Hi, I have been staying at hotels in the area of Sterling/Dulles area of Virginia and have a serious complaint about the data throughput. It has been a problem in the hotel rooms and in the parking lot, so it is not a building penetration issue (which I know is frequency dependent). It also isn't really a problem limited to either 5G or LTE. When I go to Speedtest.net I get throughput in the range of 60 kilobits per second, which is unusable with today's websites on the (5 months old) Apple 13 Pro Max let alone try to use the Apple as a Wi-Fi hotspot. I go out to the parking lot, it does not increase noticeably. So, I get in the car and drive about 1/2 mile and get very good throughout with LTE. This is predictable behavior. I try this in another hotel in the area with the same results. The fact that the throughput improves with location tells me that the Apple is not the culprit. I went to the Tyson Square Mall and visited the VZW store, where I got well over 100 Mbps and the VzW guy agreed it is not the Apple.
I have spent almost 40 years in the wireless business, designing infrastructure, designing device testing programs (while working for two major operators) and specifying test equipment. I will not claim to be an expert on deploying wireless networks, but I do know a poorly designed network when I see one and this is one. It does not matter how many bars I see or which technology I see, the throughput is very poor.
This is a far cry from the almost unquestioned superiority of VzW's network that I am used to. What are the plans to fix this? The specific locations I mention are not rural areas (about 10 miles form Dulles airport), and the problem is not limited to just this area. I can find problems in many areas. What are you folks going to do to fix this?
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