How AT&T and Verizon handle the hand off from 3G to LTE?

giper54

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Feb 13, 2010
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A new AT&T store open in town and I was talking to the owner, especially when lte would be coming to our town. He was saying how he was a big believer in AT&T's technology to handle how lte goes to 3G and back to lte. He said it was a much better transition between the two technologies in comparison to Verizon 3 g. Is anyone able to add to that or offer more insight.
 

3rdpig

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Mar 26, 2011
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I've had a Bionic for a couple of months and I travel in and out of my home LTE area once every few days and so far the transition between 3G/LTE areas has been seamless. I see the change on the notification bar, but I've never lost data. And since I use the phone for navigation I would have noticed it fairly quickly.

I don't know if that's the kind of info you want, but it's all I have.
 

SignMachinist

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Apr 3, 2011
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I travel from a strong 4g area to a poor 3g signal area on my daily commute. I stream Pandora the whole time on my Thunderbolt. The only time it every stops to buffer is in the short area where I only have 1x. Sometimes it doesn't even stop playing there.

Sent from my ADR6400L using Tapatalk 2
 

jim302

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Mar 8, 2011
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I once transitioned from LTE to EV-DO during a speed test. Obviously the speed dropped, but the speed test completed properly . There were no interruptions at all.

This was while leaving the LTE coverage area, so it would have been an orderly intentional handoff... in other words, not an unexpected loss of signal.

AT&T's marketing department says that their HSPA is faster than Verizon's EV-DO (which is true assuming that both networks are managed properly and one isn't overloaded). This means the transition is not as noticeable. It does not mean that there is anything bad about Verizon's network. There were issues early on, but these seem to be resolved now.

Of course, AT&T still has a lot of EDGE coverage in some areas, so the transition between HSPA and EDGE is very noticeable.
 

Unobtanium

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Mar 20, 2011
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My feeling is that he was basically giving you a sales pitch. I am like the others here, never have noticed a glitch in going either from LTE to EvDO or vice-versa. I also just got a new work laptop with LTE, and so far hand over on it is equally seamless.