HELP! Nexus 4 MetroPCS activate/data issue

[OcalaFlGuy]

Nexus 4 stock, unrooted. I activated the sim and phone a couple hours ago via Live Chat at Metro.com.

I was getting 3-5 Mps on CDMA.

I know I won't show LTE as I am now even though *my town IS a LTE area*.

I am only showing "H" or "3G" and the speeds are around 1sh with one blip UL to 3.8.

Here is one thing that concerns me.

When I set the APN for it "APN Enable/Disable" is supposed to be set at "Enabled". On my N4 that is grayed out and I Can't Enable it. I am thinking that has my APN hosed up.

HELP?!

Bruce in Ocala, Fl-Yes I will also post this to the Metro area

 

[Rukbat]

If your APN is hosed you'll have no internet access. Not slow, not bad - none at all. If you have internet access - even enough to see this site, your APN is working. 3G is about 1meg.

 

[OcalaFlGuy]

I keeping flopping between H and 3G with horrible speeds and the tower is only about 1/2 mile away.

If this is it for me, I'll have to go back to the Spirit and it's supposedly sold.

If I select the Metro APN I get this slow data but Metro chat told me to use the APN with fast.t-mobile.com, on that I lose ALL data. WTH?!

Bruce in Ocala, Fl

 

[Shabbypenguin]

in the system settings what is your signal? -50 is like you are sitting on the tower, -100 is poor signals and may result in dropped calls and slow speeds. andthing lower than -100 may as well be considered a waste, your phone will constantly search for better signal draining the battery

 

[OcalaFlGuy]

-101 to -99 dBm 5-7 asu

Can this be APN setting related?

Bruce in Ocala, Fl

 

[Rukbat]

I keeping flopping between H and 3G

Basically the same thing under different names.

If I select the Metro APN I get this slow data but Metro chat told me to use the APN with fast.t-mobile.com, on that I lose ALL data. WTH?!

Computer-reading robots should stick to saying "I dunno" and leave the engineering to the engineers. If you try to connect to a gateway your phone isn't registered to (which is what he told you to do), it won't accept you and you get nothing. It's like connecting to your neighbor's wifi signal and making up a password - it won't work.

-101 to -99 dBm 5-7 asu

Can this be APN setting related?

The APN settings determine WHETHER you connect, not how well you connect. If you get 1bps, your APN settings are correct.

Install Signal Check Lite and see what you're getting. And see if you can get the tower IDs from them - the tower really close to you may not be the one you're connecting to. That could be a TMobile-only tower and the nearest one that accepts Metro signals could be 10 miles from you. (Don't expect customer "service" to know this - you might have to speak to network or engineering people.)

 

[Shabbypenguin]

that would be my guess, you arent actually connecting to the same old tower you used to. whats the numbers on your spirit? if i had to guess its prolly more of -87 or so on the spirit and that is decent enough signal

my tower is about a block and a half away and i get good signal (lte is measured differently)

 

[OcalaFlGuy]

The Spirit right now is showing -96, 2 asu.

I was getting 3-5 Mps here on CDMA.

I just did some speedtests showing H with 1 or 2 bars and rocked in with .05, .09, .11 DL, this obviously won't work.

I'll D/L that app in a bit when the phone is not almost dead.

I'd really hate to have to give the new Spirit owner their money back and get hooked back up to CDMA tomorrow. That would be a lot of effort getting this N4 for nothing.

Bruce in Ocala, Fl

 

[alfick3]

The Spirit right now is showing -96, 2 asu.

I was getting 3-5 Mps here on CDMA.

I just did some speedtests showing H with 1 or 2 bars and rocked in with .05, .09, .11 DL, this obviously won't work.

I'll D/L that app in a bit when the phone is not almost dead.

I'd really hate to have to give the new Spirit owner their money back and get hooked back up to CDMA tomorrow. That would be a lot of effort getting this N4 for nothing.

Bruce in Ocala, Fl

Sorry to hear of your troubles, Mr Bruce.

 

[alfick3]

Mr Bruce, did you get your N4 running with good data?

 

[OcalaFlGuy]

Funny you should ask Al, I just checked in here before bed.

Actually, mostly fixed. Much, MUCH improved over what I've had all weekend.

No help at all actually to Bad Info from both Here AND Metro. (Actually the Mothership came the closest to the real answer.)

The answer is, APNs DO MATTER, it's NOT just a Go/No go situation as some have reported. I accidentally Bumped Into the answer not 15 minutes ago.
I'll write it all up tomorrow.

I now have better speeds than on CDMA but not by a lot though the signal is much more consistent. Good enough such that the LTE enable isn't so Critical as before.

Bruce in Ocala, Fl

 

[Shabbypenguin]

Funny you should ask Al, I just checked in here before bed.

Actually, mostly fixed. Much, MUCH improved over what I've had all weekend.

No help at all actually to Bad Info from both Here AND Metro. (Actually the Mothership came the closest to the real answer.)

The answer is, APNs DO MATTER, it's NOT just a Go/No go situation as some have reported. I accidentally Bumped Into the answer not 15 minutes ago.
I'll write it all up tomorrow.

I now have better speeds than on CDMA but not by a lot though the signal is much more consistent. Good enough such that the LTE enable isn't so Critical as before.

Bruce in Ocala, Fl

What i said is the truth, you have terrible connection signal. whether or not you fixed your issue by tweaking apns is another thing. regardless apologies for being no help at all, ill try to avoid doing that in the future

 

[OcalaFlGuy]

I didn't mean to sound unappreciative that peeps would try to help me, I DO appreciate that. It's just that incorrect info had me worried for two days now about a poor signal that didn't exist.

And, it's more than Just "tweaking" the APN.

At least in MY case, can't tell jack about the signal until you get the APN correct.

I still love ya Shabster.

[EDIT] PS; I'd like to point out that I didn't go pointing fingers at anyone here. We all make mistakes. What's important to me really is that someone Did try and help me out. I DO appreciate That.

Bruce in Ocala, Fl

 

[OcalaFlGuy]

Ok, I take back the part about the bad info.

It was VERY late last night when I first THOUGHT I'd figured everything out. I was wrngh. I hadn't figured everything out.

In fact, now I'm even Worse Off.

Here's what happened.

All weekend long with these uber slow data speeds something stuck in my mind from the chat with Metro on my activate about APNs. The Metro lady wanted me to type in the fast.T-mobile.com APN. I had 3 APNs already showing on my N4, a fast.metropcs.com one, a T-Mo that was almost empty and a fast.T-Mobile.com one. Now, since the chat tech NEVER said anything about rebooting to set the APN I was switching back and forth between the Metro and T-Mo one. THEN, when I used her fast.T-Mobile.com one, I got no data. I GOT data on the Metro one. She says to use whichever one I got data on "she guessed". (??) So the Metro one was what I was on all weekend with really crappy speeds.

So late last night, about 15 min before I replied to Alfick I thought, well, let's try the fast.T-Mobile.com APN again, surely Metro could At Least point me to the actually correct APN. So I changed it and rebooted. *I didn't recheck the APN though*. *Somehow* my speeds shot WAY up, at least compared to what they had been. (Just some better than my prior CDMA speeds.) I went to bed thinking the wrong APN was the problem and that you COULD get data with BOTH the T-Mobile AND Metro APNs. (Hence my thoughts about bad info.)

That's where I was wrngh. I DID play with it and do several speed tests last night, it sure Looked Like I had another answer.

This morning I checked the APN again and it's BACK to the fast.Metro one. Not only that, but then I discover that at least the N4 Won't Let You select a completely wrong APN without it resetting it to the correct one.

Now I'm even MORE hosed.

Everything looks fine on the phone. More than enough speeds to tether, you tube, etc;.

But my tether is screwed up. Even with the always used fine Ultimate User Agent Sniffer set to "tether" or "IE 9", I can go to Gmail and Faceplant and that's it. Everything else just sits "waiting for blah blah site".

So, I'm cluelessly totally screwed up right now. At least with the crappy speeds I was able to even YouTube on tether, now I can't even do that.

I've rebooted the computer and tried a couple more times with no change. While my pooder will at least appear to connect normally with my phone WiFi, my Ipad won't even connect to it now. Grrr.

Hell if I know.

And as of midnight last night I was happily ready to put my Spirit in the mail to it's new owner today. The Spirit that I NEVER had any issue tethering with.
Now, AGAIN, I don't know What The Hell to do.



So, please accept my apology for jumping to conclusions, albeit with I Thought good reason, about getting bad info.

Bruce in Ocala, Fl

 

[OcalaFlGuy]

Well, it looks like I have genuinely figured out what the problem is. I'm not holding much chance out for Any fix though.

It appears I am just one of the unlucky bastards[1] who got decent CDMA speeds but get screwed on the GSM side.

I just happened to be about 3 miles away more in the center of town putting the Spirit in the mail to it's new owner.[2] Ready for this? 22.26 Mps DL on just HSPA+. So, there appears to be no issue with my N4 per se.

I am going to recontact Metro on Faceplant and beg they do some tower tweaking or something. This is BS, I'm paying $5 more a month for less speed and no longer have the ability to tether (as of this minute).

It doesn't look like this Mobigga, Mobetta network is gonna do JACK for me.

[1] I always say if there were only 2 lottery tickets sold, and I had One of them, they would Surely draw the Other ticket.
[2] Yes, I AM Already kicking myself in the ass for just not cancelling the sale and hooking the Spirit back up. As things are at the moment, not doing that was probably a mistake.

Bruce in Ocala, Fl

 

[Shabbypenguin]

i told you you had terrible network signal , obviously that changes nothing with regards to tethering but until metro has its coverage filled in with tmobile coverage sounds like you are sitting in a poor area for tmobile coverage.

might be worth looking into straight talk/net10 for att service.

 

[Spec2nirvash]

^^ That. Maybe another carrier is the only option. If you can port your #, you aren't losing out on anything else. Switching to GSM already lost you the discounted CDMA 55 I'm thinking you had. I've contemplated going back to CDMA myself. Sure the outdoor GSM data/voicr coverage is a LOT better, but I'll go from 4 solid bars of 3g to NO SVC just walking through somebody's front door. The CDMA network was much stronger indoors and I always, at the very least had VZW roaming so I could use SMS

 

[Shabbypenguin]

Aio Wireless Drops Plan Prices And Boosts Data Caps, Offers Additional Discounts For Customers Who Set Up Auto Pay

they now are priced to match metropcs, except the whole unlimited data tidbit. you shave 5 bucks a month by going autopay. so while it sucks having a hard limit of 5GB's a month if you can stay under that you could have possibly better speeds on att, probably tether a lot easier, and have a $55 dollar plan again

edit: i was mistaken, i thought it was a hard cap, but it seems you get throttled. so 5 gigs of att's lte for 55 bucks a month and then unlimited 2g doesnt sound terrible, people who dont have tmobile coverage or never go over 5 gigs a month may find saving 5 bucks a month with aio over metro a good deal.

 

[OcalaFlGuy]

Thanks Shabby, you ARE da man! That sounds like the next best deal to Metro to me.

While my speeds now are horrible, they Are usable. I am messaging Metro to see if they can maybe do a tower tweak for me, we'll see. After I see what they can do for me I'll root my N4 and see if I can get that tether app to work on Metro. If tethering is completely done for me and my speeds become unusable, Aio looks like a good option.

Does anyone know what throttled ATnSleeze 2g speeds are? I would assume pretty bad.

Thanks Shabiriffic, that was Very helpful.

Bruce in Ocala, Fl

 

[Shabbypenguin]

Saw this posted on howardforums

AIO is throttling is aroudn 250 - 280 kbps. I can still watch Hulu & Netflix....Youtube does not do very good but still works if you pause it to let if buffer for a while. Even though ping on AIO are higher (250 ms) tmobile speed after throttling is a shame. you can hardly do anything.

now obviously YMMV as tower location and signal etc, but if you get good att signal then seems like its at least still usable (probably close to what you were used to with metro 3g/throttled). HOWEVER, it seems AIO does throttle LTE automatically down to speeds around 8-9Mbps (about metro's cdma lte). based on previous talks im sure that wont be a deal breaker for you overall, but its better to find out ahead of time .

 

[DirtyDee]

Bruce I hope it works out for you I will miss around these parts

 

[OcalaFlGuy]

"The rumors of my departure are greatly exaggerated."

Bruce in Ocala, Fl

 

[alfick3]

"The rumors of my departure are greatly exaggerated."

Bruce in Ocala, Fl

At least it's not demise.