Cell phone LTE reception issues

Factual Questions
1

Here’s my situation. iPhone 5s. AT&T. (They suck, I know.)

When it works, it’s great. The LTE that is.

But at work, it’s awful. I have 4 bars of LTE which should be plenty. But I can stream more than 3-5 seconds of video without playback crashing to a halt to buffer. It acts as if I have 1 bar of 3G service.

Why?

If I had awful reception here, it’d make sense. I know it’s not my phone, and it’s an issue that is consistent at work. 4 bars, awful internet connectivity.

Is this a… I dunno, bad setting at the local tower? Are the bars lying to me? Is it an alien invasion?

Would love to know how strong reception and poor speeds make sense so I can discover if there’s a way to fix it.

Ps. AT&T has an app called “mark the spot” that informs them of issues. I’ve reported this many times. No change yet.

2

Congestion. The big problem with mobile data is that the data rate they advertise is what you can get if there is no-one else using the same cell. Once you get more than a few active users you start to share the available data bandwidth, and especially in city areas the measly slice of bandwidth left to you can be worse than a bit of wet string. It doesn’t matter how strong the signal is, if there is no room left, you get nought.

3

Fair enough. But we are kind of in the boondocks of Burbank. Near a small airport and some industrial parks and office comexes. But even on weekends, when offices are empty, the problem persists. You may be right, I could be grossly underestimating tbe number of people here.