More Whacky AT&T Network Behavior: Turn on 3G & Get No Service, Turn off 3G and Get Service. Eh?

iPhone 3G with 3G Enabled

iPhone 3G with 3G Disabled (EDGE only)

AT&T Wireless decided to play network games in Honolulu on Wednesday (Nov. 4). Early in the morning I called AT&T Wireless customer support and spoke with a very courteous and helpful representive trying to figure out why I did not have any voice or data access on my iPhone 3G even though I saw reasonably good signal strength and a 3G indicator on my status. We fussed about a bit turning off my iPhone while she de-authorized and then re-authorized my phone. That didn’t seem to help. I performed another soft reset for good measure but that didn’t seem to help. On a whim, I decided to disable 3G. Guess what, that re-enabled voice services and web browsing/email over the slower EDGE data network. Enabling 3G shut down all services again. Disabling it once more restored it. We left it at that with the rep leaving a system note to contact me at the end of the week to see how things were going.

At this point, I started checking with other AT&T users (all of whom were also iPhone users). By early afternoon all 10 people I spoke with or emailed with confirmed similar problems. They also confirmed that disabling 3G restored voice/data service.

Nearly 12 hours later, my iPhone still exhibited the same behavior. So, I ran its hidden Field Test Mode (see my blog item below about this topic)…

Find Your iPhone’s Signal Strength Using the Hidden Field Test Mode

…and you can see the results at the top of this blog entry. With 3G enabled, my iPhone now indicated now service at all and the GSM Serving Cell information was literally unknown. Disabling 3G resulted in the second screenful of information. The -107 dBm signal is at the bottom of the weak signal range. But, voice calls and slow Internet access (through EDGE) was possible.

18 hours later, voice and 3G data service comes and goes with no apparent rhyme or reason if 3G is enabled. We’ll see how this plays out at the 24 hour market later.

ADDENDUM: 22.5 hour mark. Service w/3G enabled appears restored. Getting -99 dBm from same spot where I got “No service” last evening and -107 dBm w/3G disabled (EDGE only)

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