Forced to Transition to 5G Cellular

For those that have 4GLTE phones like I do that are connected to the AT&T network are going to have to bite the bullet and do the upgrade to 5G. As the phone companies transition their towers to the newest technologies there is something that you may not know.

For years I have used AT&T as a cell provider. I have used it for my phone and Internet. A few months ago my cellular signals degraded substancially. I am talking from -80DB to -118DB. This change was seemingly overnight. I decided to call 611 and speak with AT&T technical support to see if there was something strange going on in my area, perhaps a cellular site that was down or perhaps something wrong with our phones and Internet.

After working with technical support they sent out some over the air updates to my phones and were able to increase the signal slightly. They told me that they were doing 5G upgrades in my area so that I may have problems until the upgrade was complete. The suggestion was to hard reboot my phones, watches and Internet daily and that they would be done in a few weeks. They also suggested I upgrade to a 5G phone. We have one 5G phone in the house and that is my wifes. Through this entire process she continued to have a strong signal – and no loss of data – dropped calls or lost calls. My 4GLTE IPhone have continued to have issues to this day. Our home Internet has to be rebooted at least 3 times a week – my phone daily – and multiple times a day switching on and off – airplane mode to get it to work.

It has been over a month now and I still have the same issues with all my 4G LTE devices and my wife continues to have no issues with her 5G device. I decided to look at the coverage map from AT&T and it has been updated and shows very good 5G coverage but less 4G coverage. After looking at a cellphone tower map it was easy to see what had happened. There is one tower left in my area that seems to be providing 4G LTE coverage -and many small towers that are providing 5G coverage due to the shorter distance that the signal can travel. Also I am guessing that the 4G towers are overloaded and the 5G towers are not – because there is less phones using that bandwith. What happened is the upgrade was done – however AT&T is not going to spend any money on a technology that is going away – so 5G is good – 4G is not so good and 3G is gone.

The solution that you won’t like is that you will be forced to upgrade your phones if you want good service. I need to say that I am in a rural area so what you may experience in metro areas may be completely different. AT&T told me that I would have to upgrade my phone or try a different provider. In my area AT&T trumps T-Mobile and Verizon so I was left with little choice.

Eventually all of us have to upgrade our phones with the technology; 3G users were left out in the cold earlier this year – so we all know that we are going to have to bite the bullet.

I would say – look for some great phone upgrade deals. I have a IPhone 11 Pro – and was given $700 for a trade to upgrade to a IPhone 13 Pro Max with more memory. That was a cost to me out of pocket for $400 but that is cheap right now compared to how it will be when the IPhone 14 comes out. I would say take the hit now – and you will be better off later since all carriers are on the move to 5G.

Don’t expect to see these companies invest money into old technology, after all their goal is to sell phones and sell services – if they don’t they will be out of business. As long as the technology continues to improve so will the costs of keeping up with it. I would say – better to bite the bullet now than later on.

If your situation is similar to mine you will be forced to upgrade. Can’t say I blame the carriers but it sure hurts the pocket book.