Slow/Poor LTE in Boulder/Longmont Area

Hello @adicool007

Thank you for sharing your concerns about the Network issues you have been experiencing in your area.  Denver is definitely a major focus for AT&T and expanding our network. Please click here to read about the specific improvements coming to the Denver area.  To find out about all network improvements, scroll down towards the bottom of the article, and click where it says “For updates on the AT&T wireless network, please visit the AT&T network news page”. 

We appreciate you being an AT&T customer so we hope the network improvements will allow us to continue serving you!

Thanks

Charise

Hi Charise,

Thank you for sharing the information regarding the Denver area updates for AT&T.

Unfortunately, it doesn't do much for coverage in my area. I suppose it may not be that much of a priority - however, when I see other providers ensuring better coverage in the Boulder/Longmont area, I wonder why AT&T didn't do so. I think what Northern Colorado, Boulder/Longmont area needs is more towers and more capacity (i.e. more spectrum) - hope AT&T has those in its upcoming network expansion plans.

My biggest concern is why AT&T wouldn't provide better capacity and coverage in a downtown area (Boulder and Longmont downtowns) - which gets decent amount of usage. 

I hope you do understand my concern of paying for high quality cell phone service and not being able to use it due to poor or non-existent coverage.

Thanks.

Hi Homeworker68,

I completely agree with you - AT&T's service is just barely at 4G speeds in Longmont. I performed some tests at various times of the day and noticed that the worst network speeds are at lunch time - on full LTE signal - I get about 1-3Mbps down and <1Mbps up. In South Longmont - I believe the service is specifically worse, especially in the Prospect area, near the DMV etc. For your home I think a Microcell would solve the problem.

With regards to service in other states/areas - I recently visited Texas - the network is really good there. You actually get to use the data you pay for - since the network can handle it.

On the subject of upcoming network improvements - I have been using an Android App called LTE Discovery and it has been indicating that AT&T has enabled a second LTE network. However, they just need to complete all the upgrades quickly - otherwise we will have to put up with the slower network for a lot longer.

I think AT&T has good prospects for Colorado - however, my issue is more that the upgrades are not getting completed in a timely manner. My main concern is that areas such as Downtown and Hwy 119 - which I would consider as busy corridors have very poor service. My friends using Verizon don't seem to have this issue, which is frustrating.

Thanks for replying to the thread - its good to know I am not alone!

After nearly 20 years with AT&T I'm now shopping around.  The service all over incorporated Boulder County is awful.  Longmont has one of the top 5 home broadband offerings in the US yet we can't get cell service that was in most small towns by the late 90's.

I get no coverage in a 10 block area of dowtown (where I live), no LTE, and only one bar of service in all of south Longmont and west Longmont. In fact, the areas that I don't any or only one bar of service far outnumber the areas of the city where I do get useable service. I have been with AT&T for 20 years (since they were Bell South) and have been happy with them, but this is so bad that it is about to drive me away for good. I've lived here a year, it was going on two years prior to that, they are aware of it, and don't obviously care. They still continue to misrepresent their coverage on the coverage map for the area, and it is even so bad that the one AT&T authorized dealer in Longmont gave me a free Microcells so I can at least make a call from my house. According to them, a tower was downed during the flood in 2013. That 3 years! It's obvious AT&T cares less about replacing it. I am done with them. Within the next few days, I will be a Verizon customer for good. Thanks for blatantly lying on your coverage map and refusing to correct coverage problems you have known about for 3 years. Horrible ethics and customer service. As frustrating is when you call in to discuss it, they act like it's all new news to them. I gave them a chance, but they didn't care. I'm done with it!

Sincerely,
A once loyal customer

Hi tbone-CO

Given the competitive nature of cell phone service these days - I would always suggest shopping around. I did move to Verizon for a small amount of time and found that their service was worse for the part of Boulder County I care about. 

I would strongly suggest you figure out what is important to you - coverage, data speed, price per GB of data etc. T-mobile and Sprint give you "unlimited" data - you have many restrictions - while Verizon and AT&T don't put too many restrictions - but charge you a good amount for their service. 

While Longmont is a "Gigabit city" as they call it - Boulder County also has a habit blocking cell tower permits, putting major restrictions on height of tower, how it should look etc. - making coverage a major issue. A recent article on cell phone service by the Denver Post - found that Denver metro ranks last in the mobile broadband speeds in the nation's top 125 markets.

Lastly (much to the annoyance of T-mobile) - I suggest you go see the RootMetrics report for Denver for 2H of 2016 - you will be suprised to see its findings.

Hope this helps!

Hi bjohnston024,

I completely see your point - I have been with AT&T since 2006 - so about half the time you have been with them. And I am also very frustrated with them - but the ground reality doesn't let me leave them yet. 

After spending considerable amount of time studying how AT&T operates their network - I can tell you a few things - calling customer service is all but useless, they know nothing about ground realities and the network isn't improving any time soon. Secondly, moving to Verizon doesn't fix things - especially for all of Longmont - I have tried their service and moved back - since it kept dropping calls on my drive between home and work - Southwest Longmont - Airport road and Clover Basin drive. Talking to reps at the store - the answers I received were somewhere between "yes we know and will take 2 years to fix" to " yes we know, it will never improve".

Nothing about the 2013 Floods has any impact on downtown Longmont or any part of Longmont as it stands today (in fact, AT&T has removed a tower in Niwot, since they felt 2 bars of LTE was enough on Hwy 52 and parts of 287). AT&T's philosophy is centered around the highest profit margin - every operator in the industry looks up to their number. So they carefully design their network to have the least number of towers needed to get the most coverage (coverage includes 4G non-LTE as well) - so 1 bar is considered a "covered area". Also, they are not interested in the 20x20 LTE coverage that allows Verizon and T-mobile to provide great speeds - they are all about using the least amount of spectrum (air waves) they need to ensure that you are as unhappy with them as you will be with the others. For Colorado, they own the largest swath of airwaves - so essentially they can always use about 50-60% of their resources and still be about the same performance as the others. Lastly, AT&T puts up towers only where the money flows in - for Southwest Longmont, there is on tower at the airport - that covers all the residential areas here and the Twin Peaks mall (all with 2-3 bars of LTE at most), so they maximize the return on investment for that tower.

I recently visited California and Texas - very competitive markets where AT&T is clearly working hard - your LTE rarely drops to 1 bar and even then is very usable (about 5mpbs+ on 1bar, I'd be lucky to see 3-4mbps in 3-5 bars during the day in Longmont). In those markets, Verizon and T-mobile own a decent chunk of airwaves - so AT&T can't be complacent there. 

There are many more details to this argument - but I have bored you enough I guess. The final issue for me was technology - AT&T and T-mobile can hand over calls from 4G LTE to 3G fairly easily - however, Verizon cannot - making areas of poor coverage very frustrating on Verizon - not to mention Verizon's 3G data is pretty much unusable. If you want breath of coverage - Verizon is your carrier nationwide, T-mobile is great in urban areas - but too expensive for me (with their latest T-mobile One plan). If you are okay with middle of the pack - AT&T it is!

From my perspective - if Verizon were to put up a tower in my area or T-mobile improved it's rural coverage a bit more (where it stands now is good progress but not great and prepaid is still affordable) - I'd be outta here!

Hope this helps - sorry for the ramblings!

Longmont has large dead zones in major areas of the city, including all up and down Main Street. I've reported them numerous times (at least 10), and yet every time they act as though they had no idea there were any problems in Longmont. A tower was destroyed during a flood over 3.5 years ago. They have yet to fix the problem and obviously don't care to. Horrible service. Avoid them at all cost if you are in Boulder County, or anywhere along the front range. 

the worst part (other than no coverage) is how the local dealer and their tech support both deny any knowledge of this problem. Numerous forums, tons of suff on other websites about it, been going on for over 3 years, yet they deny it. So unethical.