For the last five weeks my data speed has been horrible. No I’m not being throttled there’s no way I can reach my 5 GB max with these poor speeds. I can’t figure out what happened. (Before you think it… Yes I’m in a 4G coverage area.)
Local folklore is that there was a T-Mobile tower near my home that needed to come down due to a property dispute. I don’t know all the details. I think the man who owned the land wanted to develop it or sell it. Point is it needed to come down.
Problem is it’s been a month since the tower has been replaced by this new one. (I don’t really know if it’s new) My data speed is literally about 300 kbps max. But the average speed is more like 175 kbps. It feels like I should be hearing the familiar sound of a dial up modem and, “You’ve got mail,†when I check my Gmail.
So far I’ve called Customer care five times. All except for the second time T-Mobile Customer Care has been fantastic. They’ve treated me as a part of the solution and not the problem which I appreciate. There is a reason they are #1 for customer support. But I’m not seeing any results. I want results, not just well mannered customer service. Also when I’ve asked about the tower relocation story they don’t have any information about it. To be honest I don’t expect a call center rep to have information like that but the local engineers should know what happened and at least be able to verify or negate the story. I have yet to hear any official word on the validity of the story. Frankly I don’t care what happened. I just want it fixed!
Right now I’m trying to download the Juggernaut v2.0 ROM for my Galaxy S II and Chrome (tethered via usb) is telling me it’s going to take seven hours to download the 259 MB ROM. I’m so depressed about the whole thing. I was really hoping that this ultra amazing 4G phone was going to blow my mind. But because of this tower issue it’s been quite a yawn!
Now if I travel to the more affluent parts of town (Overland Park, KS; I live in Grandview MO a suburb of Kansas City) the data speeds are pretty good. I think my fastest was somewhere in the 13 mbps range (in my car at a red light). The SGSII is supposed to be able to pull a theoretical 42 mbps but of course real world numbers almost never reach the theoretical numbers. I would hate to think that T-Mobile shows favoritism toward more affluent areas. But I gotta say it’s starting to feel that way. South KC in general doesn’t have the greatest data speeds. The fastest I’ve pulled is 7 mbps near the highway. Nice, but not blazing.
So what are your data speeds like? Where do you live? Have you noticed similar trends in your city? Leave your comments and let us know.
