Coverage Getting Worse

I'm sorry but you sounded like you took what I had said personally and I had offended your personal company and I misunderstood the badges you have.  I'm new and thought they meant you are an employee.  I apologize for losing my temper.  I did feel pretty attacked by yours and the other guy’s replies.  It sounded like you were saying I was too stupid to understand why my phone stopped working, so why didn't I just give up?.  

I kept this lousy service for so long because I got a great deal that I couldn't afford to let go - 5 smart phones for $100/month with unlimited talk, text & web - and this was over 3 years ago - long before anyone else was offering it.  Believe me, I tried with everyone to find another company to switch to, but I couldn't afford to pay $200-300/month for comparable service.  For personal reasons, my daughters couldn't afford phones without this plan.  It just bothers me that I have to add another phone bill so I can have a working phone when I have spent so much on phones trying to fix my issues.  

So I'll start over and try to answer your question.  I don't know how many towers AT&T had before they bought Cricket. I don't know how many towers Cricket had, I only know Cricket had great service all over town since their very beginning around 2005, and specifically in my house until almost immediately after AT&T bought them.  So I guess in letting Cricket tower contracts lapse, yes they must have reduced the number of towers they contract with.  However, those contracts expired over a year after they bought Cricket, so how does that explain that my service fell almost immediately unless they were able to renegotiate the terms at the lower tier?

The thing is, they don't own any towers here, they rent space on privately owned towers around town ~30 of them.  However many they had before the acquisition, AT&T is now only contracting with 4 in a town of over half a million people. It took Cricket 2 years to admit that they were sold and another 2 years to admit that my area is now a dead zone (and not just for Cricket but Sprint & Verizon are the only ones with some semblance of reliability here).  Like I said, every time I called I got the run around and they always blamed my phone.  I went through HTC, LG, & Samsung, (and that doesn't cover the other phones people who came here used) all with exactly the same problems.  No way is that the phones, especially when other people's phones work in other areas of town. Logic dictates that if the only common denominator is the service, look at Occam's Razor.  

But that is not even my point.  I don't know why you honed in on my post, but look at all the others with the same complaint.  They had 4-5 bars and then, out of the blue they only have 1-2. They didn't move or change companies so the only explanation is that the service has been cut, as in tower signal strength and yes, no longer contracting with as many towers as before.  That's the bottom line.  And to be fair, many other services like T-moblie don't work well in this area anymore either and their customers have the same complaints.  

However, my complaint, and I believe many others will agree, is that almost every other Tech field continues moving forward at breakneck pace.  Their hardware continues to improve while the costs drop in many cases (i.e. computers, TV’s, etc.)  What makes the cell phone industry so different?  Why are they not only NOT improving service (connectivity, signal strength, clarity of calls, etc.) but the service is actually getting worse?  I did some checking into the towers that the different companies contract with and I believe it comes down to greed.  The towers apparently have tiers or levels so they can choose the strength they want their signals transmitted at and, like everything, the lower tiers cost less.  A cricket manager told me they are contracting at the lowest tier to save money.  If that is indeed the case, they certainly haven't passed the savings on to us.  

And not just here but it is the prevalence of this problem across the industry that is so disturbing.  They are not even trying to fix the problems. They just don't care as long as they are getting paid.  Bottom line is all that matters anymore.  To be honest, it feels like we are guinea pigs in an industry wide, twisted social experiment to see how much we will take before we just stop using the service or stop complaining and accept their bad products as the norm.  Whatever it is, there is a real problem out there with signal strengths across the board and the companies are continuing to blame us and our equipment that we are buying mostly from them!  We can’t win this unless the companies will start admitting the problem is on their end and then fix it.  They totally have the means and technology to make this problem go away, if they only will.

---

@whatsthepoint wrote:

I'm sorry but you sounded like you took what I had said personally and I had offended your personal company and I misunderstood the badges you have.

I don't have a dog in this race at all.  (I see you are a "Tutor" now!)

It sounded like you were saying I was too stupid to understand why my phone stopped working, so why didn't I just give up?.  

Many of the people in the forums feel if it's not a good signal for you then leave. We're not telling you to take your toys and leave. It's more of a common sense thing, you're paying AT&T Wireless for one thing, wireless signal. People say "why should I keep paying?!?" and we're wondering the same thing? Especially when people are making it all complicated like "I can prove that AT&T is deliberately squashing Cricket signals", if you know it's true, it makes even more sense to leave.

I understand it costs more for the other plan, but you're pointing out your wasting money, we're pointing out your wasting money.  And you're not even getting a quality signal. Go spend more money on a quality signal for the one line that is super problematic, yours.

Logic dictates that if the only common denominator is the service, look at Occam's Razor.  

To me logic dictates that the reason doesn't matter, it's not what you need, it's time to move on.

It's like dating, sometimes you have to just move on...

(Or at least stop complaining about it and put up with it!)

I don't know why you honed in on my post, but look at all the others with the same complaint.  

YOU ASKED WHY...

I average 30 posts a day. You're just one of many (sorry!). But most of my replies are MUCH shorter (or canned responses), so sorry again...

I think you caught my eye with 'I couldn't call my daughter who was standing next to me', like that makes the signal worse than if she were 3,000 miles away (it actually would have been better since then maybe one of you would have had a good signal!). 

Plus, the Cricket CDMA to GSM changes seemed relevant as to why things didn't work for you and your non-referenced cyberattack (which struck me as tinfoil hat at the time). Which I still don't recall even with your link, I checked and I made 30+ calls that weekend myself (plus data usage), I'm not saying we weren't talking about it in the forums, but this nationwide outage didn't affect me so I didn't recall it.

Regardless, you had all this STUFF and it really just came down to leaving (IMHO).

Their hardware continues to improve while the costs drop in many cases (i.e. computers, TV’s, etc.)  What makes the cell phone industry so different?  

Cell phone plan costs have dropped in many ways. Don't count the deal that you picked up on a promo and people haven't been able to get any more, compare what they people who didn't get the promo got then compared to what they get now. Savings especially with family plans.

You can get $20 connected car plans with unlimited data.  Prices are dropping. (I can quote you some prices gong the other way too).

Why are they not only NOT improving service (connectivity, signal strength, clarity of calls, etc.) but the service is actually getting worse?

Of course this depends on where you live. But speeds are insanely higher (that's improved). The cellular speed that I can get on my phone or hotspot can surpass many home internet speeds.

Network speeds have jumped 100 times the old network speeds from 10 years ago. That's me lowballing the math, comparing best performance from then to average performance now (on an awesome day I'm getting 400 times the old network speed). I can tether multiple devices to use my internet connection on my phone while I make a phone call and surf the web at the same time. This isn't technology, this is pretty much magical!

More and more people are getting unlimited plans. They're using the towers more, that's going to make them worse.

I don't think you can make this case (getting worse) for everywhere. There is a lot of square footage in the country where people aren't complaining. 

I have zero complaints. I'm in Michigan, along the boarder for Canada and hike and camp all over and I love my signal. It sounds like you are in a particularly sucky area. I'm camping and people ask me who my carrier is since I have coverage and they don't (sometimes I'm just using the GPS, but clearly I'd still chat about it!).

I did some checking into the towers that the different companies contract with and I believe it comes down to greed.  

It's someone's job to make sure they are making the most amount of money for their investors/owners. Their job to keep as much money as possible. I'm not sure if that makes it greed. 

Was it greed that stopped you from not buying a line on another cell company? You wanted to keep as much money as possible. Or was it you trying to be fiscally responsible? 

I'm being realistic, they're not taking money meant for food from orphans or selling known hazardous medications. They're putting resources where they can make the most money. 

I'm saying just because they aren't taking care of your cellular needs doesn't make them a bad company. I'm not defending them, I'm talking about the logic practicality of it.

The towers apparently have tiers or levels so they can choose the strength they want their signals transmitted at and, like everything, the lower tiers cost less.  

I'd guess/think (that means it's my educated guess), some of the issues are they they can't just broadcast at whatever power they want, they've got (some kind of) FCC regulations on how far they can send their signal from that location and what frequencies they can use (I'm not sure how great my details on, but they've got regulations). [I'm just chatting here, not mandating a policy or telling you facts on this, I don't know the ins and outs].

I really would think AT&T would have their own gear on the tower and they'd chose the strength at which they broadcast. They not likely hiring someone else to pump out more watts. (Again, my 2 cents from my dealings with them, putting in high speed lines connecting buildings in my school district's network and then eventually putting in higher speed connections back to the county and ditching my leased AT&T connections between the buildings and running my own fiber network connecting a half dozen buildings in the district).

Or if by tier you mean physical location (height at the tower), that makes sense too. But I'd think they still have some maximum distances they can go and they can't trounce on others signals. (this is all speculation, but the FCC is supposed to be regulating "stuff" and they only have certain spectrums for certain area).

I won't debate this section, I'm just tossing it on the wall to see if it sticks. You're the EE.

A cricket manager told me they are contracting at the lowest tier to save money.  If that is indeed the case, they certainly haven't passed the savings on to us.  

• Cricket is $30 for a 1GB plan (and I think they only charge sales tax).
• AT&T postpaid is $30 + $20 for the line + fees/taxes. 

That's quite a bit of savings. At least 33% off.

And not just here but it is the prevalence of this problem across the industry that is so disturbing.  They are not even trying to fix the problems. They just don't care as long as they are getting paid.  

You're enabling them!  🙂

You kept paying them, even when you didn't get satisfactory service. 

This sending out radio waves it's not perfect, they get a few people complain and leave they are okay with that. I'm really not sure why people don't leave when it's not satisfactory service. This isn't when there was a monopoly and you didn't have a choice.

I'm sure there are some areas where they don't have a choice, but this isn't a necessity to life it's privilege to have a cell phone. I can't imagine not having one, but I'm sure there are many that choose not to.

But again, the price doesn't matter, even if it's free, if you can't use it, it's no good.

I totally agree with this comment, been a customer for years and used to always have full bars and now often barely have one in many of the places I go or even zero.  Have tried the app, but if your phone can't connect, how is the app supposed to work?  Isn't not having a connection the problem that impairs apps working?

---

@lkstepp wrote:

I totally agree with this comment, been a customer for years and used to always have full bars and now often barely have one in many of the places I go or even zero.  Have tried the app, but if your phone can't connect, how is the app supposed to work?  Isn't not having a connection the problem that impairs apps working?

---

I believe it's smart enough to upload the data later when you have signal or are on WiFi.

@PMINMD What would be the point of complaining to the FCC? What do you think they would do about it? If there are known issues that ATT is working on, what do you think the FCC is going to do? Tell ATT to fix it faster?

@planker101 I am not an ATT employee. I asked a legitimate question as to what you think complaining to the FCC would accomplish. You chose to be rude and insulting. I will respond to you no more.

@planker101 And so what does your tutor status imply??