Phone Tech question...

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Diane Sudduth

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May 9, 2016, 1:02:20 PM5/9/16
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Hello Tech Friends,

My impression is that most folks reading this discussion board know more about electronics than I do and several of you may very well be "phone geeks", which would be a lovely thing.   Perhaps you can either help me with a problem or help me understand it better (if it can't be resolved)

I have an old (4years +) iPhone 4S that works well enough most of the time.    Or it does unless I'm at work.  They moved me to a new building a couple of weeks ago and I've had a lot of connectivity/contact issues since the move.   I have AT&T.  The phone has 4 of 5 "bars" of signal, it's got a 4G signal, but connecting to the "world outside my building" is incredibly difficult.

It'll take an hour for a text message to arrive most times, text messages I try to send often fail and have to be re-sent a half-dozen times before they go out.   If people call me the phone will almost never ring.   If they leave a voicemail it'll often take 1-2 hours for the VM to arrive.   If they don't leave a VM I don't get a "missed call" notification.   

I did connect to the office guest wi-fi to see if that helped with any of the above and thus I am now getting my email more reliably but it's not helping with calls or texts (I didn't expect it to).

How can I show 4 "bars" of a 4G signal and yet have so little connectivity?    Other than "try a brand new phone", any suggestions?   

Thanks!

Diane  <*>

Travis Megee

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May 9, 2016, 1:10:52 PM5/9/16
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Is it possible that your company has a poorly implemented deployment of femtocells (mini cellular base stations connected via the Internet)?

Travis

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Diane

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May 9, 2016, 1:29:51 PM5/9/16
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I suppose anything is possible.   I would have no idea how to find out, though.   

Diane  <*>

Chris Weiss

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May 9, 2016, 1:35:54 PM5/9/16
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Android phones will show you a different thing in the status when you're connected to a femtocell or microcell.  I don't know about iphones.

Keith Rogers

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May 9, 2016, 1:47:17 PM5/9/16
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The only indication I have on my iPhone of being on my work's femtocell is that location based apps tend to place me in Chicago.  For example, a safari search for Home Depot provides a default google map preview of store locations in Chicago.  I'm on ATT... Not sure if there are other more reliable ways to figure it out.

Sent from my mobile device

On May 9, 2016, at 12:35 PM, Chris Weiss <cwe...@gmail.com> wrote:

Android phones will show you a different thing in the status when you're connected to a femtocell or microcell.  I don't know about iphones.

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Amberly Brown

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May 9, 2016, 1:58:28 PM5/9/16
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One thing to consider, if your phone is normally in your pocket/bag, is that you might have 4 bars of service when you hold it up and look at it, but under your desk/in your pocket it might not. Try leaving your phone in "higher" spot (ie: on top of the desk) and see if that makes a difference. Otherwise, I have no idea.

Amberly

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nfolken

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May 9, 2016, 8:54:58 PM5/9/16
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Have you tried turning it off and on again? :P I know it sounds silly, but often when I'm working at the America's Center I have the same issues, and for some reason restarting it usually fixes it.

Another thing to consider: Is your phone setup to use the wifi at work, or maybe its attaching to a nearby open hotspot with an access portal? It might be trying to do everything over wifi, but unable to.

Diane

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May 9, 2016, 11:27:26 PM5/9/16
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I did pop it into "airplane mode" today, then power-cycled it.  What that taught me was that the "status bar" thingy Lies!   Both times I got "No Service".  It seems to "bounce".  Sometimes service, often times not.   

I did connect to WiFi at the office to see if that helped.  It did to the extent of proving that the most reliable way to catch me at work is going to be email.  :-)

I asked several coworkers their experience.  Sent each a text.  One received it in about 35 min the other not until he walked to his car almost 4 hours later.  

I guess I should be lucky the damned thing works at all!

Diane  <*>

On May 9, 2016, at 7:54 PM, nfolken <niels...@gmail.com> wrote:

Have you tried turning it off and on again? :P I know it sounds silly, but often when I'm working at the America's Center I have the same issues, and for some reason restarting it usually fixes it.

Another thing to consider: Is your phone setup to use the wifi at work, or maybe its attaching to a nearby open hotspot with an access portal? It might be trying to do everything over wifi, but unable to.

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