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nemanirc · Jul 14, 2009, 08:27 AM

I am pretty close to done with AT&T. Their service has gotten consistently worse in the City of St. Louis, with my wife (who has a Nokia) and I (with my iPhone) unable to reliably place calls or hold calls without dropping in our house. We have had the phones for over 18 months, but have only had the service degrade since January. Several calls to AT&T have gotten us "we don't have good 3G coverage in your area, and we have no plans to upgrade our towers" and "we can't guarantee indoor coverage".

If Apple allows other carriers to cover the iPhone, we will be gone in a heartbeat.

turtle777 · Jul 14, 2009, 09:08 AM

Have you tried to change to GPRS ?

It might dramatically improve your call quality and reception.
If you are in need of higher speed (3G), you might have to switch to it when needed.

-t

ort888 · Jul 14, 2009, 10:38 AM

I am also in St. Louis and I don't have problems with dropped calls at all. I've had AT&T for about 6 years now and the iPhone for about a month.

I live in Shrewsbury and work in Clayton if that helps.

That said, the 3G network here does indeed suck. In Clayton I get speeds of about 200 down and 200 up. It's terrible.

The good news is that apparently STL is a test city for that new 7.2 HSDPA network and it's supposed to be switched on by the end of the year. With any luck that band will be relatively untouched for a long time and my speed will skyrocket.

idykenano · Jul 14, 2009, 01:52 PM

My experiences with AT&T in STL have been hit and miss. For quite some time I couldn't place calls in my house in Rock Hill and would regularly drop calls driving through Glendale. When I drive one township over to Shrewsbury, its just fine. Over time the signal has improved but their customer service regarding this problem was always much less than considerate.
Amazingly, in Kirksville, MO, a city of 17k in the middle of nowhere, I get even cell reception and very very few dropped calls.
Actually, my iPhone has gotten the best reception of all my phones, be it Motorola or Nokia.
I can't attest to the 3G network quality, as I use my iPhone sans cellular data.

ghporter · Jul 14, 2009, 06:25 PM

Originally Posted by turtle777

Have you tried to change to GPRS ?

It might dramatically improve your call quality and reception.
If you are in need of higher speed (3G), you might have to switch to it when needed.

-t

I didn't know you could select to default to GPRS for phone functions... How do you do that?

turtle777 · Jul 14, 2009, 09:33 PM

Originally Posted by ghporter

I didn't know you could select to default to GPRS for phone functions... How do you do that?

Turn off 3G.

It doesn't only affect data transmission, but also voice, since they go over different frequencies.

For a while, I had full bars on GPRS, but when turning on 3G, my voice reception droped to one bar and got really spotty. Then AT&T fixed / put up a new tower, and 3G was all well.

-t

ghporter · Jul 15, 2009, 08:21 AM

Originally Posted by turtle777

Turn off 3G.

It doesn't only affect data transmission, but also voice, since they go over different frequencies.

For a while, I had full bars on GPRS, but when turning on 3G, my voice reception droped to one bar and got really spotty. Then AT&T fixed / put up a new tower, and 3G was all well.

-t

I didn't even think about the possibility that 3G could be crappy for phone service but the phone would still use it by default. I'll have to remember this.