spotty iPhone Coverage in Chicago

[fizzboompop]

Since this past Monday (8/4/08) I have been getting very weak coverage in the city of Chicago. At this point I can't get a signal inside my home in the 60622 zip code and as a telecommuter with no land line this is not a good thing. Anyone else having issues? There was a big storm here, maybe a tower was damaged?

[Demetri70]

I was in Cary, Gurnee, and then drove to South Barrington and back to Wisconsin with no problems (Bluetooth calls like crazy), but I heard there were several power outages all over Illinois...

[jullman76]

Not just you, I have awful coverage in Chicago.  I just came from T-mobile and I have some serious regrets about it.  I teleommute as well and can't get reception in my apartment off of Damen in UK Village.  I was just talking with my wife, she was in the car heading north in Chicago.  Three dropped calls.  In seven years of T-Mobile I never had a single dropped call.  AT&T needs to get their act together.

[fizzboompop]

Update - I went to the Apple store yesterday and they were good enough to give me a new phone to try, but the problem persists. I've held on AT&T's tech support line twice now for over 30 minutes and have been disconnected before anyone comes on the line!!!

As much as I love Apple and my new iPhone, I'm starting to regret leaving the stability of Verizon. I'm having to use Skype to talk with people from my home.

C'mon AT&T - get it together! Chicago is one of the biggest markets in the world and this is COMPLETELY UNACCEPTABLE!!!!

[abnospam]

You are not alone!

I am a new customer in 60622 and last week was better than T-Mobile for me.  This week it went to crap.  No signal inside, no signal outside my house.  I have to walk about 3 blocks before I get 1 bar 3g.

I think this is all due to the storm.  Something happened.  Please fix it soon.

[domination1981]

fizzboompop,

I live in 60622 as well.  I work in 60606, right downtown on Wacker & Madison.  I have been unable to get a solid 3G signal in either place since Thursday morning.  Sometimes I'll get a bar or two on the way to work but it quickly fades to "No Service" and I have to turn off 3G to get an EDGE signal.  My EDGE signal is 5 bars but EDGE is garbage!!  I miss my streaming Pandora radio!

I have had the iPhone for 2 weeks and up until yesterday the 3G coverage has been phenomenal.  Absolutely solid.  Please post here when and if you find out what's causing this!

[fizzboompop]

UPDATE: I did chat with a customer service person online today who said there are two towers being repaired in the 60622 area. He said they expect to be back online by 8pm Friday night. Fingers crossed.

[abnospam]

ooooo, I hope so!

[abnospam]

8:30 pm, no change, no service

[fizzboompop]

11:30pm no improvement here either. ugh.

[76gordon]

This has been happening to me since Tues or Weds. I've called each day and at first they said they'd send me a text when the problem was fixed. Got a text, problem not fixed.

Don't let them tell you it will be fixed by a certain time, they've given me 2 p.m. on Weds, for example and now they're just saying "within the next 72 hours".

I switched over from Verizon where I never had these problems. This is totally unacceptable!

I'm telling everyone I know to stick with their phone companies, it's not work it to switch!

[fizzboompop]

i'm sure this has to be something to do with the storm, but you'd think they might just say that.

let's all go to the at&t store on milwaukee tomorrow and complain together!

[Demetri70]

Well I will be all over IL. this weekend, i'll report back...

[victry1]

I sympathize with your frustration. With more and more people depending on cell phones these days, outages should be fixed promptly.

But, FWIW, last year, Verizon had 2 outages in the Chicago area. Don't know how long they lasted, but I do remember them as my son lives in Chicago and has Verizon and I was concerned he would be without phone service.

Just my two cents.

[fizzboompop]

UPDATE: I have 4 bars in my home now but no 3g coverage. i have a wifi net so it's not a big concern at home, but even outside it seems like the 3g network is still flaky. it was super strong when i first got the phone 3 weeks ago...

[abnospam]

I have 2 bars now, which is almost back to the 2-to-3 bars I get inside.
Maybe one of the two towers is fixed?

[Benny Blades]

I'm in 60805 (Evergreen Park)...my 3G stinks! At best 3 bars but mostly all bars flat for 3G. Very frustrating. EDGE at full strength. I did the update but no change. I doubt it's the iphone but who knows. So the combination of weak 3G coverage and the battery drains fast on 3G setting is alarming.

Message Edited by Benny Blades on 08-10-2008 11:15:07 AM

[victry1]

I don't have a 3G phone, so maybe I shouldn't say anything, but I have read that even with 1 bar, call quality, etc. is good on a 3G phone. Another words, bars is no reliable measure of signal strength. Whether or not that is true, I guess you would be in a better position to determine that.

[abnospam]

although it seems edge service is back somewhat in my area, 3G is definitely not back to levels of 2 weeks ago,

[drchris000]

I get very weak reception in my home in Highland Park (60035).  I work in the city and when I take the train back into the suburbs I want to surf the net on my iPhone while on the commuter train.  Forget that!  I travel in and out of 3G and EDGE zones and the transition is not seemless as I thought it would be.  The phone hangs during the transition and I continuously lose coverage for minutes at a time.  I only ever have a connection to the internet for 5-8 minutes at a time.  I haven't tried calls yet though so I don't know if they drop.  By the time I get home my battery is nearly drained, but it's not from actually good use it's from the time wasted trying to get reconnection.

My biggest concern came this weekend when I was in the city for the Market Days street festival.  I was with a group of friends and we got separated.  I couldn't call them to find them because I had ZERO connection in the major neighborhood of Lakeview (60057).  They would try to call me but they would go straight to voicemail.  When we finally all found each other I had them call each other.  They connected with each other fine.  I had them call me while they were standing next to me and they couldn't reach me.  I had zero signal.  Two of them had providers other than AT&T while one actually had AT&T but had a Blackberry 3G phone.  He had full strength.  We went to a friend's apartment in Lakeview for a party.  I needed to make a call but my iPhone calls all failed.  I had to borrow my friend's AT&T Blackberry to make my call successfully.  Initially I thought that because there was a street festival and a large crowd that the cell tower was overloaded.  But no one else had a problem but me and my iphone.

I love my iPhone but if these connection issues continue they would be intolerable.  I'm not sure what to do.  Before I got the iPhone I had an old outdated Motorola RAZOR.  I seldom dropped a call and I always had connection to MediaNet.  I never thought I would miss that thing.

[scryer99]

I've been an AT&T/Cingular subscriber for years and generally the coverage nationwide has been decent.  No operator is perfect but as a frequent traveler AT&T generally has been the best of a bad lot.

Their 3G network, however, has not been ready for prime time.  I moved our phones back to EDGE this morning after being fed up with call quality issues on 3G.

I'm pretty sure it's a capacity issue.  Late at night I sometimes jump from 0/1 to 4/5 bars for no reason and then back.  Dropped calls and no-signals are common. 

I live 4 blocks from Wrigley Field so I would not think it was a coverage issue.

I'm beginning to think cracking the phones and jumping networks is a good idea.

[victry1]

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scryer99 wrote:
I'm beginning to think cracking the phones and jumping networks is a good idea.

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Cracking? What's that?

[Jameson!]

Crack it to go with which carrier?   Your only option is TMO and their 3G network, which is brand new and extrememly limited, als operates on the 1700mhz band, which the iPhone will not work with.   There are no other GSM carriers (national) for you to choose from......

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scryer99 wrote:
I've been an AT&T/Cingular subscriber for years and generally the coverage nationwide has been decent.  No operator is perfect but as a frequent traveler AT&T generally has been the best of a bad lot.

Their 3G network, however, has not been ready for prime time.  I moved our phones back to EDGE this morning after being fed up with call quality issues on 3G.

I'm pretty sure it's a capacity issue.  Late at night I sometimes jump from 0/1 to 4/5 bars for no reason and then back.  Dropped calls and no-signals are common. 

I live 4 blocks from Wrigley Field so I would not think it was a coverage issue.

I'm beginning to think cracking the phones and jumping networks is a good idea.

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[Jameson!]

One more thought here....   Given the seemingly disproportionate number of complaints in here, concerning 3G problems in the Chicago area, it may be that there is some sort of network problem there.

[victry1]

Oh, cracking - I got it now.

[fizzboompop]

Agreed. I've still not been getting consistent 3g coverage at all in the last week or so.

ALSO.... I hear you on the festival front.

In two major event situations over the last two weeks there have been MISERABLE problems connecting to regular phone service. On Saturday 8/9 at the Cubs game, I was trying to meet up with friends to get tickets and could not place an outbound call. It just said "call failed" over and over. When i tried to send a txt it just hung and wouldn't go through. Eventually I got a txt to work and we found each other.

At Lollapalooza, an event SPONSORED BY AT&T, nothing was working. I had 4 bars, but no voice service, no txt service. I understand that it may not be possible to ramp up capacity to deal with 250,000 extra people, but seriously, I never had any of these issues with Verizon. I had a crummy phone yes .... but no network problems. Ever.

I feel like we are all part of a big beta test that is not going very well...

[abnospam]

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drchris000 wrote:
I love my iPhone but if these connection issues continue they would be intolerable.  I'm not sure what to do.  Before I got the iPhone I had an old outdated Motorola RAZOR.  I seldom dropped a call and I always had connection to MediaNet.  I never thought I would miss that thing.

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chris, for what its worth, my wife has a BB (not 3g) and her signal and my edge signal seem to be in alignment for the most part.  What you are experiencing seems a but unique.  Have you restored the iPhone?

[drchris000]

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chris, for what its worth, my wife has a BB (not 3g) and her signal and my edge signal seem to be in alignment for the most part.  What you are experiencing seems a but unique.  Have you restored the iPhone?

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Thanks for the advice.  I haven't tried restoring my iphone.  After reading some of these posts (like below) I feel somewhat better because other folks in Chicago are having the same problems at large venues (and while traveling between 3G and EDGE), so it makes me think that it may be network capacity issues.  Perhaps these capacity issues will clear up as AT&T builds it's network.  I've put in an email to AT&T customer support.  Given their poor customer support track record I probably won't hear anything so I'll also give them a call as well in the next few days.  Depending on what they tell me I may also try restoring the phone also.  Thanks.

I have to admit I was some what embarrassed when everyone was making phone calls around me this weekend and my $700 smartphone was dead in the water.

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Agreed. I've still not been getting consistent 3g coverage at all in the last week or so.

ALSO.... I hear you on the festival front.

In two major event situations over the last two weeks there have been MISERABLE problems connecting to regular phone service. On Saturday 8/9 at the Cubs game, I was trying to meet up with friends to get tickets and could not place an outbound call. It just said "call failed" over and over. When i tried to send a txt it just hung and wouldn't go through. Eventually I got a txt to work and we found each other.

At Lollapalooza, an event SPONSORED BY AT&T, nothing was working. I had 4 bars, but no voice service, no txt service. I understand that it may not be possible to ramp up capacity to deal with 250,000 extra people, but seriously, I never had any of these issues with Verizon. I had a crummy phone yes .... but no network problems. Ever.

I feel like we are all part of a big beta test that is not going very well...

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[fizzboompop]

check it out - our thread picked up coverage on CNET:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-10012420-37.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20

From the article....

The network
AT&T's 3G network is not ubiquitous. Currently, AT&T offers 3G service in only 300 major metropolitan areas. It expects to get to 350 metro areas by the end of the year. By contrast, AT&T's 2.5G EDGE network, which is what the first-generation iPhone uses, is deployed throughout AT&T's entire nationwide footprint.

For iPhone 3G users this means they should be able to get 3G coverage in the areas marked by AT&T's coverage map. Many of the problems, however, are being reported in just those places. Some residents of San Francisco, Chicago, and New York--among the first destinations for AT&T's 3G network technology--report spotty 3G availability on their iPhone 3Gs, but excellent EDGE performance.

[bisens]

I noticed complaints about coverage in the 60622 zip area.  I have had AT&T, formerly Cingular wireless for more than 5 years, signal coverage at my work place  (1400 block of Wood St. has always been very poor). My work place is an absolute dead zone for At&T, other workers get a perfectly fine signal with other carriers, I have to move around, often go outside to get one bar on edge network.

I recently got an Iphone 3G and am having  similar 3G reception problems as noted all over the blogosphere.  I've been leaving the phone with 3G turned off throughout the Chicago metro area as I can barely complete a call with it on, edge is decent in general except for my work place.  3G is as bad on Wood Street as edge.  .  I'm hoping that Apple and AT&T will figure out the 3G problem, and that some day they will beef up the towers in Wicker Park.  I was all set to find a new carrier, but the Iphone kept me with AT&T, oh well.