iPhone 3G - Rogers Network - Data Congestion Issues

Tomac

Howdy,

I am a frustrated iPhone 3G user in Vancouver, British Columbia, and here is my story:

From what I have gathered, Rogers Wireless is experiencing data congestion issues, resulting in sub-par EDGE and 3G data performance.

Last week I moved to the GVRD, from a small town in northern Ontario -- Muskoka region. Prior to moving, I had a fairly smooth experience accessing data through Rogers 3G network.

After arriving in Vancouver, data access through Rogers EDGE/3G has been inconsistent -- resulting in errors, failed webpage loads and slow data speeds. Countless times a day, I have typed in a web address, only to find the following notification appear:



Note: All iPhone applications reliant on data are hindered by this: Safari, YouTube, Weather, etc.

Here is what I have done:

As of today, August 5, 2008 in the afternoon, I contacted Rogers iPhone technical support, and mentioned the above error notification. I spoke with William, a Rogers Wireless iPhone technical support specialist located in a Sudbury, Ontario call center. I asked him if others were experiencing the same problem. Indeed, there were others. He had spoken to five people in the previous hour, who encountered the same "kCFErrorDomainCFNetwork error 302" notification. After William put me on hold and did some further research into the error notification, he answered what I had been assuming all along -- the error notification equalled network congestion as the culprit. Thankfully he was honest about Rogers wireless infrastructure issues.

In sum, the Rogers Wireless 3G network is incapable of satisfying hungry iPhone users data demands -- depending on location.

Here is a link to a MobileMe webpage -- yours truly -- which contains three screenshots of the error notification from the iPhone 3G I'm using:

MobileMe Gallery

Cheers,

-- Tom

iBrandon

Tomac, I've been getting the exact same error all day. Started at about 9 in the morning, and slowed to a crawl towards the end of the work day. I'm on Fido.

As a matter of fact, I haven't been able to load a page in the past 15 minutes.

interact

Upgraded to 2.0.1 last night and that error started up for everything 3G today. Wifi was fine though.

Tried a restore and then recovered from the backup. Same errors on 3G

Did a restore and setup the phone fresh. So far so good.

True test will be tomorrow when I actually need 3G. ;-)

fjnmusic

How is your phone performing when you're using WiFi? Could you theoretically get by just using WiFi? Are there enough hotspots?

Doesn't matter if you drop the rate to $30 a month or $10 a month if the data system doesn't work. Perhaps Rogers bit off more than it can chew. Are BlackBerry customers affected by the slow Edge/3G performance?

mykal

I did exactly the same...Backup restore didn't work, but fresh restore has my 3G running smooth for the last 2 hours. Hopefully that's the last of that error message

darrenlovesmac

That error message, the "302" message is the same message I was getting. This error code, in addition to the other problems I have been having with my device, as detailed in a previous post, is the error code that is the "main culprit" in my getting a new device. The representative I spoke with intimated, although did not say nor did I ask, that the error code was related to a Safari issue. I have received this same error code while using WiFi as well (the WiFi network I accessed was a locked system and at the time I was the only user, thus it would not have been, in that case, related to "network congestion").

Odd how two different representatives can view things in two very different ways. Although we have known the reps all interpret things in different manners, this one is huge. The 302 code is the one that was the final nail in the coffin of my getting a new phone, which was approved by the higher ups as well as by my telephone representative. To think if I am getting a new phone due to network congestion is very surprising.

A quick question, who brought up the network congestion issue? Did you 'feed' that to the rep as a possible problem, or did he come up with it on his own? At times I have mentioned things as possible problems and the reps have agreed, which makes me wonder if they are agreeing because they think it is something which will satisfy you, thus getting you off the phone? I am just thinking out loud here, I mean no offense.

Darren

Chealion

Apple could really stand to update their user friendliness of their WebKit errors. I looked this one up in the Developer Docs and (stolen from my Twitter):
kCFErrorDomainCFNetwork 302? It means HTTP Connection Lost (kCFErrorHTTPConnectionLost). So it's not an error with the iPhone itself (or shouldn't) but simply yields that either the connection was dropped (lost) or it timed out. There are other error codes explained here: http://developer.apple.com/documenta...workErrors.pdf (PDF)

For what it's worth I've found turning my 3G off and then back on (or turning the iPhone off and back on) fixes the issue most of the time but at best it's a kludgy hack. There are a few spots I've found in Calgary that seem to have severe network congestion compared to others.

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g.c.87

If it is really an issue, you should call Rogers and tell them to void your data contract. I'm sure there must be something in the agreement allowing one out of it if they are not receiving the service they are paying for.

jawknee

I've got to say, I've had no problems thus far with my 3G service. I actually wasn't expecting 3G in muskoka, but it only switched over to EDGE the entire route up hwy400 (that I noticed - I was driving)

Hopefully this problem gets sorted soon. I know I would be going crazy if my - 3yr contract - data plan wasn't working as advertised.

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Tomac

In the original post, I forgot to mention I had received a $30 credit to my Rogers account because of the problematic data access. This is the equivalent of one month's fees -- 6GB data plan.