Thunderbolt Switched to 1X instead of 3G

parkernathan

I'm a contributor to a Facebook page on VZ 4G, and one of your customers had an issue during the 4G outage with their Thunderbolt. Instead of passing off to 3G, the Thunderbolt could only access data on 1X. Calling and texting was not affected. This was in the Chicagoland area.

Was this due to a 3G network outage, or was this due to a glitch on the device? I was wondering if the 3G network failed, or if the device needs a carrier firmware update so that it can seamlessly pass of from 4G to 3G when transitioning.

Thanks!

PJNC284

By default, the Thunderbolt falls back to what's called eHRPD in 3G areas (not the standard EVDO Rev-A) to deal with transitions to and from LTE.  So an eHRPD issue effects both 3G and LTE which is where the problem lies.  If the Bolt doesn't detect eHRPD in the event of no LTE signal, it falls back to 1X which is painfully slow.  Seems like poor coding to me as it should automatically switch to Rev-A during an outage if possible.  Verizon's regular 3G network was perfectly fine.  This is why a lot of people were able to regain 3G signal by turning off eHRPD and enabling EVDO Rev-A.  The ironic thing is that it seems as though verizon has done just that after the outage.  Phones in 3G areas are defaulting to Rev-A so the question now is whether or not they really have the issue fixed or if it's just  a stop gap til they can get a permanent fix.