Over the weekend I noticed something odd going on with my iPhone: It was working! That is to say I actually had signal in the SoMa district of San Francisco, which is something that I had basically given up on long ago. But it was working, and it was actually solid 3G service. Still, I chalked it up to a fluke. I had been screwed over by AT&T too many times to get my hopes up. Maybe everyone in SoMa was just out of town, I thought.
But a few more days passed as people started telling me they were noticing the same thing. It would go in and out at certain times, but for the most part, AT&T’s network actually seemed to be working in the area. Were we all going crazy? No, says AT&T, who I contacted today to see what was going on that my service was actually working. “Improvements are underway,” is what I was told by a representative of the company after he asked around.
“Most of this is 850 MHz spectrum being added.” That is inline with recent reports about upgrades for AT&T GSM network. But those upgrades were scheduled to start in Atlanta first. As I said, I’m in San Francisco. I don’t want to get anyone’s hopes up (most of all mine), but it looks like AT&T may actually be taking the steps necessary to get its network working in the areas where service is particularly bad.
I’m told that this upgrade process (at least in San Francisco) will be continuing over the coming weeks. When that’s complete, AT&T is offering to give us a walk through of the big changes they’re making to improve the network that we rip at just about every chance we get (which I think is fair, given what we pay for the service). I’m cautiously optimistic on this. Has anyone else been noticing better service on their iPhones or any other AT&T device? Let us know in the comments.