3G??? ha! T-Mo rant.

I live in Brooklyn NY and work in NYC and been a T-Mo customer for about 6 years. T-Mo service has been getting progressively worse over the years, dropped calls and dead spots galore. Then I moved to my current apartment and lo and behold had barely any reception. But my husbands ATT worked in the apartment and the elevator. When I got my Curve I was excited about the wifi, but it turned out to be crap. When ever it toggled between the t-mo network and wifi I always dropped the call (I upgraded my OS as they came out in an attempt to improve this but to no avail). When the 8900 came out I figured it would have a little better reception and improved wifi. NOPE. Still had the dropped calls when toggling back and forth from wifi and when coming out of the elevator it would get stuck in sos until I turn the connection off and the on. Since I extended for another 2 years to get the 8900, I was pretty much SOL and stuck with T-Mo. When the 9700 came out, i was able to get a free device through my job thinking the 3g would improve reception. Well... I actually have better reception now in the apartment but when it toggles between 3g, EDGE and UMA I still get the dropped calls which happens pretty much during each call.
Did anyone experience anything similar and have some answers for me, or is it just my bad luck and I'm stuck with these issue for another year and a half????
Sorry for the long rant......

Service for tmobile is different for everyone. Just depends on where u live.. Tmobile can't be touched where I live and I live in the city vzw att sprint are all crap virgin mobile would seem better and I'm not to sure but everytime it toggles between. Uma and edge/3g it drops the calls on everybody ( at least as I have read)

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I apreciate your problem. I too live in NYC: Manhattan, where we have a big building problem with reception. My home is in a 'valley' where reception is spotty. I do not have experience with ATT but I do know that every now and then I have an SOS: meaning that ATT is on and TM is off. I have no experience the other way.

Regarding reception in my home: I called CS from my home. The rep did a study of the area and found that several towers in my area had service problems. She put in a service request and about four days later the service improved. In the meanwhile she flagged my phone for a new SIM. The TM store did a free SIM exchange. Apparently the SIM's get "old" and periodically need exchange. The SIM did not improve the problem but the tower seems to have been repaired.

As far as 3G, regret, my Bold 9000 may never have 3G on TM ... but for my needs EDGE is fine. And, a costly switch to ATT is not an option just to get 3G (I have a sweetheart grandfathered rate from Omni time ... and the BB ATT plan is too expensive.)

As far as your problem when you have a 3G option: just go to the EDGE option and change to 3G only when essential ... EDGE will also save battery life. And, did you upgrade to the latest RIM official OS for your phone? Beta OS have often had the drop call problem.

I live in flint MI and run the motorola cliq don't have dropped calls when the signals change or any issues like this I hope it doesn't start happening

I would say maby it is time to get away from bb

I had the same problem with my Curve with regard to UMA switching and dropping calls. Happened every time. As far as Tmo's coverage, I feel your pain there because it does suck. Ill live with it for the relatively inexpensive cost of the carrier though. You get what you pay for I guess. I will say now that I have my 9700, the UMA is A LOT more stable and I don't notice calls dropping as often while on UMA (which is at all times in my house as I have very little reception here as well). I think the majority of my problem is due to very low signal strength from the tower making it difficult for the phone to hand off successfully from UMA. Also, do a search for router settings ideal for Tmo's UMA- after I set mine up it worked noticeably better, although it wasn't perfect.

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The only time I experience dropped calls is when I talk to someone on AT&T. But I know that's everyone's service is different.

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Try setting up your phone to "wifi" prefered in stead of network prefered when at home. That should help with dropped calls at home. That should default to the router. Thats in "manage connections" then "mobile network options".

Originally Posted by WDH

Try setting up your phone to "wifi" prefered in stead of network prefered when at home. That should help with dropped calls at home. That should default to the router. Thats in "manage connections" then "mobile network options".

I make tons of calls on UMA. I've never had any dropped calls other than to one of my best friends who uses AT&T and In general AT&T's service is just horrible. Consumer Reports latest survey rates AT&T as the worst mobile carrier in the nation by the way.

From time to time you see people complaining about UMA calls here. Without exception, it's because they are lazy and haven't set up their router and phone settings properly. T-Mobile's UMA service is fantastic. Works like a charm. I moved a few months ago back to the city full time. Before that I was up in a resort area where cell coverage in the area I lived was spotty because of a mountain range. There was no cell service at all in my home. But with T-Mobile's UMA service, I had full coverage that worked like a charm.

T-Mobile is a great company.

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I Have had Bold 9700 T-mobile for 3 weeks. I have dropped call issues from UMA at home. I was told by T-mobile Blackberry specialist that this is a frequency issue between the wireless routers 3G switching when you get out of range of the router. which use a different frequency than 3G. Hopefully there will be a firmware or OS update from RIM soon! It's aggravating. Personally I think the 9700 has a very weak UMA reception, I should be able to walk more than 20 feet away from my office without losing wireless signal. I never have that problem with my laptop wireless reception with the same router, I can pick up the signal from way out in my backyard with it.
Maybe i should buy a new router that runs on a higher frequency. BTW he could not tell me what frequency 3G uses.

http://forums.crackberry.com/f3/how-setup-uma-206217/
Have you followed that for setting up UMA?

As for dropped calls on 3G haven't had that problem when my 9700 switches to EDGE, edge, GPRS or GSM. I live in Houston and get great 3G. I went from being in my job having 1 bar of EDGE (but usually SOS or edge) to having 2 or 3 bars of 3G or 5 bars of EDGE.

I was given wise advice a few months back.

Pick your carrier first, not your phone. You need to be 100% happy with the service in order to have a good phone experience.

My personal opinion is that T-mobile is behind on everything and they havent expanded their 3G to enough markets. Even though AT&T's 3G coverage isn't huge, it makes t-mobile look small.

Originally Posted by auero

I was given wise advice a few months back.

Pick your carrier first, not your phone. You need to be 100% happy with the service in order to have a good phone experience.

My personal opinion is that T-mobile is behind on everything and they havent expanded their 3G to enough markets. Even though AT&T's 3G coverage isn't huge, it makes t-mobile look small.

Good advice.

Originally Posted by auero

I was given wise advice a few months back.

Pick your carrier first, not your phone. You need to be 100% happy with the service in order to have a good phone experience.

My personal opinion is that T-mobile is behind on everything and they havent expanded their 3G to enough markets. Even though AT&T's 3G coverage isn't huge, it makes t-mobile look small.

even though I've left t-mo.......are you seriously gonna try to argue that att has better service?........cuz if so I'm gonna spank you with article after article......lets forget that their network is clogged with bandwith sucking iphones.......tmo is quickly rolling out 21mbps........tmo is hands down better than att in every way.....att is nowhere near launching those speeds

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Originally Posted by Brightwater

Read above post, router settings or not, UMA is unstable at best, and this post is comming from the world's biggest T-Mo Fanboy-Berryite

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The post you quote does not appear to support that conclusion.

Now everyone please debate the products and services, not the poster's personal qualities!

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Originally Posted by Branta

The post you quote does not appear to support that conclusion.

Now everyone please debate the products and services, not the poster's personal qualities!

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I meant MY post above, champ. Put two and two together. I directly referred to router settings and UMA connectivity. These forums are really annoying sometimes.

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For you guys having trouble with UMA dropping during handover, have you checked the selection box for Allow inter-acess point handover in your Wi-Fi profile?

Ever since I selected that, I have not had a problem with switching from UMA to 3g.

On the other hand, I am getting dropped calls like never before on 3g since I switched to the 9700. I hear this is becoming a problem and tons of 9700's are getting returned.

Originally Posted by RRA

On the other hand, I am getting dropped calls like never before on 3g since I switched to the 9700. I hear this is becoming a problem and tons of 9700's are getting returned.

Call drop sounds like a network issue. If there is a gap in the 3G coverage for any reason (real gap or a tower with no free slots in-band) the phone is forced to negotiate down to 2G services. There are 2 obvious problems:

(a) The 2G<->3G jump is a complete drop and renegotiate on the new service, a hot handoff is impossible.

(b) It may be that the phone has been configured to use 3G only. At least on my 9000 this is a user setting, with a choice between 2G only, 2G+3G, 3G only.

It is likely that most 3G BB users on TMo/US will never have experienced these issues before because this is the first 3G RIM device compatible on TMo. Users on other networks report generally good performance, so coverage problems and sudden extra network load are a probable explanation.

Originally Posted by Brightwater

I meant MY post above, champ. Put two and two together. I directly referred to router settings and UMA connectivity. These forums are really annoying sometimes.

Originally Posted by Brightwater

I had the same problem with my Curve with regard to UMA switching and dropping calls. Happened every time. As far as Tmo's coverage, I feel your pain there because it does suck. Ill live with it for the relatively inexpensive cost of the carrier though. You get what you pay for I guess. I will say now that I have my 9700, the UMA is A LOT more stable and I don't notice calls dropping as often while on UMA (which is at all times in my house as I have very little reception here as well). I think the majority of my problem is due to very low signal strength from the tower making it difficult for the phone to hand off successfully from UMA. Also, do a search for router settings ideal for Tmo's UMA- after I set mine up it worked noticeably better, although it wasn't perfect.

I looked again at your posts in this thread, and I see nothing to support your sudden claim of UMA instability. In fact the second quote seems to show you consider UMA is "A LOT more stable".

I do not see a reason to make an offensive reference to Berryite as "Fanboy". I will remind you of our forum rules, and in particular

Personal Attacks
Do not flame, insult or post personal attacks against other users. Be courteous, not rude. Any instances or reports of harassment of members will be treated seriously. CrackBerry.com has a zero tolerance policy against this kind of behavior, which may result with an immediate temporary or permanent ban at moderators' discretion. CrackBerry.com is a friendly place - treat members with respect at all times. If you don't have something nice to say, do not say it!

Look at the 5th post in this thread, first sentence. WTF is unclear? My saying it became a lot more stable meant that it improved with the router settings. I even said I dropped calls all the time with the switch.

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I notice a lot stronger 3g signal on my wifes 9700 but the call quality is crap we have her phone set to 2g only to avoid the bad call quality. Anybody have quality
issues while on 3g have called TMOBILE several times and they say it might be a Sim card issue I doubt it!

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Originally Posted by Californium89

Service for tmobile is different for everyone. Just depends on where u live.. Tmobile can't be touched where I live and I live in the city vzw att sprint are all crap virgin mobile would seem better

I find that very difficult to believe.

Also, brush up on some facts before making a blanket statement: Virgin Mobile uses Sprint and were just bought out by Sprint. So, if sprint is crap, how can Virgin be a better solution?

Yawn...