Apple watch radomly drops cell service

We understand the importance of being able to connect with your children, @chasndav04. 

We have a few questions we'd like you to answer to help us get to the bottom of things: 

• Are they losing service in one specific location or is this happening every time they're away from your home's network? Sharing this will let us know if they're traveling in a low coverage area. 
• What's the signal strength on the devices? The network signal strength is displayed in the Control Center as green dots. The more the better. Depending on the network connection, the apple watch may be unable to receive calls. 

Since you've already tried power cycling/resetting the devices, the next step would be to perform a factory data reset. This will reset all settings to their defaults and erase all data stored on the devices, including the contacts, messages, and music. When you perform a factory data reset, a backup of the watch will be stored on the paired iPhone.

• From the clock screen, press the Digital Crown/Home button then select the Settings app.
• Select General, then scroll to and select Reset. 
• Select Erase All Content and Settings, then scroll to and select Erase All to confirm.

Keep us updated on how this information helps! We're here for you. 

Sydne, AT&T Community Specialist

I’ve had the exact same issue and still no resolution.

I’ve had the exact same problem with no resolution. 

Same issue here. 4 times taking the watch back to apple and no issue found. I've now had the watch replaced. I will be changing service after 12 years with AT&T. T-mobile has the same issue. Verizon, I hear works for this watch. I use the watch for the same purpose, to communicate with my daughter and track where she's at. 2 months of dropping, reset then back to normal. Super frustrating. Clearly its on the ATT side and once it loses connection, it stays disconnected. 

Time to switch to another service. Verizon seems to be the only alternative. Tmobile having the same issue. Sad. 12 years... bye At&T. The frustration level is to much with the problem and blaming Apple for this. 

That's one of the reasons why I just purchased the GPS only Apple Watch. Cellular is nice to have but I didn't want to pay the $10 per month plus taxes, and they are not cellular phones so they are limited in range and reliability, at least in my experience with AT&T.

@OttoPylot The 10 bucks is cheap, very cheap. But worthless when the watch drops and wont reconnect without resetting. Having connectivity with a child and also locations services is very important to use and millions of others. Gabb, Gizmo, Garmin etc have a viable market just for this and kids. Apple watch is the best alternative IMO, when it works. Especially as an Apple  device family and me maintaining it. The other solutions all have their issues. Apple was the best, but a bit more money and the extra for a line for $10 was very affordable and cheaper than others. The Problem and "weak link" is AT&T in this case and the fact that re-connection isn't possible without a reset. Sadly, Apple is taking the hit since most blame the watch, as I did, not thinking it could be AT&T. Now Ill pay more for Verizon, but will have connections that work and not so many dead zones that create the issue to start with. 2 months of fighting this and another replacement watch on the way. Apple is stellar in this manner. Att is not. 

@koreycurtis63  I agree with you about Apple and I also agree with you about AT&T. Our kids are grown and gone but you do make a valid point about the cost. We would've switch to VZ a long time ago as well but I have two family members with no data phones who just would not do well with a switch to another provider.

@OttoPylot That makes sense. I'm cringing about thinking of having to "jump through the hoops" to switch to VZN and getting the number ported. I've done it before, and it works as long as they are not like the "Pay for time" plans like Telnet or something like that. But it's still not seamless and a bit of a hassle. For whatever reason, the phones, like our iPhones, don't have this problem and recover when we got out of a bad service area. The watches don't. As an EE engineer, I have my own theories on why. Since my daughter is 9, we dont want her to have a phone, but want that connectivity. Given the dead zones Ive struggled with, using ATT, $10/day international travel use for data, this seems to be the final straw. Not mentioning the stuggle to talk to a live person and have to navigate through all the "front end' service people that are just pawns in the system and to finally get to someone that can help, is an hour at least. IDK. They all have issues but this watch issue is the one that has pushed me over the edge. As I told my wife last night, I dont even want to try to navigate through their (att) phone bots, front end people, just to possibly get disconnected or get someone that still cant help you and says, "reset the watch". That just makes me crazy. Its a waste of time and my energy. I'm posting here only hoping to help others once they get to this point and cant figure out why their 300 dollar watch dont work reliably. Att knows the problem but dont fix it. Possibly tied to the 10 dollar line that is a substandard connection that wont switch towers, which they all do. Tmobile uses others networks and hence the same problem. I expect google phones will have the same issue. 

@koreycurtis63  You could always file a complaint with the BBB. That is forwarded to AT&T Corporate. They review it and then assign the complaint to a Senior Manager in the Office of the President who will contact you. This is an unusual issue so I don't know how helpful they can be but at least you can discuss it with someone who is way above the pay grade of any CS Agent so they may have some ideas. It's worth a shot because that's about as high as a customer can go in AT&T for complaints.