AT&T Not selling iPhones in NYC?

[archibaldcrane]

I just love that Verizon's 3G network is as large as AT&T's total network.

[wyrmtung]

Apparently the AT&T online store stopped selling the phone over the weekend but you could still buy it through the brick and mortar stores. Other retailers, including Apple, had no such stoppage.

That said, AT&T is stupid if they thought they could do something like this without it getting a lot of buzz and bad press.

[netz]

Ditto on this. My iPhone's service sucks balls. There's so many 3G deadzones, and places where I have full bars, but no data coverage. I just used someone's Droid, and holy shit. That feels like what a wireless data network should be. It was fast, and responsive.

I really hope Apple releases a CDMA iPhone next year so I can go my ass back to Verizon.

Trollin' on details here, but AT&T's 3G service is CDMA, just not EV-DO data or CDMA2000 voice.

I just love that Verizon's 3G network is as large as AT&T's total network.

AT&T and T-Mobile are hurting from their gamble on GSM (maps posted in this thread are obvious proof), which had noble origins in the spirit of worldwide phone compatibility, but failed miserably because TDMA sucks. The FCC further blew it out of the water by not licensing the American operators on the same frequency as the Europeans, hence the requirement of quad-band GSM phones.

All of the providers are converging on the same platform for their 4th gen service, LTE. Sprint is getting there first.

[Tyche]

I just love that Verizon's 3G network is as large as AT&T's total network.

THat's because Verizon's entire network is 3G. The AT&T coverage map is larger than Verizon's, but only select parts of that network (the blue area) has 3G coverage.

[Eanae]

I have AT&T on my Blackberry. Luckily I live in Connecticut so I've had no problems.

[zoobernut]

THat's because Verizon's entire network is 3G. The AT&T coverage map is larger than Verizon's, but only select parts of that network (the blue area) has 3G coverage.

With any luck eventually AT&T will be able to extend 3G coverage to their entire map rather than just select areas like that.

[Cephius]

The whole maps thing really reminds me of Swampy's avatar showing the distribution of red to blue during the elections. What the maps don't show is number of people covered based on population densities.

Just like Chuyu said the % of Americans covered by AT&T and Verizon are probably fairly close to each other based on population density.

AT&T by their own admission covers about 233 million people with their 3G coverage.

Verizon covers about 284 million people with their 3G coverage, again according to them. So it's not a factor of even a couple million people, even if you believe both sides are exaggerating a bit, it's not even close.

And yes, AT&T has edge coverage in those areas. But if you're dealing with data transfer rates (as everyone who owns an iPhone does) edge vs 3G isn't even close, which is why this is an issue.

[zoobernut]

Yeah I didn't say they were exactly the same but at the same time you can't deny how misleading it is to display those maps without also taking into account population density.

If you compare surface area of the colors on the map of AT&T 3g to the surface area of the color on the map of Verizon 3g, Verizon is massively larger than AT&T and it seems disproportionately larger when compared to the actual difference in numbers.

I was just pointing out that I thought it was funny.

You look at a map all covered with red and then you look at a map with barely any blue and you think you can make an obvious conclusion when in reality you need to size the colored areas to take population density into account.

(This is if you are throwing around the number of covered people garbage, which also doesn't really matter because larger area covered is better no matter what. People travel.)

[Rockstaru]

http://imgs.xkcd.com/verizon_billing.mp3

http://imgur.com/9N2bu.jpg

http://macdailynews.com/index.php/we...omments/23000/

[Tekki]

with phones getting better and better, ill take the smaller map with better and faster service. att's simple solution would be to blow another $150m in their service, and not an exclusive contract.

[zoobernut]

AT&T seems to be doing more than fine coverage wise on the East coast. (Maybe minus NYC as per this whole thread) I hope they increase coverage on the west coast areas a little bit though. I would like to see better coverage in the Reno/Carson area.

[Ragnell]

I've rarely had issues with AT&T here in NYC, near always 3g (97% of the time)

[Izzy]

I've rarely had issues with AT&T here in NYC, near always 3g (97% of the time)

My phone says 3G 99.9% of the time.

My phone can actually send/receive data 50% of the time.

The coverage is here, the capacity is not.

[Sonomaa]

with phones getting better and better, ill take the smaller map with better and faster service. att's simple solution would be to blow another $150m in their service, and not an exclusive contract.

yeah, except its not really that much better. ATT did win the speed margin by a hair on some major city tests but I do know my brother got shit signal with his iphone when he came up to visit me while I remained full bars with both of my cell phones

Ill keep my verizon while att passes their contract fees back on to the customer

[archibaldcrane]

I was visiting a friend of mine in San Diego a couple weeks ago. She has an iPhone 3g, just like I do. I noticed her phone was on Edge while mine was on 3g - when I asked her why, she said "3g just drains my battery, it's not faster."

I chuckled and condescendingly showed her how much faster loading a page was by opening rottentomatoes.com on both phones simultaneously.

Her Edge beat my 3g.

Very confused, I downloaded a free speedtest.net app on my phone and ran tests with 3g on and off. The edge network was consistently faster both UL and DL.

When I returned to LA, things were normal - 3g was 8x faster than edge. Anyone here in San Diego? Why is that edge so fucking fast?

[BadKarma]

I have the HTC Hero from Sprint. Only time I have problems with service is when Im in a tunnel lulz

[Celeras]

http://imgs.xkcd.com/verizon_billing.mp3

image snip

http://macdailynews.com/index.php/we...omments/23000/

So what you're saying is that it's ok for AT&T not to have any 3g coverage, because they have a psuedo 56k that almost spans the coverage of verizons regular 3g?

There's a reason nobody mentions EDGE. Because it sucks and nobody gives a shit.