I was in Manhattan, NYC yesterday because my wife had to work. She’s Assistant Director of Student Rights and Responsibilities at The New School and Saturday the university had Parent Sessions prior to the beginning of the school year. Code of conduct, etc. blah blah.... I’m really here to talk about the 3G reception problems NYC has been having recently.

As I mentioned in my previous entry, my 3G reception (voice and data) has been fine after my full restore with the 2.02 firmware and no backup, at least in New Jersey. Even with a smidgen of a single bar, I’ve been able to transfer data over 3G faster than Edge and Voice has been crystal clear. The same holds true for Voice in NYC. I actually had at least four bars outside with 3G and Voice was crystal clear. Inside, only a single dot, but voice communications were fine. Data is where everything fell apart though. I could not transfer anything in any internet capable App (Safari, Mail, Google Maps, Twitterific, etc.). Data transmission wasn’t just slow, it was non-existant! Switching to Edge restored data functionality at a somewhat good clip. WiFi of course was the way to go for wherever I had a connection.

In further research on the Apple Forums and on other forums online, I found that this was a shared experience across NYC for the past week. Many have said that they had fine data transmission until about August 18 or maybe a little earlier. At that point it was spotty, non-existant, or only seemed fine late in the evening. Much has been said about 3G dense areas and corresponding saturation of 3G data causing outtages in many cities. I experienced this first hand yesterday in NYC. A few blamed this on the iPhone and Apple, but my experience (and that of many other people) show that 3G data is fine outside the confines of population centers. Some forum entries have AT&T customer service responses showing this to be a problem on their network specific to these population centers and that they are building out the Hardware in the areas affected. Let’s hope they get the situation fixed soon. Whatever the case, this is DEFINITELY not just an iPhone 3G software problem. AT&T must get their 3G network up to snuff in one of the largest markets in the world before the iPhone gets further bad (and undeserved) press.

UPDATE: Follow the link for more proof that the iPhone 3G data problems are Network related and not Hardware related at AppleInsider.

Tags: 3G, data, reception, voice, iphone, apple, firmware, Update, new york, nyc, new jersey, manhattan, newschool