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Serious HELP needed w/ Iphone 5, 4S, 4 dropping to 2G when 3G is signal is 5 of 5.

So folks I am not going to get into the details of this issue but here is the quick run down... I left AT&T to join Verizon when they got the Iphone back in Feb 2 yrs ago... Since DAY 1.. I had nothing but major issues with the Iphone dropping 3G and go into that horrible circle 2G (Circle = 1X (2G Network) so I have seriously opened up so many calls you can not imginage with support, l2 and network tech. We have removed and readded my phone to the network more times then you can possibly imagine.. What was strange was that when the was new it held the 3G and had full bars... Background: Please be patiend it has to do with the issue... Ok so after a year later and 4/ to 5 phones laterdue ot them thinking it might have been a bad batch with to me is not possible but ok I will humor support... The issue continues... This yr in Feb I opened a REALLY upsetting ticket.. I was paying full price for a service I was only getting half the quality. I did learn to turn on Airplane mode and Disable and 3G would come on at full strengh for a very short time. So this being said I was asked to upgrade to a LTE phone... Android was the suggestion by the L2 from Verizon. My company does not support Android phones any longer due to secruity issues. So that was not possible.. I was told then I could go with a blackberry. Well knowing this yr and the rumors of the iphone 5 release I patiently waited to see if in July/Sept the iphone would actually show its self.. I was all set.. I had the early upgrade autherised.. and by the way we are talking 2 weeks and all.. So to find I had to pay full retail to keep my unlimited data for a phone to correct an issue that Verizon has been been able to determine or correct has really tips the scales... Needless to say I been paying ofr a service for 2 yrs where when I am at work I get 1/2 the service and not I need to dish out more money.. hummm lovely... $850.00+ just to get an LTE phone which L2 suggessted would resolve my 3G issue.. So I pay the 850$ get the phone and guess what... SAME ISSUE... I am currently still in 2G.. WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY is 3G dropping to 2G when I have FULL 3G service.. Ok LTE I get maybe its weak even thou I have seen it hit 3 bars at my desk. But WHY can I not keep a 3G signal.. ( I have attached screenshots. To get the 3G for a short time I had to go to Airplane Mode and Back to normal) See the 3G FULL BARS !!! so why DO I DROP to 2G? and they sometimes drop to 4 bars and 5 over a 10 min period... so its not a fake indicator. and if I have to restore my phone one more time from factory I will lose it...

I have read all over the internet other people having the same issue all over the place... Now this has happened on the Iphone 4, Iphone 4S and now Iphone 5 ... I have a co-worker with an AT&T phone and another with Sprint and they has no issue holding LTE and 4G so its not the building.. Take a guess what I am thinking about doing? As well as every other employee with Verizon.. EMC Corp Hopkinton, MA 171 South

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE any suggestions? Help? Advise? I love Verizon and their coverage but seriously this is now costing me thousands of dollars and when I call Customer Loyality all I got was sorry..

***BTW I am at work and I dont have the time to check spelling... Already spent too much time on this... Thanks

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Comments

HCGoncalves

Might I mention it KILLS my battery life as you can see and yes I know I have 1,900 emails :smileyhappy:

PeteBoston

I have only had a good LTE signal once since getting my iPhone 5 eight days ago and this was when I was about 5 ft from a tower. Other than that, I pretty much have 1-2 bars of LTE or 3G and data barely works. I also see the 2G circle like you showed on your screenshot at times. Like you, I am also in Massachusetts, and have tried my phone in about 30 different major cities in Eastern Mass.

I called VZW twice on this topic and today was told that they have a "critical trouble ticket" open on this issue. Hopefully they can get to the bottom of this soon as the Data on my iPhone 5 is unusable until this gets corrected. I have an AT&T Galaxy S III which gets 25-35 and even 50Mb/s in the same locations while my VZW iPhone 5 is primarily stuck in 3G and when it goes to LTE, I'm lucky if I can obtain 4-8Mb/s.

This does not appear to be isolated to Massachusetts though, there are people in NYC and Kentucky in the Apple forum complaining about the same problems. What I don't know is if this is an iPhone SW/HW problem or a VZW Tower problem.

kaebfly

Wow...not really sure what to say to you on this issue. Maybe I have just been lucky that everywhere I travel and where I live this issue has never occurred for me or the other iPhone on my account. I've had the 4/4s and now the 5...so my only guess would be that it is an area issue. Although honestly, if I had been through what you describe and I decided that staying with VZW was what I wanted to do in spite of it...I probably would not have opted to go with the iPhone 5 after having both the 4 and 4s with the same results. This is only assuming that you are positive that the issue only exists with the iPhone on VZW and not with any other device.

Now the unlimited data thing...unfortunately, that has nothing to do with the issues you've been experiencing so there won't be any relief on that front...unless VZW decided to give you an exception to the rule as far as letting you keep the unlimited data without paying full retail (which would likely cause a lot of people to become upset if they found out you managed to pull that off lol). But as far as the rest of the issues go...you might need to consider trying a different device on the network. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy my iPhone BUT I don't think I would want to keep going through the issues you are going through just to be able to have the iPhone. It does you no good to have the device that you want if the service is poor most of the time. That's really a personal decision, but if you want to find out if the issue is somehow connected to owning an iPhone in your area on the VZW network versus any other device then you may need to switch. Since the iPhone has only been officially out for 8 days you have time to do a switch under the return/exchange policy.

Also, do you know others that are also experiencing the same issues in your area? Is it only iPhone users? Just curious...

HCGoncalves

Correct outside of this area I have very little to no issues I should have mentioned this is ISOLATED to my work area only... Hopkinton, MA ... I do drop into 2G but usually lasts a few minutes... At work its all day and night

HCGoncalves

as for the unlimited that was a choice my concern was that getting this phone was to resolve a network issue and to maitain my current status I had to pay full retail so I understand that... That was my choice I would have liked to have had Verizon give it for upgrade costs since this was a recommendation from their engineers and not cause I wanted to go from 4S to 5 ... personally I could careless.

As for other users.. YES everyone who has Verizon has this issue.. EVERYONE... so its not just me.. I guess I am the only one who just can't take the constant re-tries to send out one text message...

B33

Might be it has something to do were you Work there may not be enough Verizon Towers in that Area. What i do in my Area i Go looking for the Towers and see if there Verizon's or Not.. Now allot of then you can't just Drive up by them because of the Fencing around the Building and for some there remote Location but if you Find the Door Verizon has there Red Sign on Them and a Pair of Binoculars will get you Close with out getting Close and getting your self into Trouble.. But as i Mentioned it can depend how many is in your Area. And some Cases there might not be any..

HCGoncalves

So that actually would make sense... but its currently 12 midnight and the building is down to 15 employees... so I would think during the day that would make sense at this time of the night I dont think so.. This is a small town...

kaebfly

Well if everyone in your area has the issue then it sounds like it doesn't matter what device you get...the problem will exist. I know others have posted on this forum about similar issues in the past but for whatever reason they seemed to be users in certain areas...there hasn't been much talk about it for awhile (to the best of my knowledge)...so I'm not sure if some areas that were having the issue got relief. I honestly don't know if there is a solution to the problem...other than VZW really finding out what is going on in those areas. As I stated, the issue does not appear for anyone I know in my area or the areas I frequent when traveling so I can only assume it's not an issue that affects everywhere that VZW has coverage. I'm not sure what other options you may have other than considering switching providers if continuing to hope for a solution to happen isn't something you really want to do. Hopefully someone else will chime in if they have any ideas for solutions. Have you checked the Apple support forums to see if anyone has mentioned this issue and had any successful solutions?

HCGoncalves

Yes and you can find it all over the web... strange for me its just in a tiny area... makes no sense.. I was at the main entrace today full 3G walk upstair and now at 2G... its like seriously? I need to find out if there is a repeater here or at one time there might have been... This appears to be isolated to this building and surrounding 200 to 500 feet...

silver6055

HCGoncalves wrote:
As for other users.. YES everyone who has Verizon has this issue.. EVERYONE... so its not just me.. I guess I am the only one who just can't take the constant re-tries to send out one text message...

Is this in Hopkinton in general, or just in your EMC facility? Is this an EMC manufacturing plant as well? (Just asking, because I would imagine that some fancy radio wave blocking might be in use at such places to protect the processes!)

HCGoncalves

Not just a normal office building... Nothing that would release large amount of EMF or any type of radio signals beside your regular household PCs. The Manufacturing building is located in Franklin, MA. As I mentioned in one of my earlier posts.. I know at one time we have Verizon Repeaters.. rumors and I want to be sure to state these are only rumors... Verizon has deactivated or disconniued these repeaters... I will bet any money that something was not done correctly when this action was done leaving the on a limited mode or something... I am literally 5 feet from the windows... Right outside I get full 3G service even 3 bars LTE.

Now.... I dont want to get too excited and I have no idea why it is... I have had Full 3G service on my phone all day with out having to turn on airplane mode and then off... I even verified with another co-worker who had this same issue with VZ and he is on 3G.. So... what do I say to this? lol All day today we have had 3G with out the device dropping into 2G. I walked into the middle of the buiding away from all the windows left my phone there for an hour and when I came back this is what I saw... See Image... So? this is now leaving my sratching my head...????? I guess ill see what happens when I return to work on Wednesday... Having my phone on 3G for over 8 hours... Is so unreal.

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staciez6888

For 2 years we have been fighting the same thing. We even up graded and that did not help because here in Maine there is no 4g coverage. Went into the store after complain to customer service by phone. By phone I got they can see we have used data so we are getting what we are paying for???? Really?

There are a bunch of us that have been complaining on different plans complaining getting new sims having new phones sent and still nothing. I went into the store and was told that the speed is going to be way less than 3G while they are working on the 4g upgrade, nice of Verizon to tell us this, where is our discount? Personally we are having to use our phones at home on our wifi because it takes to long for pages to load on 3G WHEN IT WORKS. I have 4 smart phones on my plan and we are always on them but all have them set to pick up wifi everywhere because 3G is no longer working good here. I'll attach an example below of our usage 1/2 way through the month. One of our phones alone used to blow through 3 almost 4 gigs alone per month and one used to hit 3 so by rights we should NEED an 8 gig plan. Because of Verizon failing us and having to use wifi most of the time we don't use much and most times I even drop calls.

AT&T, TMobile have horrible coverage in Maine, Sprint isn't even recommended here so our choices are very limited so they have us right where they want us.

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PeteBoston

Not that it accomplished anything in my case, but I recommend that you call 800-922-0204 and open up a case against your local towers where you are receiving weak signal strength. Before doing so, make sure you check out the VZW coverage map to ensure that they are claiming strong signal strength in your area.

NJ_Analyst

My iPhone 5 digital speed has been getting consistently slower since I purchased it back in November of 2012. Back then I could get up to 28 Mbps down and now I am lucky if I get 8 Mbps down at home. If I travel to areas outside of my home area, such as Princeton, I get no LTE at all and rarely get 3G or 1G which is not useable. Verizon, are you listening?

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