phone that's constantly searching and trying to connect to the elusive signal.It's only really useful in some big cities around the nation so far... and it'll be many, many, many years before it becomes accessible (hopefully
) everywhere like 4G/LTE. And 4G/LTE speeds get the job done just fine for most everyone... no lack there 
But they're already allocating more and more 4G/LTE resources to 5G because the 5G "buzzword" gets people to pay more for a 5G plan... even if the speeds in the parts of the U.S. that get 5G are oftentimes slower and more problematic than 4G/LTE. But folks are wising up
For right now 5G has hurt cell phone service more than it's helped it. That's why there's threads like these
A Google search will explain it way better than I can lol.
And if you're not paying for a 5G plan, which your service would specify, then you're probably not getting it.
Depends entirely on the band/frequency. Low band 5G, like 600mhz aka Band n71 isn’t going to have worse range than 4G operating on the same frequency (aka Band 71, the n is important for reasons beyond my comprehension) all else being identical. Heck, I got a spot on my couch where there is no LTE signal at all, but 5G works fine… I think T-Mobile just did away with LTE at that particular tower but idk. Not blazing fast, but quick enough to watch YouTube and browse the web.Like alarmguy said, in theory. In reality the phone has to decide which frequency to use, and quite often the phone will choose 5G because it thinks the signal is stronger, even if the throughput is so weak the 5G is unusable.
Many people end up forcing their phones to 4G/LTE only, to keep a stable signal and preserve battery life
It's only really useful in some big cities around the nation so far... and it'll be many, many, many years before it becomes accessible (hopefully
But they're already allocating more and more 4G/LTE resources to 5G because the 5G "buzzword" gets people to pay more for a 5G plan... even if the speeds in the parts of the U.S. that get 5G are oftentimes slower and more problematic than 4G/LTE. But folks are wising up
For right now 5G has hurt cell phone service more than it's helped it. That's why there's threads like these
A Google search will explain it way better than I can lol.
And if you're not paying for a 5G plan, which your service would specify, then you're probably not getting it.
Yeah, we are pretty happy with the phones selection of LTE/5G on our iPhone 13's with T-mobile. Really mostly flawless. But one area near a beach that we go to, funny because there is a massive amount of antennas on top of the water tower.Like alarmguy said, in theory. In reality the phone has to decide which frequency to use, and quite often the phone will choose 5G because it thinks the signal is stronger, even if the throughput is so weak the 5G is unusable.
Many people end up forcing their phones to 4G/LTE only, to keep a stable signal and preserve battery life
It's only really useful in some big cities around the nation so far... and it'll be many, many, many years before it becomes accessible (hopefully
But they're already allocating more and more 4G/LTE resources to 5G because the 5G "buzzword" gets people to pay more for a 5G plan... even if the speeds in the parts of the U.S. that get 5G are oftentimes slower and more problematic than 4G/LTE. But folks are wising up
For right now 5G has hurt cell phone service more than it's helped it. That's why there's threads like these
A Google search will explain it way better than I can lol.
And if you're not paying for a 5G plan, which your service would specify, then you're probably not getting it.
I try to force LTE but dont seem to be successful in anything I do, Sometimes I see a low bar 5g, sometimes LTE and sometimes "Ext" which would be roaming, sometimes it works, sometimes its super slow, sometimes it doesnt which is funny because my wife could be right next to me with the same iPhone 13 that she has and everything will be fine. Its true sometimes you can have a completely dead 5g yet a fair amount of bars.
Dont misunderstand, many times it works just fine/acceptable but its a tricky area for sure, the only one area where I can say this happens.
I then found this article posted below because after watching one of these FB or YouTubers making it sound like a conspiracy that your iPhone has the NSA listed as a service if you type the following on the keypad, then hit the call button is shows NSA under "Rat Serving Cell Info"
if you punch in *3001#12345#* you will see a reference to NSA which stands for NON STANDALONE 5g but he was leading people to believe it was NSA and to uncheck the box to discontinue it ... interesting article below.
Understanding Non-Standalone (NSA) 5G and Standalone (SA) 5G - MobilityArena
Standalone 5G (SA) and non-standalone 5G (NSA) are two different deployment models for 5G networks, and they influence your choice of 5G smartphone.
mobilityarena.com
My comments were in response to the concept that people are paying more for a 5G plan to specifically get 5G. In the case of my carrier, ATT, its actually the opposite- 5G comes with nearly every plan, and if you only want 4G, they sell a specific plan for that (at a cost of course...).
So to state "And if you're not paying for a 5G plan, which your service would specify, then you're probably not getting it.", reality is carriers have gone the opposite direction in making 4G only a different plan, not the other way around.
As far as the 5G/$G toggling, its the same issue that's been around since the start of cell phones - getting the phone to select the best bad that delivers what you need is not an exact science, and there are times and places where the non-default setting is better. Being blunt, that has not been an issue for me. I can state in my area that 5G service has significantly improved data service as a whole. Not in terms of coverage, but in terms of speed.
I frequently use my phone as a hotspot for work purposes, and the difference has been noticeable in the last year in particular.
So to state "And if you're not paying for a 5G plan, which your service would specify, then you're probably not getting it.", reality is carriers have gone the opposite direction in making 4G only a different plan, not the other way around.
As far as the 5G/$G toggling, its the same issue that's been around since the start of cell phones - getting the phone to select the best bad that delivers what you need is not an exact science, and there are times and places where the non-default setting is better. Being blunt, that has not been an issue for me. I can state in my area that 5G service has significantly improved data service as a whole. Not in terms of coverage, but in terms of speed.
I frequently use my phone as a hotspot for work purposes, and the difference has been noticeable in the last year in particular.
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Unfortunately the majority of the nation that's more spread out and rural aren't benefiting from 5G... it's mainly only beneficial to the population dense area's. We're also with AT&T, and if we wanted 5G we'd have to upgrade our plan. But our limited 5G availability makes it more problematic than 4G/LTE, so most of our friends/neighbors/folks on Nextdoor and the local small town folks we've talked to opt to not pay for it, and neither do we, regardless of carrier.
AT&T also removes the option on their customers phone's to turn off 5G if it's giving you trouble. Take a look at your phone. The settings are greyed out.
There's a big part of the country that doesn't have good 5G, and won't until they get 5G towers everywhere, because true 5G is a short reaching, easily blocked mmw frequency that is also very dense and can move lots of data. So you literally need mini towers everywhere.
It's going to be a long time before they have mini towers covering the whole nation, and until that time 5G is only going to work well for some. If you're having a good 5G experience I'm happy for you.. but unfortunately many aren't
That's what this thread was started about. Deteriorating service. We deserve better from the carriers
Do a Google 5G news search, read some phone forums, right now a lot of folks across the country aren't happy with 5G, it's just not ready to replace 4G/LTE yet the way the carriers want us to think it is
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With my iPhone 13 Pro on verizon it works better when I turn off 5G.Unfortunately the majority of the nation that's more spread out and rural aren't benefiting from 5G... it's mainly only beneficial to the population dense area's. We're also with AT&T, and if we wanted 5G we'd have to upgrade our plan. But our limited 5G availability makes it more problematic than 4G/LTE, so most of our friends/neighbors/folks on Nextdoor and the local small town folks we've talked to opt to not pay for it, and neither do we, regardless of carrier.
AT&T also removes the option on their customers phone's to turn off 5G if it's giving you trouble. Take a look at your phone. The settings are greyed out.
There's a big part of the country that doesn't have good 5G, and won't until they get 5G towers everywhere, because true 5G is a short reaching, easily blocked mmw frequency that is also very dense and can move lots of data. So you literally need mini towers everywhere.
It's going to be a long time before they have mini towers covering the whole nation, and until that time 5G is only going to work well for some. If you're having a good 5G experience I'm happy for you.. but unfortunately many aren't
That's what this thread was started about. Deteriorating service. We deserve better from the carriers
Do a Google 5G news search, read some phone forums, right now a lot of folks across the country aren't happy with 5G, it's just not ready to replace 4G/LTE yet the way the carriers want us to think it is
On LTE at home I got 94 down, 6 up, 40 ms. There was a time when 94 down was unbelievable.
I’m not paying $10/mo extra it’s already expensive, I think around $35 plus tax not sure not gonna stew over it. Also I get a stipend from work.
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