Gadgets

Like last month I noticed I only get LTE, even though my plan is 5g. Few months ago everywhere I went it would be 5g, but now only LTE

I get frustrated in stores. It seems almost deliberate that the signal drops so Ill have to use the stores wifi or app to do any searching leading to data collection....

It’s remarkable how awful T-mo coverage is in the Seattle area (about 15 miles from their US office headquarters).

It’s not getting worse, they are making it worse so you will use WiFi more often and take that traffic off their network.

In the USA. Because our elected officials have big telecom’s dick so deep inside them that they can’t even think about regulating anything that would benefit consumers. Remember when we were supposed to have fiber optic internet available to everyone in exchange for telecom not paying taxes for like a decade or more, and then they just didn’t do it and faced no penalties? It’s like that. We’re fucking stupid cash pigs, and our government has sold us to them.

When the legacy telecommunication lines are underground and the new system is installed on the top of buildings, you get competing wireless signals.

The other thing that happens? Lots of electromagnetic radiation in between. It’s not only bad for reception. It’s bad for the human body, radiation breaks down the our cells and the environment.

Poor infrastructure planning nation wide!

I remember when 5G was rolling out companies were befuddled why people weren’t more excited. Gee maybe because we’d rather you just focus on maintaining quality of service?

I find browsing web/social media to be worse these days especially indoors, but maybe ot is a consequence of better insulated buildings?

Has been worse for me too. Used to have good connection at work and in stores and now it's all very spotty at best.

Even upgraded my phone in hopes it would help but it didn't really do anything in cities. I do have better connection on the road now though.

Anecdotal but have definitely noticed this in Atlanta

O2 is absolutely terrible.

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You're right. I'm neither imagining nor experiencing it.

I travel a lot. Multiple states. 125k miles a year. I am on a budget carrier. Cellphone speeds only seem, to me, to be slowing in areas with heavy tower traffic. Makes sense. More people with phones than ever. More data intensive games and social media being consumed on all of them. Towers not being built or upgraded as fast as they could be. And of course, the budget carriers do get pushed to the back when congestion is up. The best place to watch netflicks on your phone is out in BFE by yourself. A tower with low traffic never slows down. You can also notice service differences by day of the week. Sunday evening, when everyone is home instead of bar hopping and eating out is the worst time to be online as far as service quality goes.

T-mobiles “map” sez I got great coverage - across the street from me in the cemetery. This side not so much, weird how they figured that. I have to use wifi calling, thankfully we have unlimited data.

I live in rural area. If my DSL internet went out, I used to be able to hotspot to my phone and continue basic internet surfing. As of a few years ago, that isn't possible anymore. I don't get enough signal to even text reliably.

Definitely agree with this. It's been harder finding a no-interference spot lately.

I didn't read the article but I'm guessing it has something to do with net neutrality being canceled a few years ago

This is why I have my cell service for my phone, and cell service for my vehicle which uses a different carrier. It really sucks driving for work and ending up in a dead zone or spotty coverage.

In the USA with net neutrality it will get worse. Carriers will not have an invested interest in improving the infrastructure. Margins are razor thin - imagine a DMV like experience, understaffed and lack of technology.

In the northeast I’ve had less dead zones the last couple years 🤷‍♀️

I was at a wholesaler recently and one of employees there was affiliated with AT&T and specifically asked me if I had noticed worsening service, as apparently AT&T had acquired something like 70%+ of cell towers? Any truth to this?

I live outside a major(but still smaller) city in Arizona, I'm basically in the middle of nowhere and the only thing around is the neighborhood I live in. I don't get full bars here but my LTE service works pretty much flawlessly.

Now every time I go into town I get full bars of service but it's so slow it's pretty much unusable because the network there is overloaded.

Too many people connected to an insufficient network

Thank you, thank you! REAL as 1 “Great Fiber-Optic” throat shove by municipalities, boroughs & civic offcls, over a wet-lunch & nation-wide.

Haven't noticed any issues on Verizon. Seems t-mobile people are the most vocal about this issue from the comments.

Not surprising. 5G has less range than 4G, which had less range than 3G, etc. National carriers have been updating equipment on their existing towers, but haven’t been erecting new ones. They don’t want to pay for it.

I can’t get a good signal in half of my town on T-Mobile

Bloomington, Indiana!

Everytime they shorten up the wavelength it gets worse

The death of 3G killed phone reception here in Michigan, get out of a few larger cities and it can get pretty spotty. 4G was never fully developed and now has to carry all the voice traffic 3G used to carry. Town I work near no longer has reliable T-Mobile (old Sprint) reception through most of it since 2022.

Here in the Phoenix, AZ area, there are random spots on major highways in the middle of the city-( specifically a section of L-202 and a separate two sections on I-17-- that I can completely drop a call in. And I've tried this in the past few months with a Verizon, AT&T, and a t-mobile phone and they all lose signal at roughly the same spots.

AT&T has been great for me. I did a speed test outside the other day and I got a gigabit down.

It used to be 30 tops so I'd call that an improvement.

It has got consistently better everywhere I am. Every year is a bit better than the previous. Voice quality keeps getting better.

I haven't had any problems with phone reception in the European cities I've been to in recent years, or in the one I currently live in. I don't live in the biggest city, but it's still about as dense as London.

The only problem I have, is that bluetooth headphones drop out pretty often when public transit passes by.

I think my country rates in the top 5 worldwide for mobile internet speeds, though, so maybe we just have a lot more cell towers per person (or rather, fewer people per tower) than what's normal.

edit: I was wrong, but that's because most of the top 5 spots are filled by really small but oil-rich countries.

Verizon eliminating 3G killed a lot of areas that needed it for bridging the gaps on 4G/5G. I believe a lot of older frequencies were eliminated from other companies too.

all those massive 5G towers everywhere that got installed overnighter are definitely not hybrid Electronic warfare assets. That’s crazy talk.

now that 2g is gone, so is long range radio's, 5g is good for what a mile and not even through objects?

That’s because these dingdongs haven’t been getting their covid boosters. Come on guys, we need all the 5G we can get!

Any explanation for this other than 5G or rural? Or is that it? There’s none in the article.

My favorite thing of recent memory was I went to a Chiefs preseason game where the stadium was only half full. T-Mobile had all these banners up about “Data Strong” and all this bullshit, but I couldn’t make a call or send a text with that company.

T-Mobile, y’all fucking suck.

Just restart your phone if you're getting bars but can't browse the internet or get a connection.