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Angelo78 · Jul 13, 2008, 09:00 PM

Does anyone else feel AT&T is way to generous with their coverage viewer? On the 3G map most of my state is well with-in the blue service area. Even at full zoom most everywhere near me is in blue. Yet, sitting in my house barely 10 mins from the capital I get 1-2 bars using 3G. I get all the bars on the Edge network. If I drive to the city the phone gets all five bars on 3G.

This whole iPhone 3G experience has been sort of a let down to me. I love the phone but my overall rating of this has been poor to average at best. Waiting in line was kind of enjoyable at times. There were lots of nice people to talk with and the complimentary water and coffee were nice. While the activation delay was a bit ridiculous things could have been worse. But the whole 3G speed excitement has worn off since AT&T seems to have been misleading with their coverage maps. From when I joined with AT&T two years ago up until this past Friday I've had little to no complaints about the service. I feel this time around they knew a lot of people would be jumping on the iPhone 3G wagon and they deceived some of us. I mean the price jump is something I could let by but at least give me the service I am paying for.

mduell · Jul 13, 2008, 10:18 PM

Duh? This seems obvious to me; it's in their interest to overstate coverage quality.

BoingoBongo · Jul 13, 2008, 11:37 PM

Their coverage viewer is most definitely flawed. My whole area shows full Edge/3G coverage, but I know of a number of decent-sized areas with no coverage. It's slowly improving, but progress has been...well, slow.

ghporter · Jul 14, 2008, 06:38 AM

Ummmm..... Angelo, you ARE getting coverage, even if it's lower than you'd like. Isn't that what the map says? Boingo, are you talking about "no coverage" or "no functional coverage?" The difference being that with no coverage at all, your phone won't detect a 3G connection at all, while lacking functional coverage means that you're stuck in a low coverage area or one that has enough interference that the coverage isn't useful.

I'm not defending AT&T's maps, but it's also not really helpful to anyone to suggest evil motives behind their coverage display. Besides, the map page says rather clearly "Map depicts an approximation of coverage." (Italics and bold are mine.)

BoingoBongo · Jul 14, 2008, 09:56 AM

There are a few areas near me where it's impossible to send or receive any calls at all, despite being in the dark orange/blue areas of the coverage viewer. I know their map can't be 100% accurate. It's just kind of annoying, especially since one of the areas with no coverage is the university.

Angelo78 · Jul 14, 2008, 10:52 AM

I do agree that it is in there best interest to approximate coverage areas. Also, ghporter is right. At least I am receiving the 3G service...just not as much as I expected. Many places are without this type of service altogether.

Something I'd like to see on the 3G map is a signal strength indicator, like they show with the standard voice coverage. I guess that's what bothers me most about the whole matter. I don't mean to come off like a whiner, I'm not. There are many more important things to be concerned about than my new phone.

I was under the impression that if I was in the blue area I'd get the same signal strength as with Edge only at 3G speed. What I didn't realize before is they use different towers for each network. Or at least that's what I read on a few forums while searching around for some answers. I was assuming it's like a wireless router which is backwards compatible. In other words, the latest 802.11n router can still serve up 802.11g speeds between computer networks if that's what the hardware handles. Which ever hardware you have the signal strength is the same, it's the transfer rates which differ.

I certainly don't claim to know much about this stuff. I think it's obvious, so if I say something that is quite plain to some here I mean no harm.

ghporter · Jul 14, 2008, 05:19 PM

I just spent three weeks in South Texas—in particular, in Zavala and Dimmit Counties. The area has great digital phone coverage. NO 3G coverage at all. I also learned how bad satellite Internet can be when there's bad weather... From that perspective, I advise you to count your blessings that you get anything at all!