AT&T Community Forums

Internet issues that have gotten progressively worse

I live in a rural area with a population of 1600 people, so I get why AT&T doesn't really care about upgrading the infrastructure around here, but our service has gotten progressively worse over the years to where it's basically unusable. I'm at the point where I'm actually willing to shell out the $150/month to just get satellite internet installed with another company. If anyone has any suggestions on how I can get my internet service back in working order, I would love to hear it.

We've been on AT&T's basic 3 mbps plan for over 15 years now. It's literally the only thing offered out here unfortunately. The last year or so, we've had such spotty service to where the internet cuts out for 5-10 minute chunks of time. We've had technicians out to fix things, although I'm not sure exactly what they're doing. When they actually show up, the internet seems to get a little better for a short while, and then slowly goes back to cutting out or being so slow that I can't use it anyway. Our 3 mbps max download speed often clocks in at around 0.2 - 0.5 mbps, literally so slow that AT&T's account and support webpages won't even load.

I'm unsure of what I can post or check to figure out what the issue is. I'm just trying to exercise what options I have before I completely cancel my account.

Responses

ATTHelp

Community Support

•

207.7K Messages

3 years ago

Hey, @rmjanowitz. We'd be glad to help improve your internet experience.

How much bandwidth do you generally use when you're having this problem, are you eclipsing your allowed bandwidth? If you haven't already, you may want to check out our AT&T Fixed Wireless Internet service, and if it's available in your area.

Let us know if this helps!

Ramses, AT&T Community Specialist

3

R

rmjanowitz

New Member

•

3 Messages

Hello Ramses. We do not have a cap on bandwidth as far as I know, but this is an ongoing every day problem. I doesn't matter what day it is, or where we are in our billing cycle.

As for AT&T Fixed Internet, we live in a rural area and there is no cell tower that reaches our house. I rely on my Wifi service to use my phone. Attempting to look up availability for this service in my area results in an error message that says my address cannot be found. I'm assuming this is because there are no cell towers in the area.

Like

3 years ago

0

ATTHelp

Community Support

•

207.7K Messages

@rmjanowitz.

You may be thinking of unlimited data. Your bandwidth is usually not much more than your internet plan's speed, so if you're using 3 Mbps of download speed on one device, you likely will get little to no speed on any other device since bandwidth is shared between all devices on the same internet network and service.

You can test this out by turning off all devices using internet on your network and just using one. If the speeds are better than usual on that device, it's probably because you were previously eclipsing your max bandwidth. You may want to Reboot your Gateway before trying this out.

Let us know how it goes!

Ramses, AT&T Community Specialist

Still need help? Ask a question! Our 1.4 million members typically respond within 1 hour.

*I am an AT&T employee, and the postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent AT&T's position, strategies or opinions.

Like

3 years ago

0

R

rmjanowitz

New Member

•

3 Messages

Hello again Ramses!

So I tried your suggestion this morning and rebooted my gateway to test. It doesn't seem like there are any changes to my speed when I do this. It's still just as slow if I disconnect my devices, reboot my gateway, and try to use my one computer wired into the device. I tried accessing a couple websites one at a time to test after a fresh reboot and it taking me like 2 or 3 minutes to load pages like Google Docs. I get several second buffering on short (1-3 minute videos) on 360p quality. If I run speed tests, I'll occasionally get a 2-3 mbps download speed but mostly it's 0.5 mbps. For some reason the speed seems to jump around even if I'm not running anything. Could there be an issue with my line or gateway that would cause the speed to be that inconsistent?

Like

3 years ago

0

rmjanowitz

Internet issues that have gotten progressively worse

ATTHelp

rmjanowitz

ATTHelp

rmjanowitz

Related Conversations

Did this help you?

Tags