Not bad for the boonies

RJM62

RJM62

Touchdown! Greaser!
Gone West
Joined
Jun 15, 2007
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13,157
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Upstate New York
Display Name
Geek on the Hill
I just switched my cell service to AT&T and bought a new BlackBerry, and finally got around to doing some speed tests today. It felt pretty fast, but the tests surprised me: 38 Mb/sec. Woo-hoo!

AT&T never updated their database when they planted the new tower, so they won't activate here if you order online. They put me through quite a bit of hassle that culminated in my driving 70 miles to get a SIM card. But it has its positive side: There's almost nobody feeding off the tower.

I feel almost guilty...

Rich
 

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We've been with AT&T from day 1 never a problem.


even in the boonies
 
For a long time VZW was the only game in town here. I was happy enough with VZW service over Straight Talk; but my BlackBerry was getting old, I despise cell phone contracts, and VZW (and therefore ST over VZW) flat-out refused to activate a new BB on prepaid.

That's pretty dumb in my opinion. It's not as if customers are breaking down the doors looking to buy BlackBerries; and now that they don't require BIS any more, what's the difference? You'd think they'd want to sell them any way they could. I was willing to pay full-price to buy the phone up-front to avoid the contract. But VZW wouldn't budge. So once AT&T planted the tower, I decided to go that route, as described in depth in the other post I made.

The other bizarre thing is that I've actually been going through this problem with AT&T's database not having been updated for at least six months, but it wasn't until I found the BB on sale for $232.00 off that I started really pressing the issue with AT&T. They actually were extremely helpful in terms of their engineers evaluating the signal (they were dead on in their assessment, too) before I bought the handset. But you'd think that once they confirmed that service is available here they would have updated the database. Nope. That still hasn't been done.

Because of that, the only options if you want AT&T service here are to provide a phony address (not an option if you're doing it online using a credit card), to activate it anonymously using a store-bought refill card (assuming you can first manage to get the SIM card), or to do it with an AT&T employee who's willing to do the override. The two nearest stores are about 50 miles in either direction, and the nearest one whose staff was willing to override the system to do the activation was about 70 miles away.

I'm glad that AT&T doesn't want to activate service that won't work at the customer's location. That makes sense from a consumer-protection point of view. It would be helpful, however, if they kept their database up-to-date.

But no biggie in the end. I have the BlackBerry, I have the service, and they work splendidly.

Rich
 
That's the best I've seen yet for cell access, Rich.

Verizon erected a 4G tower about 3/4 of a mile from our house a couple of years ago and we get 18 to 30 down and 10 to 15 up. I won't complain, especially with two phones set up as hotspots so the bandwidth is effectively doubled (we oft watch a movie on the bigscreen connected to my phone while surfing on our iPads connected to Chris')

We're grandfathered on their unlimited data plan for $25/mo and typically use 25 to 50 Gig.

We have no TV reception in our valley, refuse to get cable or a satellite, so all our TV viewing is streamed. That's probably about 70% of our total on the average month.
 
timwinters said:
That's the best I've seen yet for cell access, Rich.

Verizon erected a 4G tower about 3/4 of a mile from our house a couple of years ago and we get 18 to 30 down and 10 to 15 up. I won't complain, especially with two phones set up as hotspots so the bandwidth is effectively doubled (we oft watch a movie on the bigscreen connected to my phone while surfing on our iPads connected to Chris')

We're grandfathered on their unlimited data plan for $25/mo and typically use 25 to 50 Gig.

We have no TV reception in our valley, refuse to get cable or a satellite, so all our TV viewing is streamed. That's probably about 70% of our total on the average month.
Click to expand...

Actually, that reminds me of another thing I like about AT&T: Apparently they don't care if you use the device's hotspot. Not that I'd use it much anyway having the cable Internet, but it's good as a backup or when traveling (which I don't do very often either these days, but it's still good to have).

I posted that test result on Twitter last night, by the way, along with the line, "Pretty good speed for the boonies: Thank you, AT&T." They found it and thanked me on Twitter for the shout out. I got a chuckle out of that. I guess they constantly scan Twitter for references to their company.

$25.00 / month unlimited, huh? They must hate you. :lol:

Rich
 
EppyGA said:
Not to worry Net Neutrality will fix that :D
Click to expand...

In true Democratic form, I demand you give up some of your data to me because I only get marginal 3G at MY home and you are obligated to share at no cost to me......its for the children.
 
timwinters said:
That's the best I've seen yet for cell access, Rich.

Verizon erected a 4G tower about 3/4 of a mile from our house a couple of years ago and we get 18 to 30 down and 10 to 15 up. I won't complain, especially with two phones set up as hotspots so the bandwidth is effectively doubled (we oft watch a movie on the bigscreen connected to my phone while surfing on our iPads connected to Chris')

We're grandfathered on their unlimited data plan for $25/mo and typically use 25 to 50 Gig.

We have no TV reception in our valley, refuse to get cable or a satellite, so all our TV viewing is streamed. That's probably about 70% of our total on the average month.
Click to expand...

We are grandfathered too. and recently was told by a VZW rep they are going to force people on to the tiered plans soon. This was a casual conversation, not a sales pitch. I was told point blank, If you like your unlimited data, you can't keep your unlimited data.

What I have also noticed is that after about 10 gigs, they are throttling me. I have an HTc One, iPhone 6 and a Pantech VZW hotspot all unlimited. Service runs so slow when they hit me it's not worth trying, hence, they win.
 
I haven't had any throttling issues at all. Likely because I'm on a lightly loaded rural tower. I don't think it's legal for them to throttle you, and I believe they lost a lawsuit on that front, but I'm no expert on that topic. Hell, if you're on 3G then you're being throttled already!

I was told over three years ago that my unlimited days were numbered...but here we still are!

Can't do the "cheap phone in exchange for a two year contract", I have to buy them outright. But I've always been able to find a six month old phone for about the same price as what they want for a new one with a contract so that hasn't been an issue thus far.
 
JHW said:
if you have cell phone reception, it's not the boonies
Click to expand...

Yep, I wish I had cell service. Or, a land line for that matter. The phone company has zero interest in fixing their lines to my house. Closest cell reception is 4 miles away.
 
Unit74 said:
We are grandfathered too. and recently was told by a VZW rep they are going to force people on to the tiered plans soon. This was a casual conversation, not a sales pitch. I was told point blank, If you like your unlimited data, you can't keep your unlimited data.

What I have also noticed is that after about 10 gigs, they are throttling me. I have an HTc One, iPhone 6 and a Pantech VZW hotspot all unlimited. Service runs so slow when they hit me it's not worth trying, hence, they win.
Click to expand...

In a major metro area virtually everything is effectively throttled. Because there's simply not enough bandwidth to accommodate the users.
 
wsuffa said:
In a major metro area virtually everything is effectively throttled. Because there's simply not enough bandwidth to accommodate the users.
Click to expand...


Depends. Comcast may be the evil empire but they built a massive new backbone in Denver. Folks who've ordered up their new 150 Mb service are actually seeing it 24/7. The only throttling appears to be certain websites who simply refuse to stream to a single IP that fast.

On the business side of things we're paying for 100 Mb pipe from them fed via fiber physical layer at the office and the thing never runs any slower than 100 Mb down and We got 214 consistently up the other night during some testing.

We think they forgot to throttle the upstream or they have a technical issue where they can't. Have seen upstream as high as 250 in bursts. We're only paying for 100 so I can't complain.

If you live somewhere the carrier built way out ahead of their next business growth spurt, throttling means you'll just run the max you paid for. Rare I know, but we're defiantly seeing it here.

Seems to be the perfect storm of Comcast wanting to compete with Dish/DirecTV and wanting to completely obliterate CenturyLink DSL as a viable option. No one bothers ordering DSL here anymore unless they can't get cable service at all.

(Or they're rural like me, where the fixed unlicensed wireless companies are kicking everything else's butt soundly. Ooh. I can get 1.5 Mb on CenturyLink DSL. Bestill my beating heart.

With another ten feet of height I can get ten times that on fixed wireless. And if I was willing to be raped on overages of their cap, VZ LTE beats them all at over 20 Mb/sec but each byte after the data plan is gone, turns to solid gold nuggets.
 
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