New to AT&T

[xtalentx]

So my work uses AT&T and has been trying to get me on their plan for sometime now. I was reluctant to go because they are on AT&T and I never hear good news from anyone I know who uses AT&T. Well, on Sunday my touch screen stopped responding on my HD2. I could see calls and texts building up with no way to check them. It was horrible!
Monday comes around and I decide it's time to make the change to the work plan. I head to the AT&T store and get a Samsung focus (I really wanted a HD7S but they are not available yet). I setup my phone and go back to work and start playing. First off I love the phone. I am a huge fan of WP7 and the Focus is almost perfect for me in it's design.

Soon after that I actually have to start working... That's when the AT&T part kicks in. I dropped four calls within an hour. Finding this unacceptable I got a microcell and set it up. After connecting my phone I had full bars and thought I was good to go. Nope... still dropped 2-3 calls an hour on average. I thought maybe it was my phone - nope the iPhone users here say it's always like that.

How the hell is AT&T even in business? I am probably going to cancel my service and go back to TMobile. Hopefully the AT&T purchase never happens.

What makes this worse is this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AT&T_Mobil ... Concepcion

Now you cannot even bring a class action lawsuit against AT&T for offering crappy service. AT&T apparently needed protection from it's pesky customers.

[Airmantharp]

ATT and VZW is a coin-toss- and you appear to implicate yourself as at fault here

The best advice is to ask the people around where you need to use your phone what service they're using and how it's working for them. You should be aware that Apple's iPhone is among the best of mobile handsets- great hardware is Apple's forte', and the iPhone is among their own best. If you know that iPhone users are having issues in the areas that you'll need good service, then why would you expect any better?

I've found personally that ATT is spotty. In some areas it is magnificent, in others it's almost non-existant, and sometimes the difference can be one side of a building versus the other. Sometimes it's 5 feet. In any case, I've stuck with ATT simply because they've offered me an upgrade before my contract ran out, and I was ready for a new phone at that time- this last time I very seriously considered jumping to VZW instead of grabbing my current Galaxy. One of my motivators has also been that I have the unlimited data plan on my account, something that may be valuable in the future.

[Corrado]

2-3 calls an hour is NOT normal and generally NOT the network. I had AT&T for 3+ years and dropped a total of 3-5 calls EVER over that period using an iPhone 3GS and an iPhone 4. Conversely, a buddy on Sprint drops roughly that many per week. I'm now on T-Mobile (just because its $80 cheaper a month than AT&T) and have dropped 2 calls in the first month I've had the service. Call AT&T and see what they can tell you. Exchange your phone. Check that your SIM card is making proper contact in the phone, etc.

[xtalentx]

2-3 calls an hour is NOT normal and generally NOT the network. I had AT&T for 3+ years and dropped a total of 3-5 calls EVER over that period using an iPhone 3GS and an iPhone 4. Conversely, a buddy on Sprint drops roughly that many per week. I'm now on T-Mobile (just because its $80 cheaper a month than AT&T) and have dropped 2 calls in the first month I've had the service. Call AT&T and see what they can tell you. Exchange your phone. Check that your SIM card is making proper contact in the phone, etc.

It's all the AT&T users here. Definitely not my phone. I had tmobile for the last 7 years and dropped calls almost never happened. AT&T is just horrible where I live. What's funny is TMO and Sprint have the best coverage around my work and Verizon and AT&T have by far the worst.

I have 2 Microcells in the office as of this morning and have split up the users on each depending on their geographic position. It's certainly helping but it's not perfect. I might get one more Microcell and that should cover everyone. Hopefully the dropped calls become less frequent after that.

[Airmantharp]

If you're having to expend your own funds (company's funds) to extend a cell network, I would think that your company/you would have reasonable cause to get the contract reconsidered or even revoked due to breach. You're not paying for cell service so that you can't make calls! Make ATT either fix the problem, or get a quote from TM/VZW and hang that in front of them when you demand your money back.

[DancinJack]

I can't believe the company would be willing to deal with that. Not only the crappy service knowing there is better service where you guys are, but putting additional money into the service that's bad where you are. I used AT&T for about two years and MAYBE had 1 or 2 dropped calls in that time. You must be out way in the boonies.

[ludi]

2-3 calls an hour is NOT normal and generally NOT the network. I had AT&T for 3+ years and dropped a total of 3-5 calls EVER over that period using an iPhone 3GS and an iPhone 4. Conversely, a buddy on Sprint drops roughly that many per week. I'm now on T-Mobile (just because its $80 cheaper a month than AT&T) and have dropped 2 calls in the first month I've had the service. Call AT&T and see what they can tell you. Exchange your phone. Check that your SIM card is making proper contact in the phone, etc.

Re-emphasis: It really does depend on where you are. Some areas, their service is fine. Where I live presently, not so much, which is ridiculous because I-70 West to ski country enters the mountains not three miles from where I live and work. In this particular case, it's a perfect storm of geography and dense user base, but they could and should fix it by deploying several infrastructure-grade microcells around the area. They evidently haven't, and the result is that you can be standing in my living room and watch the reception bars flicker between 0 and 4. Load an app to identify towers, and you discover the reason: the connection is doing a dance between three different towers. With that kind of handoff rate, coupled with high utilization, small wonder that calls get dropped.

To be fair, Verizon's service isn't quite perfect in this area for the same reasons, but it's generally superior to AT&T. T-Mobile seems better than both, for the two weeks or so that I've been using it. AT&T's problems largely started when they signed the exclusivity contract for the iPhone and didn't pre-upgrade their tower infrastructure to handle the massive volume of data traffic that would result, and they've been playing catchup ever since.

[xtalentx]

A big problem at my work is we are essentially in a big metal cage. I am sure that doesn't help. However my tmobile phone was almost always max bars HSPA+. If I step outside I get 2-3 bars on my AT&T phone which seems sufficient to work and even stream netflix.

In my house I get 4 bars but people are complaining about not being able to hear me. I really think being a customer of AT&T will be short lived.

[xtalentx]

Update:

AT&T gave me four microcells (no cost) to make up for the bad signal in my office's area. Not only that but the service I had when I called in an issue with adding a number to one of the microcells was top notch.

I was ready to get my work to jump carriers too. Now I feel like I should stay with them for a while longer.

On top of all of that they also gave me a microcell for my house. Again - no cost to me.

I think they really want to keep our business.