Today I woke up to slow speeds yet again. “Bummer, still not fixed. All well I guess I’ll live.” Went to work, came home and then around 3pm my data speeds picked up!
Shortly after the speed changed my phone rang. It was Russell P from my local T-Mobile egineering office.
Here’s the whole story.
Monday night after posting the original article I got an email from Simon Walker (Editor and Chief of AndroidSPIN) advising me to get in touch with Les W. So I emailed Les, let him know my location, phone#, etc so that he could look up the notes for my issue. Then I received an email yesterday saying that I should receive an email from the local team either today (Wednesday) or tomorrow.
Needless to say I was getting excited that my issue might actually get fixed this week. Then the data speeds picked up and then the phone call (better than an email).
Here’s what Russell told me. At the end of September there were some upgrades done to several towers around the KC Metro area. (This is when I started having trouble) For the first few weeks of my dilemma they apparently had no clue. But I guess about two weeks ago they noticed the severe throttling (which is what it was, certain towers were throttling everyone for no reason). Then they couldn’t figure out why. I guess over the weekend one of the techs figured it out and they finally got the fix implemented today.
So I am pleased to report that my data speeds are now on par (at least) with Overland Park. So far my top download speed was somewhere around 5 mbps but this test was during peak hours. Not the fastest ever but way better than 175 kbps! Russell also told me that KC is limited to the 21 mbps speed because of FCC regulations (something about frequency availability) but that they are working on getting that lifted so they can do the full 42 mbps!
Couple of thoughts now that this is over. I wish tech support had more information on what was going on locally. If they had known they could have just told me and I would have been soothed a little bit more than, “we’re re-escalating your service request.” The next idea came from Les. We should be crowdsourcing all the data from users. So that users have a way to report problems and let engineers know where problems are faster. If you are a software developer and want to make some killer cash please develop this kind of software to help Networks and users. I’m sure the top four mobile companies will pay top dollar for tech like that. Some kind of third party site that keeps track of data speeds in real time through a mobile app users can use to upload their current reception issues or non-issues. It would be interesting to have a real time speed map of our cities.
Thank you to all the men and women at T-Mobile who do what they do to give us great service. I am especially grateful for Les and Russell and their teams. You guys rock!
About the Author
Tom, glad we could help. Working with customers one on one is some of the most satisfying work we do here in the Engineering Department. Our Customer Care reps do great work, but sometimes their tool bag doesn’t have what they need to resolve real network trouble. T-Mobile does care about our network and works around the clock to deliver the very best customer experience. Thanks again for your help identifying a service impacting condition that needed our attention.
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Disclaimer: I am a T-Mobile employee, my opinions are my own, and not those of T-Mobile.
What about my problems, every damn day. From slow data, to no data, to constantly switching from 2G up to 4G. I think T-Mobile just gave up thinking ATT is goin to take over which wont be the case and by the time this is all done, there gonna have so much money to spend for the repairs they should of had fixed when it went down instead of letting it go for ATT that there gonna be in a bigger hole then expected
So the moral of the story is you need a widely read blog in order for TMO to fix a speed problem. I’ve been calling them for 8 months (I have records of the calls) trying to get them to fix the speed issue in Center City Philadelphia (its only the second largest city on the East Coast and smack downtown…City Hall!!!). Occassionally they acknowledge the issue but its never fixed.
Great job Tom. Is it “editor and chief” or “editor in chief”?