Question about AT&T Towers and Reception

[M-5]

I've been having problems with my reception today while I've been in my dorm room. I've never had problems with reception in my room after being in my room for about a month, and I've always had full 3G bars on my iPhone 3G.

As of recently, my reception will go from full 3G bars to full Edge bars to "Searching..." and then a frequent "No Signal". I'll usually have full bars and then attempt to send a message, but I'll lose signal.

Here's what I think the problem is though:
I attend the University of Texas at Austin, and there is a UT v. Texas Tech game going on right now. My dorm room happens to be right next to the stadium, so I assume that all those people might be bogging down the tower that is nearby. But I'm not really sure how those towers work.

 

[Vandam500]

Well to be honest AT&T has been popular for its network crapping out at events where hundreds/thousands of people attend. Wait until the game's are over and see if your problem is fixed. Also, have you changed the software in your 3G at all recently? Software Update? Jailbreak? Updating your carrier files to get MMS early? Enabling Tethering?

Best of luck!

 

[Coolnat2004]

When there's a lot of people in one area like that, cell phone towers tend to get "filled up". I've found that when that happens, temporarily turning off 3G and using Edge mode only will allow you to make calls and send text messages. It seems easier to get an Edge connection than a 3G connection.

If it happens when the stadium is empty, then I would probably call 611 and see what's up.

 

[M-5]

Well yes, I did happen to manually update my carrier file to get MMS, but this was a week ago, and I haven't experienced any problems until today at around the time when people started to fill up the stadium.

I didn't consider that to be the reason though until my roommate mentioned it. And he had some friends over to watch the game who also said they were experiencing a slow connection; I'm not sure if they were on AT&T though, but I'm fairly certain they were.

 

[SFStateStudent]

OP, have you ever turned your iPhone off? Usually it's good to turn it off or reboot it after a FW update or changes to your plan, such as adding an unlimited text plan, etc. It should reboot and things should be OK....

 

[M-5]

Yes, I rebooted it several times and even toggled airplane mode on and off several times. Unfortunately, it didn't work. I'm fairly certain it was the amount of traffic going through the nearby tower, since the game ended a while ago (all of the fans have left), and now I can text normally.

 

[Rodimus Prime]

It is safe to say all cell phones in the area would of been slowed and reception spotty at best. When I was at Texas Tech at the big games phones on campus across all careers would become spotty because having 70k+ people all in a very small area kind of kills the cell phones.

Now that the game is over it should all start working again.

 

[Steve686]

In your dorm room during that game!? Oooof.

If you are on 3G the phone tries to connect to multiple towers to attain speed and strength. Edge utilizes the closest/strongest single tower.

From what my BIL explains to me that's the basics of the towers. He's a tech with Sprint and has taken me into some tower sites. They're pretty beefy with tons of routers and servers so I winder exactly how much throughput it would take to actually put your phone into that bad a connection to one. I'll ask him some details soon.

 

[ryguy2303]

I've had a similar problem. However, I do not live near anything that would require that much data (like a stadium/event). I literally went from full 3G bars to to struggling to find a signal. Any ideas or suggestions?

Thanks guys!