Google Nexus 5 - AT&T LTE APNs and network settings

[scorpiodsu]

Hello everyone,

Not sure if there was already a thread out there for but just wanted to put this out there for those that may be having problems with AT&T LTE. Mine worked perfectly out of the box but I know some users aren't having some trouble and mobile settings for unlocked devices could be tricky at times. Couple things you want to make sure are in place. These are listed in no specific order so you can test them as they apply to your situation.

1. You have a data plan that is LTE provisioned. If you come from a N4 or older iPhone or any other device and never had a device with LTE then it's a strong possibility that your plan is not LTE provision and/or your microSIM cannot pick up LTE if it's a older one that you have been carrying over. So you can do a couple things to check this out: Call AT&T up to see if your current plan is LTE capable. This is something that they can only tell you and not evident by just viewing your account online. If they need to update this you will need to give them your IMEI. Another thing is to stop into an AT&T store. They'll do the same thing and probably swap out the SIM for you as well.

But if you already had an LTE plan before then check the next options

2. Make sure your mobile network is set to LTE. Settings > More > Mobile Networks > Network mode. Set this to LTE.

3. Check the APN settings. Sometimes APN settings can be a little tricky for unlocked phones. Depending on when your SIM card was inserted during setup or if you bought it second hand, it may not have the correct settings for your network. To check the settings Settings > More > Mobile Networks > Access Point Names > ATT Phone

AT&T LTE Network settings are as below:

AT&T APNs

?Name: ATT PTA
?APN: pta
?MMSC: http://mmsc.mobile.att.net
?MMS Proxy: proxy.mobile.att.net
?MMS port: 80
?MCC: 310
?MNC: 410
?Auth: none
?APN type: default,mms,supl,hipri

Make sure your settings match this. Once it does and if everything else is in place you should be getting LTE where it's available. Good luck and please feel free to add if I missed anything.

 

[foxbat121]

Re: AT&T LTE APNs and network settings

You don't need to setup PTA APN anymore. The default Phone APN comes with N5 will work just fine with AT&T LTE. Basically all you have to do is get your data plan provisioned. Everything else just works out of box.

 

[scorpiodsu]

Re: AT&T LTE APNs and network settings

You don't need to setup PTA APN anymore. The default Phone APN comes with N5 will work just fine with AT&T LTE. Basically all you have to do is get your data plan provisioned. Everything else just works out of box.

I agree for the most part but there are cases where the APN may not update automatically. If a person uses a T-Mobile Sim and then sells it to someone with an att Sim. In most cases the APN should update automatically but that isn't always the case. I've already seen threads where users have the wrong port or using the way.cingular. So this just gives options for people to check just in case some settings aren't correct. Everything doesn't always work ideally

 

[scottyb007]

Re: AT&T LTE APNs and network settings

so my phone for the most part works perfectly. The only issue is that some people don't receive my text messages. I receive theirs just fine most of the time. Should i provision my phone to the APN above? Thanks

 

[scorpiodsu]

Re: AT&T LTE APNs and network settings

so my phone for the most part works perfectly. The only issue is that some people don't receive my text messages. I receive theirs just fine most of the time. Should i provision my phone to the APN above? Thanks

You can try. The above have always been my settings for my different LTE devices and never any issues. Take a screenshot of your current settings in case you need to revert back.

Posted via Android Central App

 

[Jonneh]

Call AT&T up to see if your current plan is LTE capable. This is something that they can only tell you and not evident by just viewing your account online.

Actually, you can view this online via your AT&T account. At least, I was able to see my plan was called "Unlimted smartphone data plan" rather than "Unlimted 4G LTE smartphone data plan", which is what I now have.

 

[scorpiodsu]

Actually, you can view this online via your AT&T account. At least, I was able to see my plan was called "Unlimted smartphone data plan" rather than "Unlimted 4G LTE smartphone data plan", which is what I now have.

Agreed but depends on your plan. For instance I'm on mobile share and it just says "mobile share 6gb with unlimited talk & text". One would assume that all mobile share plans are LTE provisioned but not sure how it works behind the scenes if a person never had a LTE phone but are on a mobile share plan and I'll never assume anything with att lol. But I agree with individual plans it should say the data but I'm not even sure how iPhone or blackberry plans are since they were treated different. So again this is just a suggestions and for all accounts it's not the same. But thanks for the info. Much appreciated.

Posted via Android Central App

 

[gidgiddonihah]

Something good to mention: you may have a LTE enabled plan and have the APN setup correctly but still not get LTE. This is because AT&T does not know you have moved from a HPSA+ (or lower) phone to an LTE compatible one. You just need to contact their support and give them the new IME number. I activated mine last night but right after I hung up I I realized my N5 wasn't getting an LTE signal when my mom was. I promptly contacted them again to update the IME number. She had me give her the number, shut the phone down for a few minutes and then boot it back up. Upon reboot it connected to LTE.

I am getting an odd error that it wants to drop signal occasionally. I have seen it do it twice. It drops for a few seconds and then goes right back to 1-2 bars. It also really likes to bounce around signal wise, but that happened to my old S2 as well so I am not too worried about that. I am worried about it dropping a signal but I am not 100% sure that I should have been getting coverage at that time as my coverage wasn't the best to begin with. Anyone have any ideas?

 

[foxbat121]

Something good to mention: you may have a LTE enabled plan and have the APN setup correctly but still not get LTE. This is because AT&T does not know you have moved from a HPSA+ (or lower) phone to an LTE compatible one.

If you never had LTE capable phone (HSPA+ as you mentioned), your data plan is not LTE provisioned. You will need an LTE AT&T phone (or phones that AT&T can recognize the IMEI like Nexus 5) to enable LTE provision on your data plan.

 

[gidgiddonihah]

If you never had LTE capable phone (HSPA+ as you mentioned), your data plan is not LTE provisioned. You will need an LTE AT&T phone (or phones that AT&T can recognize the IMEI like Nexus 5) to enable LTE provision on your data plan.

Well that's just plain odd. I have never owned an AT&T LTE device. I just called them, updated the IME number (the rep told me she didn't mess with my plan), and when I rebooted my phone I had LTE access. Maybe she did change my plan from 3G to LTE and just didn't want to tell me.

 

[foxbat121]

That's what LTE provisioning means. You only need to do it once per account.

 

[ptonantryloc]

I ran across this thread and noticed my APN settings were different:

• Name: ATT Phone
• APN: phone
• MMSC: http://mmsc.mobile.att.net
• MMS proxy: proxy.mobile.att.net
• MMS port: 80
• MCC: 310
• MNC: 410
• APN type: default,mms,supl,fota
• APN protocol: IPv4
• APN roaming protocol: IPv4
• Bearer: Unspecified
• MNVO type: None

All the rest of the entries say "Not set."

I don't know if this makes a difference, but when I got this Nexus 5, I just removed the SIM from my AT&T Lumia 920 and stuck it in this phone. Anyway, AFAIK, the phone works fine. I'm just trying to understand WHY these things differ. Specifically, the differences between my settings and the OPs are:

• Name: I assume it makes no difference -- it's just a label
• APN: pta vs phone -- from the comments, pta isn't needed any more. So these must be meaningful, specific field entries
• APN type: hipri vs fota -- what's the difference. From that thread I mentioned, I found reference to agps, dun, default, fota, hipri, internet, mms, supl, and tether with no explanation of what they mean.

I've been looking across the web and I find oodles of posts where people show their particular settings. But, I can't find anything that explains what these settings mean or why any particular setting (or group of settings) would be better or worse than any other. For instance, in the following year old thread on a different site:

AT&T APNs for custom ROMs - Vivid - RootzWiki

he's got 5 different sets of APN settings that he implies should ALL be present on the device and the phone will switch between them as necessary (of course he's talking about custom ROMS instead of just settings on a stock phone, so maybe that makes a difference). Because I can't find anything that explains why things should be set the way they are, I have no idea if that kind of stuff is even relevant to me. Can someone point me to a primer on what these things mean?

 

[dan1431]

As taken directly from http://developer.android.com/reference/android/net/ConnectivityManager.html#TYPE_MOBILE

hipri = A High Priority Mobile data connection. This network type uses the same network interface as TYPE_MOBILE but the routing setup is different. Only requesting processes will have access to the Mobile DNS servers and only IP's explicitly requested via requestRouteToHost(int, int) will route over this interface if no default route exists.

FOTA= Firmware Over The Air
My understanding from talking with an Engineer at at&t is that it could be used for many different things but that at least in at&t's case it was meant to update various provisioning settings like APN type or other administration related settings.

However in the last few years it has not been used much at all.

Dan

 

[ptonantryloc]

Thank you. I guess I'll look into tacking that hipri onto the end of my APN type.

EDIT: OK. I made some changes and ran Speedtest to see what kind of differences they made. I compared my existing APN type of "default,fota,mms,supl" to "default,fota,mms,supl,hipri" (added hipri) and "default,admin,fota,mms,supl,hipri,internet" (additionally added admin,internet). My Speedtest results in each case (within minutes of each other without moving) were:

Original: 101 ms, 18.13 Mbps download, 1.11 Mbps upload
Add hipri: 194 ms, 19.08 Mbps download, 0.55 Mbps upload (slightly better download; much worse latency and upload)
Add hipri,admin,internet: 98 ms, 8.72 Mbps download, 0.26 Mbps upload (much worse download and upload; slightly better latency)

Overall, I'd say none of them are very good. But, my signal here is its usual not-very-good -97 dbm and 43 asu. Assuming those different results are not purely fluctuations in the ether (i.e., signal), I guess my original settings are the best.

 

[Roger Guillemette]

Hello

SGH-i337m worked on AT&T LTE after after making APN change.

Thank You

 

[anon(8256055)]

Thank you. I guess I'll look into tacking that hipri onto the end of my APN type.

EDIT: OK. I made some changes and ran Speedtest to see what kind of differences they made. I compared my existing APN type of "default,fota,mms,supl" to "default,fota,mms,supl,hipri" (added hipri) and "default,admin,fota,mms,supl,hipri,internet" (additionally added admin,internet). My Speedtest results in each case (within minutes of each other without moving) were:

Original: 101 ms, 18.13 Mbps download, 1.11 Mbps upload
Add hipri: 194 ms, 19.08 Mbps download, 0.55 Mbps upload (slightly better download; much worse latency and upload)
Add hipri,admin,internet: 98 ms, 8.72 Mbps download, 0.26 Mbps upload (much worse download and upload; slightly better latency)

Overall, I'd say none of them are very good. But, my signal here is its usual not-very-good -97 dbm and 43 asu. Assuming those different results are not purely fluctuations in the ether (i.e., signal), I guess my original settings are the best.

Thanks for the results! Here's mine, averaged over 3 runs, rebooted between setting changes:

default,mms, supl,fota,hipri
Ping: 12ms
Download: 30.69 Mbps
Upload: 6.31 Mbps

default,mms, supl,fota
Ping: 13ms
Download: 30.00 Mbps
Upload: 6.39 Mbps

The differences are not much, and probably too close to call. I'll keep it how it was originally (the second set).

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

[Jeffrey Cargile]

I just tried these settings and my Nexus 5 would not connect to the internet. Where I am located, AT&T does not have LTE coverage, only HSPA+. I reverted my settings back to the HSPA+ and I was able to connect to the internet again. The only thing I changed in the settings were the first two lines (Name and APN). Everything else was same. Did I not connect because there was no LTE signal? I would have thought it would pick up the HSPA+ if there was no LTE signal.

 

[aasneller]

Thank you, thank you, thank you!
Got my brand new red Nexus 5 from Play Store yesterday and could not get LTE or data after activating on AT&T
I have spent HOURS the last two days with 4 different customer support reps at AT&T
These APN settings SAVED MY SANITY and no one at at AT&T got even remotely close to this issue