putting att to the test

Call 611 and request a trouble ticket and a field tech come check out your area. I have gone to customers residence that had similar problems but this was back when we had TDMA and just turned up GSM so it was 2 different technologies.

 

Dont go by customer service advice, they have very generic tower maps that have exagerated tower coverage areas. The maps really dont take in account hills dense trees building 850/1.9 etc. If it were me Id complain and ask to have a tech come out and have the tech lay it out straight.

Ask if it is on 850 or 1900, if it was on AT&T original network or Cingulars.
Ask if it is a OMNI or sectorized site.

Tell 611 that you normally had full bars and now have crap and you hear garble. If they dont respond get anyone you know in the area to call in and say the same thing. Multiple complaints will get faster attention and usually signifies to us that work in Engineering that there is a problem at the tower.

 

If we had more info I could try to help you figure out whats going on.

There has to have been some sort of change at the tower. What town did you say you lived next to. I can look it up and see if I can find anything.

I wish we knew what the Net10 was picking up. We will be able to tell more when your test is done and you can unlock the Net10 and put your ATT sim in that phone, this will eliminate the theory that your MOTO's are picking up
3G.

 

Well, your NET 10 phone cannot be connected to the AT&T network in your hometown, because like I said, ALL phones would behave the same.
On your net 10 phone, from you home town, dial a wrong number of wrong code, like *234 or something like a 5 digit number, and tell us what the recording says. This will answer ALL questions as to whether or not your net 10 phone is using the AT&T network.

 

I tried looking up your area but its hard to tell where your at. Dobson looks like it has coverage to the Northwest of you but hard to tell. I wonder if that net 10 phone is picking up Dobson? If you dial a wrong number on Cell One you will get a error number like TCG 32 in Michigan or Kentucky is probably
KY 32 or what ever the switching center programmed the first letters as.

 

If he is picking up the Dobson towers in his area & recently his coverage went downhill, is it possible he was roaming on them & with the pending merger they should re-establish this roaming ability & his coverage would improve?

Just a theory of course then he would have been flagged as excessive roaming & should have recieved a letter so it may not be the reason either.

 

Nothing is changed between the two companies since the first announcement.

None of the roaming has changed between ATT and Dobson.

It would be nice if he could do network selection just to see what it out there.

 

Yes it would be nice if he could do a networks selection & like I said it was a theory & didn't think anything changed, but I thought somewhere out west they stopped roaming on a carrier recently & that's why I brought it up.

 

Yah ATT stopped roaming with a company in East Texas called Cellular One of EAST Texas. This company is a mom and pop company that leases the Cell One name from Dobson but has nothing else to do with Dobson.

 

Oh ok thanks for that info, I was wondering why I heard Cell One somewhere with them.

 

Hope you feel better soon.

 

Wow sorry to hear you have been sick & hope everything works out for the better for you.

I guess this is the least of your problems right now.

 

ATLANTA ATHENS MSA PARTNERSHIP =Cingular ala at&t...the old name for the BellSouth Mobility licenses were listed under in most of the southeast. So it sounds like your NET10 is indeed setup on at&t.

 

Army1, It sounds like your account is screwed up in the translations table of either the HLR or the switch. You need to call Tier 2 customer support and tell them you what's going on with your account. They should be able to fix it pretty quick by making a few calls with you. Good luck.

 

Hi Army1 and everyone else. Army, I'm curious as to why you are conducting this test? Thougt it might e becuse AT&T sucks. I had Cingular for the previous 5-6 years with next to no problems the whole time. Now, since the day AT&T took over my service it's one thing after another. The day of the switch in my area all of a sudden I have to dial the area code for local numbers. When I call CSR the "nice" lady puts me on hold about eight times each time she has to talk to the tech people. Checks my records to confirm information and they still show me using the first phone I had way back when. Finally she tells me she doesn't know why I have o dial the area code, maybe it's just a new thing, "but it should make any difference to me because I have nationwide coverage anyway". And all the while she's talking to me or I'm on hold my signal is bouncing bakck and forth between 0 & 3 bars. Now I also have many dead zones where before I only had two, 1/4 mile spots. Over the last couple of months I have had more dropped calls than I ever had with Cingular and that includes driving across country. I still have low signal. My brother and sister-in-law have/had Cingular in Arkansas and they were having the same problems. The CSR's told them to bring in their phone to get a new sim card???? I'm not sure that helped alot because they use the NEW Motorola they added as a second phone most of the time time. Well I'm not happy with the NEW AT&T, but I'm not real confident in the other companys either. I was really happy with Cingular. Now I'm rambeling sorry. Any comments are appreciated

 

Still hanging in with "The New AT & T" but still not happy like with Cingular. I did talk with the local Cingular franchise store last month. One of the guys checked my chip(?) not my sim, and told me it was a 32mega somthing and I should go to one of the Corprate Stores in Las Vegs and have them put in a 64mega chip. I have a Nokia 6102. He also told me that my area is utilizing an Alltell or T-mobile tower ( I forget which he said now) and always has. So, I think I'm even more confused. Before I thought I was using Cingular tower and thought my signal went to %^(# because I was now using the New AT&T towers. But it seems I'm using the same, borrowed tower from some other company.
Now I have dropped my phone and messed up the LCD screen and have to play with it to light up. But don't want to go buy a replacement if I haven't decided who to or if I want to switch to who......I'm in Mohave County AZ in the Bullhead City, AZ-Laughlin, NV-Needles, CA area. Any suggestions on how to find out which companies have towers in my area or does that even really make a difference as I carry a national coverage plan anyway. Or should I just look for who has the best/most coverage ranging from here to along Interstat 40 towards Arkansas and Kentucky which is where I travel to visit family?.

 

He did check your SIM & that is what he was talking about with the 32k chip vs the newer 64k ones.
I don't know if Alltel has GSM in that area, but if you are roaming I would bet it would be on T-Mobile & if you were roaming most if not all the time, you would have heard something from AT&T about that, My guess is some area's when the alpha tag changed some phones have been camping on the 1900 band vs 850 & if they have both there that's where the problem lies, I don't know if the newer chip will help & I am also sure the phone damage isn't helping you any.

You could get a cheap one on Ebay vs going to the store to get a new phone, it may be a cheaper better way to go right now.

 

I think this is the old Western Wireless GSM area that Alltel got some years ago and keep in use for GSM carriers to roam off of.

 

Good to know, I wasn't sure which states were included in that deal. Thanks Mike.