Verizon admits it can't handle LTE demand in major cities

[dpham00]

We've all seen those commercials where Verizon boasts about the breadth of its network, but what of the depth? Turns out, at least in some cities, that Big Red's LTE is so over-taxed that users are being downgraded to 3G. Executive Fran Shammo has admitted that Verizon's capacity in places like New York and San Francisco is running out, but promised that the troubles should be fixed by the end of 2013. The company has pledged an extra $500 million in investment to remedy the issue, in addition to promising that, when it comes to capacity, Verizon will be "ahead of the curve" going into next year -- presumably before holding up a sign marked AWS Band 4 and winking at an imaginary camera.

Verizon admits it can't handle LTE demand in major cities


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[Almeuit]

Glad they at least admit it. I've seen some horrible speed tests for users in New York... Worse than 3g.

They'll fix it though I'm sure.

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[Almeuit]

BS. Those snakes at Verizon always put stuff like this out to justify their data caps. They're such a dirty underhanded company it wouldn't surprisingly me if they're down grading people to 3G on purpose & creating these bottlenecks.

People in New York have posted speed tests of 1 Mbit down..... That's bad... Very bad.. For LTE.

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[dpham00]

People in New York have posted speed tests of 1 Mbit down..... That's bad... Very bad.. For LTE.

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I have seen practically unusable 4GLTE. Note that the upload test couldn't complete, but the download was under 0.3mbps. I have had worse, that the speed test wouldn't even initialize

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[Almeuit]

I have seen practically unusable 4GLTE. Note that the upload test couldn't complete, but the download was under 0.3mbps. I have had worse, that the speed test wouldn't even initialize

http://img.tapatalk.com/d/13/11/13/e5ajeduj.jpg

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Omg that's worse than Sprint lol.

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[dpham00]

Omg that's worse than Sprint lol.

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Typically it is around 1-3mbps. Occasionally, maybe once a week or two it gets so bad that it isn't really usable and so I force the phone onto 3g. My options at work are limited, Verizon has the best coverage, not necessarily the fastest but the coverage in the most areas in my building.

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[lennyj17]

Here in L.A. with Sprint I get 25mb down with LTE.

Why in the hell is Verizon so slow in NY? Makes 0 sense.

Oh I don't know could it be NYC is the largest city in the country and the most densely populated as well. Not to mention everyone who jumped from Sprint while NV process was just too painful to remain there.

Look as much as we like to cheerlead our carriers....Fact is America needs the 4 Big National Carriers to succeed to Balance the loads of Data Traffic. We simply cannot all fit onto 1 or 2 networks and have them maintain Super Speedy LTE networks... It's a balancing act and Verizon's problems are showing that.

ATT and TMO are nice now, because their LTE pipes are fresh and much less congested than Verizon's....Trust me ATT and TMO will too see the slow downs as well as the network become more congested, everyone's running to TMO from Sprint and others like its the 2nd coming, because of the fresh fast LTE, but that wont last too long if TMO doesn't stay ahead.

Again America needs 4 healthy, robust 4G nationwide networks otherwise it's always going to be the game of jumping from carrier to carrier when one shows signs of congestion. Carriers wont admit it but they need each other to maintain Robust Networks keep from having their Networks swamped with refugees from the poor performing network (i.e. ATT- then, Sprint - Now, Verizon - Next?)

 

[Almeuit]

Oh I don't know could it be NYC is the largest city in the country and the most densely populated as well. Not to mention everyone who jumped from Sprint while NV process was just too painful to remain there.

Look as much as we like to cheerlead our carriers....Fact is America needs the 4 Big National Carriers to succeed to Balance the loads of Data Traffic. We simply cannot all fit onto 1 or 2 networks and have them maintain Super Speedy LTE networks... It's a balancing act and Verizon's problems are showing that.

ATT and TMO are nice now, because their LTE pipes are fresh and much less congested than Verizon's....Trust me ATT and TMO will too see the slow downs as well as the network become more congested, everyone's running to TMO from Sprint and others like its the 2nd coming, because of the fresh fast LTE, but that wont last too long if TMO doesn't stay ahead.

Again America needs 4 healthy, robust 4G nationwide networks otherwise it's always going to be the game of jumping from carrier to carrier when one shows signs of congestion. Carriers wont admit it but they need each other to maintain Robust Networks keep from having their Networks swamped with refugees from the poor performing network (i.e. ATT- then, Sprint - Now, Verizon - Next?)

I see what you're saying but the carriers just need to stay up with it in these densely populated areas. In other areas these networks will be fine due to people being spread out more.

Hence why Verizon is throwing money at it.. To fix it.. Because they didn't start to fix it as it declined... They waited for it to hit bottom and now are doing it.

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[Almeuit]

Btw Lenny NYC isn't the largest land wise.. People most likely though.

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[dpham00]

Here in L.A. with Sprint I get 25mb down with LTE.

Why in the hell is Verizon so slow in NY? Makes 0 sense.

There are a variety of factors. I see 60+ pretty regularly too at some locations non peak

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[cgardnervt]

Well I'm sure Verizon will take a few steps and get this corrected. They have a huge sub base and they likely wanna keep it that way. I'm not to hard to please I like my att HSPA+! 10megs down and about 3 up. I"d like to see LTE at some point in VT that is not Verizon but I have a feeling that is not on their priority list! Either way its good to see Verizon has admitted the issue and I'm sure they will fix it. (In time of course.)

 

[lennyj17]

I see what you're saying but the carriers just need to stay up with it in these densely populated areas. In other areas these networks will be fine due to people being spread out more.

Hence why Verizon is throwing money at it.. To fix it.. Because they didn't start to fix it as it declined... They waited for it to hit bottom and now are doing it.

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Stop making excuses for them. If people are paying $ to join that network then they should be putting that money towards expanding their network to make sure their paying customers get what they're paying for.

"But but but..Itz all dense n everything" What? we're they blind sided by the amount of people in NY? They had no idea it's the most populated city in the country?

It's not about "making excuses for them"...Its about understand the checks and balances of wireless.....Spectrum does become congested, there is not an Unlimited amount of Spectrum available, regardless of how much money Verizon throws at it, and the Spectrum they do have gets used up fairly quickly. In big cities like NYC when the majority of people are using 1 carrier in particular and they only have so much spectrum, you seeing the evidence of what happens.

Again you need the four carriers to balance the loads, no one carrier can maintain >50 Mbps in densely populated cities with 10 million users which is about the number Verizon has in the NYC market.

 

[Almeuit]

It's not about "making excuses for them"...Its about understand the checks and balances of wireless.....Spectrum does become congested, there is not an Unlimited amount of Spectrum available, regardless of how much money Verizon throws at it, and the Spectrum they do have gets used up fairly quickly. In big cities like NYC when the majority of people are using 1 carrier in particular and they only have so much spectrum, you seeing the evidence of what happens.

Again you need the four carriers to balance the loads, no one carrier can maintain >50 Mbps in densely populated cities with 10 million users which is about the number Verizon has in the NYC market.

I thought NYC has a population of 8-10 million so how do they have 10? .

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[Almeuit]

Just FYI to show I didn't pull it out my **** .

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[lennyj17]

I thought NYC has a population of 8-10 million so how do they have 10? .

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Just FYI to show I didn't pull it out my **** .

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That just for the city....now pull up the population of the NYC metro area...... You'll be surprised to find NYC METRO has ~20 Million people

 

[cg101]

People in New York have posted speed tests of 1 Mbit down..... That's bad... Very bad.. For LTE.

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I am right outside of NYC in Jersey...like, litterally right outside of Manhattan. I get 13-16 down and 2-5 up, which is well within what Verizon posted as 4G LTE acceptable speeds.

That Shamwow person is just trying to justify caps and take away my unlimited. This is complete and utter nonsense, just like VDC530 stated.

 

[cg101]

Again you need the four carriers to balance the loads, no one carrier can maintain >50 Mbps in densely populated cities with 10 million users which is about the number Verizon has in the NYC market.

The NYC metro area alone has more people living here than the entire population of Canada. (No joke.)

You are absolutely right though...most people (making a decent income/related to someone who does) in the area probably has Verizon. Otherwise it is Sprint/T-Mobile/AT&T and the tertiary cell companies like MetroPCS and Boost and Straight Talk. I do a speedtest of both my mobile and my Jetpack and I get speeds equivalent to basic broadband service. (Compared that to my FIOS where I see 75/35.)

Seriously, I'm ok...I only care about the mi-fi when I'm on the road...use it to VPN to the office or watch some Netflix. Sometimes...and I only say this to get people riled up...I'll even put on a movie on Netflix when I sleep when connected to my Mifi...just because I can...there is more downloads that occur in my sleep in one night than people's entire monthly balance...lmao!! Just think of Jesse Pinkman to finish this phrase...

Unlimited Data...

 

[Almeuit]

That just for the city....now pull up the population of the NYC metro area...... You'll be surprised to find NYC METRO has ~20 Million people

Okay true. Now.. Where are you pulling the data of them having 10 Million subscribers in that area?

Only asking out of curiosity. I know you love Sprint (or used to) and defended their network to death if anyone said anything bad.. But admit you use Verizon because of how bad Sprint is at the moment so it's just interesting to see you defending Verizon.

I personally see no defense for Verizon except it being their advertising worked. Is that bad? Well yes and no. It's not bad because.. Customers.. Money.. Yay! Nuff said for that. As for the yes to being bad is because of spectrum... They have to keep up... But in my opinion it's not a good defense of "well they have lots of people on the network!"... They did that to themselves by advertising... Being the best in coverage and having tons of LTE everywhere. So people bought it.. Pay for it.. Use it.. And now it's the people's fault for using the network they were sold on? No.. Verizon has to keep up.

And by keep up I mean do what they are doing now to fix it... Which I commend them on but they could of done it sooner to prevent the decline in service. It's not like one day everyone was getting 60 Mbit and the next 1... I guarantee you could see the decline on a graph... And you know these networks watch that stuff to stay on top of it. So they waited till it got to the last possible second before pumping in money to fix it... Versus doing preventative spending to not let it get that bad.

Just my 2 cents .

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[dpham00]

Okay true. Now.. Where are you pulling the data of them having 10 Million subscribers in that area?

Only asking out of curiosity. I know you love Sprint (or used to) and defended their network to death if anyone said anything bad.. But admit you use Verizon because of how bad Sprint is at the moment so it's just interesting to see you defending Verizon.

I personally see no defense for Verizon except it being their advertising worked. Is that bad? Well yes and no. It's not bad because.. Customers.. Money.. Yay! Nuff said for that. As for the yes to being bad is because of spectrum... They have to keep up... But in my opinion it's not a good defense of "well they have lots of people on the network!"... They did that to themselves by advertising... Being the best in coverage and having tons of LTE everywhere. So people bought it.. Pay for it.. Use it.. And now it's the people's fault for using the network they were sold on? No.. Verizon has to keep up.

And by keep up I mean do what they are doing now to fix it... Which I commend them on but they could of done it sooner to prevent the decline in service. It's not like one day everyone was getting 60 Mbit and the next 1... I guarantee you could see the decline on a graph... And you know these networks watch that stuff to stay on top of it. So they waited till it got to the last possible second before pumping in money to fix it... Versus doing preventative spending to not let it get that bad.

Just my 2 cents .

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They have been working to fix it for some time now. At my work, it was pretty bad earlier this year. They did something and a few months ago, it got a little better.

At home, speed was declining as well. They added another tower and reconfigured another one. There are at least 3 Verizon towers within 1 mile of my house.

Where there are high rises like at my work, it complicates things because there are just so many people in a small area. That and they are working on band 4 and volte. Yes, they could have planned better, but to say that they waited for the last possible second isn't true, at least in the areas where I use it.

At the same token, att and tmo haven't improved their services at my work, there are still dead zones where there is no signal where Verizon gets signal, albeit being a bit slower than before.

If att or tmobile or even Sprint can provide better total network coverage and coverage where I need, then I would switch in a heartbeat. For me, voice reliability is the most important thing in cell phone service, and afaik, Verizon is still number one overall and in the areas I use most.

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[bontjes]

I thought I'd share my experience. I was near a Verizon Wireless store and could see the tower in Fargo.

I went inside to discuss my results and they told me that they are tired of it to because they have trouble activating new phones.

My town is 130,000 or so people and this has been going on for about 6 months or so.

Before, I had wonderful service and when you go to the next town over it's great again. I get 10mg or better.

Go Fargo North Dakota!

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