ATT-Cingular Hell - Tower problem help needed

We signed up for a four phone, family plan last fall because the salesman said ATT has the best packages and it is even
going to get better when it joins with Cingular. Well, I do think ATT has a good package, but part two didn't come true.
Cingular has been a disaster for us.

For the past week none of our phones has worked correctly. We can call out, but we cannot receive calls and missed calls
are not shown. We do get voice mail, but it shows up several hours after the voicemail was placed. We have called
Cingular Customer Service each day and all we get are mixed signals and no information that has helped us. There were a couple of good ones, but the rest seemed clueless.

The main cause that is sited is that there is trouble with a tower in Denver and it is affecting everyone in that area. They say they are working on it but are not sure when it will be fixed. I asked, by, "everyone," did they mean Cingular customers also. I was told yes by the CS agent, but when I went to my local Cingular store, they said, yeah, all the ATT customers are having problems, but the Cingular customers are not. "We can fix you up by migrating you to Cingular." Of course you know what that means, worse plan, having to get new phones, migrating charges, etc.

I'm at the end of my rope, we did away with our land line two months ago because we figured why pay an extra $35 a month when everyone already has their own phone.

I hope someone knowledgeable can answer a few simple questions I have and give me some advice of what to do next.

If a tower is bad, why doesn't that impact the outgoing call? I can call out with no problems, but cannot receive? The CS rep said that's just the way it works.

Are both Cingular and ATT calls handled by the same tower? I was told they were, but when I asked why were Cingular customers not affected then, the answer I got was, "I don't know."

At one point we were given a code, #002# then told to turn off the phone. We did that and when the phones came back on, they worked, but only for about ten minutes, then they failed again. Any idea what that was about?

At this point I would just like to break the contract if possible with no penalty, because they cannot provide us service, and go back to T-Mobile, which we had for several years with no problems. Anyone have an idea who I would contact to discuss that?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Sorry to be so long winded, but don't really know what to do next.

Bill

---

› See More: ATT-Cingular Hell - Tower problem help needed

On Tue, 05 Jul 2005 20:35:40 -0400, "Elmo P. Shagnasty"
<[email protected]> wrote:

>In article <[email protected]>,
> "Bill Brauker" <[email protected]> wrote:

The reason as I understand it is that they are not maintaining the ATT
towers. You will be forced to migrate, trust me. I've migrated 3
phones. It works out better in the long run. Just migrate.
--
Scorp

[POSTED TO alt.cellular.cingular - REPLY ON USENET PLEASE]

In <[email protected]> on Fri, 08 Jul 2005 22:35:24
GMT, [email protected] wrote:

>On Tue, 05 Jul 2005 20:35:40 -0400, "Elmo P. Shagnasty"
><[email protected]> wrote:
>
>>In article <[email protected]>,
>> "Bill Brauker" <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>The reason as I understand it is that they are not maintaining the ATT
>towers. You will be forced to migrate, trust me. I've migrated 3
>phones. It works out better in the long run. Just migrate.

While it's true that everyone will be forced to migrate eventually, there's no
truth to the rumor that Cingular isn't maintaining the ATTWS towers. In fact
they're being integrated into the Cingular network.

--
Best regards, HELP FOR CINGULAR GSM & SONY ERICSSON PHONES:
John Navas <http://navasgrp.home.att.net/#Cingular>

[POSTED TO alt.cellular.cingular - REPLY ON USENET PLEASE]

In <[email protected]> on Tue, 5 Jul 2005 17:54:09 -0600,
"Bill Brauker" <[email protected]> wrote:

>We signed up for a four phone, family plan last fall because the salesman said ATT has the best packages and it is even
>going to get better when it joins with Cingular. Well, I do think ATT has a good package, but part two didn't come true.
>Cingular has been a disaster for us.
>
>For the past week none of our phones has worked correctly. We can call out, but we cannot receive calls and missed calls
>are not shown. We do get voice mail, but it shows up several hours after the voicemail was placed. We have called
>Cingular Customer Service each day and all we get are mixed signals and no information that has helped us. There were a couple of good ones, but the rest seemed clueless.
>
>The main cause that is sited is that there is trouble with a tower in Denver and it is affecting everyone in that area. They say they are working on it but are not sure when it will be fixed. ...
>
>I'm at the end of my rope, we did away with our land line two months ago because we figured why pay an extra $35 a month when everyone already has their own phone.
>
>I hope someone knowledgeable can answer a few simple questions I have and give me some advice of what to do next.
>
>If a tower is bad, why doesn't that impact the outgoing call? I can call out with no problems, but cannot receive? The CS rep said that's just the way it works.

You can't depend on what CS reps say.

>Are both Cingular and ATT calls handled by the same tower? I was told they were, but when I asked why were Cingular customers not affected then, the answer I got was, "I don't know."

They aren't.

>At one point we were given a code, #002# then told to turn off the phone. We did that and when the phones came back on, they worked, but only for about ten minutes, then they failed again. Any idea what that was about?
>
>At this point I would just like to break the contract if possible with no penalty, because they cannot provide us service, and go back to T-Mobile, which we had for several years with no problems. Anyone have an idea who I would contact to discuss that?

Insist on speaking to a "supervisor." If that doesn't work, ask for the
"executive office." Don't give up.

--
Best regards, HELP FOR CINGULAR GSM & SONY ERICSSON PHONES:
John Navas <http://navasgrp.home.att.net/#Cingular>

> While it's true that everyone will be forced to migrate eventually, there's no
> truth to the rumor that Cingular isn't maintaining the ATTWS towers. In fact
> they're being integrated into the Cingular network.

In terms of migration, I would expect that the GSM users eventually could be
"imported" into the Orange GSM system, couldn't they? I mean, it's not like a
copy and merge because of different billing features, but I would expect that it
would indeed be possible. I, and other Blue GSM users have not heard anything
about "migration" from Cingular. I heard a rumor that Cingular is only pushing
migration to Orange GSM from both Orange TDMA and Blue TDMA.

Any thought, anyone?

TH

[POSTED TO alt.cellular.cingular - REPLY ON USENET PLEASE]

In <[email protected]> on Sat, 09 Jul 2005 12:01:20 -0400,
Tropical Haven <[email protected]> wrote:

>> While it's true that everyone will be forced to migrate eventually, there's no
>> truth to the rumor that Cingular isn't maintaining the ATTWS towers. In fact
>> they're being integrated into the Cingular network.
>
>In terms of migration, I would expect that the GSM users eventually could be
>"imported" into the Orange GSM system, couldn't they? I mean, it's not like a
>copy and merge because of different billing features, but I would expect that it
>would indeed be possible. I, and other Blue GSM users have not heard anything
>about "migration" from Cingular. I heard a rumor that Cingular is only pushing
>migration to Orange GSM from both Orange TDMA and Blue TDMA.
>
>Any thought, anyone?

Cingular GSM subscribers (orange and blue) can freely roam on both GSM
networks (orange and blue).

--
Best regards, HELP FOR CINGULAR GSM & SONY ERICSSON PHONES:
John Navas <http://navasgrp.home.att.net/#Cingular>

A couple of days after posting this the phones started working again and I have not had any more problems.

Thanks for your response.

Bill

I know the problem is already resolved, but as omeone who has a bit of
knowledge on how these things work, I can maybe do a little write in
case this happens again in the future:

Bill Brauker wrote:

> I hope someone knowledgeable can answer a few simple questions I have
> and give me some advice of what to do next.
>
> If a tower is bad, why doesn't that impact the outgoing call? I can
> call out with no problems, but cannot receive? The CS rep said that's
> just the way it works.

A CS rep may have been told the "tower" is bad, but that likely could
mean anything related to handling the calls is in a fault condition. It
could be that incoming calls are not being correctly routed to the right
central office, or the switching office may, due to some glitch in the
software, not be keeping track of which handsets are registered with the
network, resulting in everyone being listed as "unavailable." Often
though, the engineers and tech in the know aren't inclined to give a
lengthy explanation of these things to a low-level CS rep because it's
likely they won't understand it, and it's also likely that most end
user's won't either. So, the catch-all for any such issue is "the tower
is down," since most end users will accept that and deal.


> Are both Cingular and ATT calls handled by the same tower?

Not exactly. A better way to say this is that both Cingular and AT&T
calls can be handled by either type of tower, BUT, if both happen to
exist in your area, then your phone is likely to try and stick to
whichever cell sites match the logo on your phone. If your phones sport
the AT&T logo, then they're likely to hang on to AT&T towers for dear
life unless there aren't any to be "heard" nearby, and only then will
the phone try a Cingular tower. Though, phones with newer 64K sims are
more likely and willing to user either network.

> I was told
> they were, but when I asked why were Cingular customers not affected
> then, the answer I got was, "I don't know."

What MIGHT be happening in this case is that someone in Cingular's
engineering department mucked things up and set up the switching
software so that all calls, regardless of whether they were for Cingular
Orange or blue customers, would route to orange towers only. The Blue
phones, which by default don't listen to orange towers unless they
absolutely have to, would then not receive these calls, and the network
would simply assume that the phones were turned off, thus rolling the
calls to voicemail. This would of course not affect outgoing calls
because the towers and all outgoing routing functions are workign just
fine; the blue towers were only cut out of the loop when it came to
incoming calls.

This is of course, just a theory. It's certainly plausible though.


> At one point we were given a code, #002# then told to turn off the
> phone. We did that and when the phones came back on, they worked, but
> only for about ten minutes, then they failed again. Any idea what that
> was about?

That code seems to send an instruction to the cell network to turn off
call fowarding. If my above theory is right, then this would make
sense: your phone basically sent a command to the switch saying "I'm
OVER HERE. Send all calls to ME." This instruction would then work for
a while, but would ultimately get overridden again by the default route
programming, reverting back to the same old problem until you re-issue
the command.



--
E-mail fudged to thwart spammers.
Transpose the c's and a's in my e-mail address to reply.

This is so funny...I have had Cingular for 2 years without problem until
the last two months.

Massive error/dialing codes, 8 out of 10 dropped calls...etc...had
handsets replaced x2 already..same problem. (LG and Motorola V400
phones).

Called Cingular...here's a new twist....they said "your in a great
coverage area, we don't know why this is happening" (chicago) and when
asked if the merger is affecting the towers in the area the response
was "well if a tower is down in your area, then your signal
automatically gets routed to the AT&T towers"...huh?

Haven't they been telling people the opposite....I acutally asked him
to repeat that because I thought I had just hallucinated that
response...but NO he did say that.

Have jumped thru every hoop Cingular has asked me to jump thru and
still no decent service...

We are getting handset number 3 tomorrow...I was told that after 3
times they would send a different brand of phone...

They are a shady bunch....they conviently offered to "upgrade" my
hubby's phone (V400) free of charge because they could see just how
many dropped calls he was having....but wait there's a catch (isn't
there always)...

I would have to sign a new two year agreement with them....I actually
was so shocked I couldn't speak....

If the 3rd handset still doesn't provide service, I have no recourse
(if they don't allow contract to be voided) but to take steps towards
litigation. I've been battered and bruised enough by this company.

I have been a good customer, always paid my bills on time and never had
any issue up until now...I think they would value my business rather
then treat me like something they scraped off their shoe.


--
dazedandconfused

On Wed, 13 Jul 2005 03:50:18 +0100, dazedandconfused
<[email protected]> wrote:

>
>This is so funny...I have had Cingular for 2 years without problem until
>the last two months.
>
>Massive error/dialing codes, 8 out of 10 dropped calls...etc...had
>handsets replaced x2 already..same problem. (LG and Motorola V400
>phones).
>
>Called Cingular...here's a new twist....they said "your in a great
>coverage area, we don't know why this is happening" (chicago) and when
>asked if the merger is affecting the towers in the area the response
>was "well if a tower is down in your area, then your signal
>automatically gets routed to the AT&T towers"...huh?
>
>Haven't they been telling people the opposite....I acutally asked him
>to repeat that because I thought I had just hallucinated that
>response...but NO he did say that.
>
>Have jumped thru every hoop Cingular has asked me to jump thru and
>still no decent service...
>
>We are getting handset number 3 tomorrow...I was told that after 3
>times they would send a different brand of phone...
>
>They are a shady bunch....they conviently offered to "upgrade" my
>hubby's phone (V400) free of charge because they could see just how
>many dropped calls he was having....but wait there's a catch (isn't
>there always)...
>
>I would have to sign a new two year agreement with them....I actually
>was so shocked I couldn't speak....
>
>If the 3rd handset still doesn't provide service, I have no recourse
>(if they don't allow contract to be voided) but to take steps towards
>litigation. I've been battered and bruised enough by this company.
>
>I have been a good customer, always paid my bills on time and never had
>any issue up until now...I think they would value my business rather
>then treat me like something they scraped off their shoe.

I tried 2 v400s about 6 months ago and cancelled service after a week.
Now I have a RAZR and it's like night and day.

Part of that could be network improvement but I borrowed an old Nokia
at the time and it worked better for sure at my office.

My guess is that the network integration probably has something to do
with the problem since it worked previously. That should eventually
sort itself out but won't help in the meantime.

[POSTED TO alt.cellular.cingular - REPLY ON USENET PLEASE]

In <[email protected]> on Tue, 12 Jul 2005 16:29:48 -0400,
Isaiah Beard <[email protected]> wrote:

>... A better way to say this is that both Cingular and AT&T
>calls can be handled by either type of tower, BUT, if both happen to
>exist in your area, then your phone is likely to try and stick to
>whichever cell sites match the logo on your phone. If your phones sport
>the AT&T logo, then they're likely to hang on to AT&T towers for dear
>life unless there aren't any to be "heard" nearby, and only then will
>the phone try a Cingular tower.

More precisely, your handset will prefer the Home network programmed into the
SIM card as long as there is a "usable" Home network signal, even when it gets
a much better signal from a non-Home network tower. That's just the way GSM
works.

Thus ATTWS handsets locked to ATTWS SIMs will always prefer the ATTWS (blue)
network, and only roam on Cingular (orange) when there is no "usable" ATTWS
(blue) signal. Likewise Cingular handsets locked to non-ENS Cingular SIMs
will always prefer the Cingular (orange) network, and only roam on ATTWS
(blue) when there is no "usable" Cingular (orange) signal. Unlocked phones
(with the necessary bands), regardless of logo, will prefer the Home network
of the actual SIM card in use.

>Though, phones with newer 64K sims are
>more likely and willing to user either network.

Newer 64K Cingular SIMs are ENS-capable. With an ENS-capable handset (and
only with an ENS-capable handset), the Home network can be programmed OTA
(over the air) by Cingular to either blue (ATTWS) or orange (Cingular).
Otherwise, ENS is just like non-ENS with regard to network preference; e.g.,
ENS programmed to Home on ATTWS (blue) will always prefer ATTWS (blue) over
Cingular (orange). In other words, ENS isn't "more likely and willing to user
either network" on a automatic, dynamic basis.

>What MIGHT be happening in this case is that someone in Cingular's
>engineering department mucked things up and set up the switching
>software so that all calls, regardless of whether they were for Cingular
>Orange or blue customers, would route to orange towers only.

Very, very doubtful -- an essential part of GSM systems is routing calls to
whichever network and cell a given SIM is registered to by a mobile device.

>The Blue
>phones, which by default don't listen to orange towers unless they
>absolutely have to, would then not receive these calls, and the network
>would simply assume that the phones were turned off, thus rolling the
>calls to voicemail.

GSM handsets actually "listen" to all towers that have usable signals, even
when registered on a Home network.

>This would of course not affect outgoing calls
>because the towers and all outgoing routing functions are workign just
>fine; the blue towers were only cut out of the loop when it came to
>incoming calls.

A GSM handset has to register itself with a given tower before being able to
initiate a call.

>This is of course, just a theory. It's certainly plausible though.

Not really.

There can of course be registration failures, but that's why GSM handsets are
programmed to register themselves periodically -- no manual intervention of
special command is necessary.

Bottom line is that this sounds like just a "normal" tower problem, probably
one that would affect multiple subscribers.

--
Best regards, HELP FOR CINGULAR GSM & SONY ERICSSON PHONES:
John Navas <http://navasgrp.home.att.net/#Cingular>

[POSTED TO alt.cellular.cingular - REPLY ON USENET PLEASE]

In <[email protected]> on Wed, 13 Jul 2005 03:50:18
+0100, dazedandconfused <[email protected]> wrote:

>Called Cingular...here's a new twist....they said "your in a great
>coverage area, we don't know why this is happening" (chicago) and when
>asked if the merger is affecting the towers in the area the response
>was "well if a tower is down in your area, then your signal
>automatically gets routed to the AT&T towers"...huh?

Indeed -- if all Home towers are completely down (no usable Home network
signal), blue Home SIMs will roam automatically on orange, and vice versa.

>They are a shady bunch....they conviently offered to "upgrade" my
>hubby's phone (V400) free of charge because they could see just how
>many dropped calls he was having....but wait there's a catch (isn't
>there always)...
>
>I would have to sign a new two year agreement with them....I actually
>was so shocked I couldn't speak....

How is that at all "shady?" That's SOP for an upgrade as compared to
replacement.

>If the 3rd handset still doesn't provide service, I have no recourse
>(if they don't allow contract to be voided) but to take steps towards
>litigation. I've been battered and bruised enough by this company.

First, return all subsidy equipment, and insist that your account be closed
without termination charges.

>I have been a good customer, always paid my bills on time and never had
>any issue up until now...I think they would value my business rather
>then treat me like something they scraped off their shoe.

No offense, but I think you're being unrealistic.

--
Best regards, HELP FOR CINGULAR GSM & SONY ERICSSON PHONES:
John Navas <http://navasgrp.home.att.net/#Cingular>

[POSTED TO alt.cellular.cingular - REPLY ON USENET PLEASE]

In <[email protected]> on Wed, 13 Jul 2005 08:46:21
-0400, [email protected] wrote:

>I tried 2 v400s about 6 months ago and cancelled service after a week.
>Now I have a RAZR and it's like night and day.
>
>Part of that could be network improvement but I borrowed an old Nokia
>at the time and it worked better for sure at my office.

Most or all was probably network improvement -- the RAZR isn't that different
from the V400 in terms of RF capability. As for the Nokia, there may have
been other differences (e.g., band capability) that explain the difference --
the V400 is pretty good RF performance.

>My guess is that the network integration probably has something to do
>with the problem since it worked previously. That should eventually
>sort itself out but won't help in the meantime.

Agreed.

--
Best regards, HELP FOR CINGULAR GSM & SONY ERICSSON PHONES:
John Navas <http://navasgrp.home.att.net/#Cingular>

dazedandconfused <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> I have been a good customer, always paid my bills on time and never had
> any issue up until now...I think they would value my business rather
> then treat me like something they scraped off their shoe.

Welcome to the way the world works now - almost no company cares about any
customer anymore (unless you spend a ridiculously large amount with them).
If you leave, there'll be a dozen more to replace you in an instant. This
pretty much holds true with any company anywhere that I've dealt with that
has sucked in some way or another that I've had to leave.

brian
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If you want to reply to this message by mail, you will
have to change the reply address to [email protected]

On Sat, 09 Jul 2005 00:52:58 GMT, John Navas
<[email protected]> wrote:
>>The reason as I understand it is that they are not maintaining the ATT
>>towers. You will be forced to migrate, trust me. I've migrated 3
>>phones. It works out better in the long run. Just migrate.
>
>While it's true that everyone will be forced to migrate eventually, there's no
>truth to the rumor that Cingular isn't maintaining the ATTWS towers. In fact
>they're being integrated into the Cingular network.

Actually, this not true. They are converting a percentage of the TDMA
towers to GSM. This results in less coverage for TDMA users.

You can call that "integrating" into the Cingular network, but it's
not a very honest claim.

Cingular should wait until the last TDMA contract ends, and then shut
everyone's butt off. But not during their contract where their only
option is to sign a longer contract or not use their service.

I have trouble with telling a company that I'm displeased with the
service it provides me, and then the only answer they can offer is
that I sign up to stay longer.

MP-

--
"Learning is a behavior that results from consequences."
B.F. Skinner