4G speed at Atlanta Airport-- Comments for VZW Engineering

[guardlights]

I travel and connect through flights at the Atlanta Airport on a regular basis. The last trip I took, Monday afternoon I was in a few of the concourses, and noticed very slow data speeds, Ran a few speed tests, and was amazed to find download rates of 30Kb/sec/ (you heard right, 30 Kbit) and upload so slow I could not even get a number.  also in watching the test it was very choppy.  so there were bursts of about 30 kBits, but a lot of the time it was zero

I had plenty of signal, and this was from a couple of the concourses, as well as outside in the window seat of a plane.

I have a stock Bionic/ ICS.  If I go to any other 4G market, the rates are 10 to 30 Mbits d/l and 5 to 10 Mbit u/l

upon my return through ATL yesterday, Same thing, maybe up to 60 kbits

Basically these speeds make the data portion of the phone pretty much useless.  I actually get faster speeds in 1X. 

I dont think this is related to the radio signal, but related to the capacity of the backbone infrastructure that VZW has installed in the area.

Atlanta literally  is the busiest airport in the world, busiest in arrival and departure traffic, and busiest in passengers

as more people get 4G phones they load the capacity of the infrastructure.  As a business user, my time there is valuable, I need to do email, calls, etc.all before I get on my connecting flight.

i am a systems engineer professionally.  I know a slow connection due to traffic overload when I see one.

I am sure VZW will say it is just unusually high load of users.  I agree it is a high load, but not unusual.  The fact is that Atlanta is busy,, Big Red, you need  to design for that.  just because it is a busy airport is not an excuse, you knew this when you installed the equipment. 

its time for your network engineering people to take a look and make some changes.  Airport coverage is something that is of critical importance to business and other travelers.  Assume it is always in peak demand.

How about taking a look at this issue?

[vzw_customer_support]

Hey guardlights,

Thanks for the heads up on the speeds at the airport. I know that being the busiest airport, that the towers can be easily at capacity. I can assure you that our network engineers are constantly working on making the network the best it can be. The best way to advise them of something like this would be to file a ticket from your account. Other than that, I do know that we are looking at our coverage in airports, so please be on the lookout for improvements as our 4G LTE network grows more! Thanks again!

MichelleG_VZW

Please follow us on Twitter @vzwsupport

[guardlights]

Did open ticket

Todays test:

Concourse B, 4 bars of 4g signal.

Still 1X speed.  Issue persists.

Test Date: Jan 31, 2013 5:31:13 pm

Connection Type: Lte

Server: Atlanta, GA

Download: 83 kbps

Upload: 168 kbps

Ping: 188 ms

http://www.speedtest.net/android/357309837.png

can you hear me now?--  good

[guardlights]

Feb 10. 94k down, 280 up

http://www.speedtest.net/android/366443935.png

Can you hear me now?

[MK_SE]

I just got my Jet Pack, and have made three trips through the ATL airport since. I can assure this problem perists.  Much like guardlights I am also a systems engineer and call tell the wheat from the chaff.  The infrastructure is not passing the bandwidth in any reasonable amount at all.  At least on Sunday night I can use it - email only takes 10 minutes to update. During crunch time at the airport, the throughput is non-existent.  Clearly Verizon has made no headway on this yet. Disappointing.

[jewreindeer]

Guardlights has hit the nail on the head. 

I also am a technically oriented business user who connects through Atlanta on a regular basis.  For months the speed has been nearly unusable. As stated, under 1X speeds.  Today (Feb 22, 2013 at 7:03pm) I am getting 48kbps down and 33 kbps up on the VZ 4g network.  That is unacceptable.

As stated, this is not a peak demand issue.  I've noticed these speeds later in the evening, during non-peak travel times.  The backhaul is obviously completely overloaded.  Verizon's network engineers should have planned better for this.

[Stone13]

I'm another frequent business traveler.  I'm actually composing this message from the SkyClub Lounge on Concourse B.  I'm in ATL airport no less than twice a week just about every week.  My VZW data connections are essentially useless in this airport especially on Concourses A,B & D but not really great anywhere except Councourse F at times.  I have a 4G phone & a JetPack and neither could be considered usable in this airport.  Something definitely needs to be done.

[guardlights]

C Concourse in ATL, 4 bars of LTE signal

Still needs work guys,

[guardlights]

Here is an update from my trip yesterday through Atlanta airport:

speed test underneath the terminals, in the train tunnel area where they have 4G coverage using some kind of "nano-cell" coverage for inside locations:

So Awesome coverage, right? well not really,  there are not that many people or active users down in the tunnels, but this proves that high speed is possible -- because just a few Minutes later upstairs in Terminal E

this was on LTE, Good signal!

Looks like there is more work to do, as most people don't congregate in the train area-- too noisy and no seats.

Lets Get back to work Big Red

[Wow3192]

Verizon...this is still an issue. Seems more persistent in the B terminal as noted by the other user. This is extremely frustrating as I am sitting on a plane unable to do anything online, yet in the same plane as I go away from B and start taxiing down the runway, everything works, fast