Poor data speeds - new SIM card can fix!

[Pedro Rampolla]

Hey everyone! I just wanted to share some observations I've made regarding some data speeds.

When I transititioned here in WY on 5/11, one of the first things I did was performed a speed test. What I was seeing wasn't impressive (1 Mbps or less on download), what was more concerning was in big cities like Denver and Atlanta, I was seeing the same sort of low speeds.

I chocked this up to a burdened network and thought much of it. Now recently I transitioned to an iPhone 4 and instead of cutting down my SIM card, I received a new one from the folks at the local corporate store. It was much to my surprise when I ran another speed test and saw significantly higher speeds (now an average download of 3.5 Mbps/ upload of 2 Mbps) - now I thought this might be thanks to upgraded backhaul, but running speed tests on the rest of my devices (HTC Aria, Samsung Focus) show the same slower speeds.

So if one of your complaints has been slower speeds, take your phone in to your local corporate store and ask them for a replacement SIM. It seems to have made a huge difference for me and it's made me like AT&T all the more.

[Jordan T]

The iPhone uses a different APN - phone (that's actually the name of the APN) instead of wap.cingular. This might be related.

[Pedro Rampolla]

While I don't totally doubt that, everything I've read says that wap.cingular is the APN for AT&T on the iPhone. And would the APN really make that much of a difference, the speeds are determined by the backhaul located at the tower I thought?

Either way, I do recall a few posts from folks in the Group 4 transition reporting improved speeds with new SIM cards.

EDIT: what phone do you have Mark?

[Jordan T]

I have an iPhone 4 and the APN, at least on mine, is phone - not wap.cingular. Confirm this on your bill. phone is supposed to be capable of higher speeds than wap.cingular, though I'm not sure the technical WHY of that.

[toddlermn]

Pedro, what phone did you have before? That could be the reason, rather than the SIM card.

[Pedro Rampolla]

I had the Samsung Focus (on it's appropriate data plan) but my other phone was a Samsung Captivate - both experienced the much slower data.

My biggest inclination for believing that the SIM card made a difference is that when I replaced the SIM from the Focus into an iPhone 3GS - I called AT&T and made sure I was moved to an appropriate iPhone data - (the unlimited data for $30 anyone curious) - I still experienced the slower speeds - and the 3GS was using it's stock settings so I presume the APN was correctly set.

[Jordan T]

Um, why don't you try the iPhone SIM in one of your other phones? That'll quickly confirm or deny your theory (I bet deny...)