Raleigh, NC - Coverage Deteriorating?

[mpallo]

Hello,

I am in the Raleigh, NC market. Moved here 10 years ago. Previously had T-Mobile in upstate NY for years and it was amazing. Got down here and the coverage was not as good. EDGE everywhere you went inside buildings. I assume from the spectrum difference. Switched to AT&T. Over the past few months ever since 5G (not 5GE) has been rolling out the coverage has really taken a hit. Where I once had 3-4 bars I now have 1-2. Over the past few weeks I have seen 5G+ popping up but that seems to have went away recently.

I am hoping they are making some tuning changes to the towers and integrating all these new bands/spectrums and this will come back to normal but am aware that the bands all have different coverage ranges. I was at restaurant over the weekend and had solid 5G and was barley getting 10MB downloads. My friend with a new iPhone 14 on T-Mobile was getting nearly 600MB on their UC.

Curious to know if anyone in this market is seeing the same because it is rather disappointing. If T-Mobile's merger with Sprint has improved coverage that much it is pretty impressive.

[matt110]

Cband/DoD (e.g. 5g+) is actively being rolled out in NC - Raleigh/Cary/Durham/CH and Charlotte specifically. The sporadic "5g+" indicator you noted you noted is ATT testing those upgrades. It is possible (but unlikely?) that the upgrades are having an impact on overall network performance and reliability.

FWIW, Charlotte, NC was like that many months ago. The network was increasingly becoming congested on low-band 5G in the midst of ATT rolling out mid-band 5G. Since then, ATT has shutdown 3G/refarmed the extra 5mhz of UMTS, and aggressively rolled-out Mid-band cband. Things have definitely improved and the extra 40mhz of DoD isn't even live yet.

Having said all that, t-mobile undoubtedly will provide the fastest speeds in NC - but their coverage outside of urban areas is pretty poor (relatively speaking). Verizon/att, in my experience, have the best balance of coverage/speed/performance that I've found, with ATT even having a slight rural edge now with their Firstnet rollout (this is my opinion of living in NC - sample size = 1). Do whatever works for you!

Out of curiosity - what plan are you on?

[mpallo]

Thanks very much for this information. Kinda what I speculated and hoping for the best.

Cband/DoD (e.g. 5g+) is actively being rolled out in NC - Raleigh and Charlotte specifically. The sporadic "5g+" indicator you noted you noted is ATT testing those upgrades. It is possible (but unlikely?) that the upgrades are having an impact on overall network performance and reliability.

FWIW, Charlotte, NC was like that many months ago. The network was increasingly becoming congested on low-band 5G in the midst of ATT rolling out mid-band 5G. Since then, ATT has shutdown 3G/refarmed the extra 5mhz of UMTS, and aggressively rolled-out Mid-band cband. Things have definitely improved and the extra 40mhz of DoD isn't even live yet.

Having said all that, t-mobile undoubtedly will provide the fastest speeds in NC - but their coverage outside of urban areas is pretty poor. Verizon/att, in my experience, have the best balance of coverage/speed/performance that I've found, with ATT even having a slight rural edge now with their Firstnet rollout (this is my opinion of living in NC - sample size = 1). Do whatever works for you!

[mpallo]

Out of curiosity - what plan are you on?

Unlimited 5G with 13 Pro Max. I actually live in Cary.

[matt110]

Unlimited 5G with 13 Pro Max. I actually live in Cary.

Got it - keep in mind the starter and extra unlimited 5g plans are subject to depriortizatioan if you're on those...although att is less aggressive than Verizon in that regard.

And nice - Cary's a great spot!