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| "AT&T’s network-capacity challenges, however, are not just 'looming' a few years down the road—they are here today, the product of AT&T’s mobile broadband lea

by j79 15y ago

| "AT&T’s network-capacity challenges, however, are not just 'looming' a few years down the road—they are here today, the product of AT&T’s mobile broadband leadership and its need to support multiple generations of services. And although other providers’ public statements indicate that they have sufficient capacity to cover their needs until additional spectrum is made available via auction several years from now, AT&T must move more quickly." I recently moved from Boston to the West Coast. As an AT&T customer in Boston, I never had issues with service. I remember two dropped calls in over 2.5 years of service and that's it (I'm sure there were more, especially on the commuter rail, but the drop calls became rare as my contract/usage went on...) I was a customer who defended their service when reading about how "bad" it was. Then I made the trek over to Silicon Valley. WOW, did things change. About two weeks I was talking to my dad and had five dropped calls in under three minutes. Usually I average 2-3 per conversation. Extremely frustrating, to the point where I no longer even pick up... So while I'm sad that this merger is happening (I'm all for more competition and think T-Mobile offers great service - ex T-MO customer here...), I completely understand why AT&T is doing this. I'm sure weighing the cost of buying T-Mobile vs new towers (and the cost/time for those) just made sense. Checking the coverage for T-Mo, they appear to have where I live extremely well covered. IF I'm still an AT&T customer in a year, hopefully this will help. I know a few other AT&T customers who would be happy with this as well.

abeppu 15y ago
For several months last year, I was involved in a long distance relationship, and phone calls constituted a very large proportion of my interaction with my BF. Unfortunately, at the time I was both living in SF, and an AT&T customer. The constant dropped calls drove me crazy -- as you pointed out, several dropped calls in a very short window of time was quite common. The nature of a conversation changes when you're always afraid you're about to cut off. You get paranoid every time you hear a pause in someone's speech. And sometimes you get the the point where after the umpteenth redial, neither of you says anything, because you know you won't be able to talk long enough to finish a thought. Eventually I switched to T-Mobile, and moved across the country to live with my BF again. Now, with this looming acquisition, I'm faced with the prospect of becoming a reacquired AT&T customer, and again being dependent on a company whose service was so crappy as to have literally brought me to tears more than once. Yes, AT&T's infrastructure is already stretched thin -- but I wish their approach to increasing network capacity didn't involve dragging me back in.

by j79 15y ago

abeppu 15y ago

For several months last year, I was involved in a long distance relationship, and phone calls constituted a very large proportion of my interaction with my BF. Unfortunately, at the time I was both living in SF, and an AT&T customer. The constant dropped calls drove me crazy -- as you pointed out, several dropped calls in a very short window of time was quite common. The nature of a conversation changes when you're always afraid you're about to cut off. You get paranoid every time you hear a pause in someone's speech. And sometimes you get the the point where after the umpteenth redial, neither of you says anything, because you know you won't be able to talk long enough to finish a thought. Eventually I switched to T-Mobile, and moved across the country to live with my BF again. Now, with this looming acquisition, I'm faced with the prospect of becoming a reacquired AT&T customer, and again being dependent on a company whose service was so crappy as to have literally brought me to tears more than once. Yes, AT&T's infrastructure is already stretched thin -- but I wish their approach to increasing network capacity didn't involve dragging me back in.