iPhone 5s LTE data reception in Midtown Manhattan (East)
PDNYC
Newbie

Would anyone who has upgraded from the iPhone 5 to 5s kindly share their experience of Verizon's LTE data reception in Manhattan Midtown East (Park Avenue, mid 40s).  I switched to Verizon from AT&T last year, as AT&T reception in my old office in Midtown West was terrible.  However, my company moved across town recently, and I now get no data reception when I am in the office.  My iPhone indicates 3 of 5 bars and the LTE logo, but nothing is coming through.  I have tried all the usual resets, restarts etc. and nothing seems to fix it.  Others on Verizon in my building seem to have similar issues and unfortunately a cell booster is not an option.  Voice calls come in, but just no data.  I know that there are a lot of people in this part of NYC on weekdays, and I really don't want to go back to AT&T but it's pretty frustrating when I see that my AT&T work blackberry has full reception here and works fine, so clearly the building is not impenetrable to data signals!

I couldn't see anything in the specs for the 5s that would indicate a better antenna or any reason for an improved LTE data reception, but am curious whether others have experienced improved service in this area with the 5s over the 5, as I would consider paying for the ETF and upgrade if it improved the data issue enough for me to send and receive gmail during the day.  iOS 7 upgrade has not helped.

thanks

Labels (2)
0 Likes
Re: iPhone 5s LTE data reception in Midtown Manhattan (East)
Ann154
Community Leader
Community Leader

I think I read the radios had more frequencies it could connect to. I don't know if it is a different or improved radio.

I'm most definitely NOT a VZW employee. If a post answered your question, please mark it as the answer.

0 Likes
Re: iPhone 5s LTE data reception in Midtown Manhattan (East)
jazz290
Newbie

My office is on 41st & Lex, I just got the 5S last night, upgraded it to iOS 7.0.1...

This was a complete failure. Phone showed 1 dot on LTE, but could not send/receive any data. Did a factory refresh and wiped it clean, no improvement. Store in GCT was trying to convince me it was acceptable to not get service on 41st b/c of the bldgs.

Had the same experience whether I was on the street or 19th floor where my office is.

Full strength when disabling LTE and using 3G but then what's the point.

I am getting decent speed on the street in Financial District (6Mbps/4Mbps) but it drops when I get into my apt (1/0.5).

Because I was grandfathered for unlimited data, I paid the full price for a 64GB 5S, $849... and now I wil be seeing that credit back on my CC because the moral of the story is upgraded from my 4S primarily for LTE, everything else was icing. If the phone is a brick on LTE, I'll stick with my 4S.

I wish you better luck. I've been with VZ for 15+ years (when they were BAM) and this is one of those moments where I really am considering leaving. For me, I'm on a month to month term so no ETF (but full price phones), so no harm to me. But I'd be angry if I was in a 2 year contract.

Crying shame...

0 Likes
Re: iPhone 5s LTE data reception in Midtown Manhattan (East)
Intocable
Contributor - Level 2

forget about data in midtown manhattan. just be happy you can make a phonecall and get texts from time to time. VERIZON DATA COVERAGE IN MANHATTAN IS NONEXISTENT.

i will be porting my number next week to tmobile and grab a note 3.

just today after work i walked to tmobile store in west 34 street.

i held my verizon galaxy s 3 along with a tmobile galaxy s 4 and did a speedtest.

BOTH RUNNING LTE ON THEIR RESPECTIVE NETWORKS

my galaxy s 3 gave me 683kbps download and gave me an error on the upload(too slow)

the tmobile galaxy s 4 showed 7599 kbps download and 9823 kbps upload.

that was all i needed to see.

0 Likes
Re: iPhone 5s LTE data reception in Midtown Manhattan (East)
PDNYC
Newbie

Thanks for sharing; sorry to hear you're having trouble too.  I had been on unlimited data with AT&T and was annoyed at having to give it up when I moved to Verizon, but I figured unlimited data wasn't much use if I couldn't actually use it.

I spoke to a Verizon rep yesterday who said that they were aware of the issue in our building.  He also confirmed it is a bandwidth capacity problem (i.e. too many people in a small area trying to access the network) rather than a reception problem, based on some diagnostics we ran on my phone and the fact that I'm generally getting 3 bars.  I mentioned to him that AT&T is in the process of installing transceivers into each floor of this building, so they should do something soon to avoid losing customers.

What it came down to is that he said they were working on it, but didn't give any specifics.  I'll give it a few months and see if things improve.

0 Likes
Re: iPhone 5s LTE data reception in Midtown Manhattan (East)
PDNYC
Newbie

Thanks - definitely has me thinking about a provider switch.  I'm going to give it a few months and see if things improve at all.  Maybe VZW rolling out its AWS spectrum will free up some of the congestion in this area.  I think I would be more understanding if this was a problem related to the LTE signal not getting to my phone, but that's clearly not the case, as confirmed with a VZW rep over the phone.  Having sufficient capacity to avoid this type of data congestion in midtown Manhattan should really be a higher priority for VZW than it seems to be if they expect to make a legitimate claim as #1 network in NYC.  I feel as though they rely on the perceived difficulty of changing providers to keep customers tied in rather than addressing the problem and making customers satisfied.

If not, I'll be behind you in the line at T-Mobile.  Going to listen to some music on my "iPod touch" now.

0 Likes