Bad data tower?

I moved to a farm in rural Kentucky a couple of months ago from Bellevue (right next to corporate). I am close enough to a tower to get a fairly constant 3 bars. It is an Edge only tower. I intentionally bought a Samsung galaxy s for myself and a My-tough 4g for my wife because both of these allow the phone to be used as a wi-fi hotspot (our nearest neighbor is a few hundred yards away so I use them with no security). This is important because our only other internet option is satellite, which is a very bad deal.

The reason I'm posting this is that after a month of wonderful service, it simply stopped working. It is like a bad car that won't start. You crank and crank, the engine fires, you gun the pedal to get gas to the engine, but after 5 or 10 seconds, the engine dies again, unable to start at all after that. I can actually watch the packets flowing via my computer's connection screen, and watch them sputter and peter out after anywhere from 20 to 300 packets. Meanwhile, If I accidentally leave Mobile AP on, after a few hours I will notice on my computer that it has uploaded thousands of packets while downloading only a hundred or so.

This is an issue that is unique to the tower by our house - The one we use for virtually all data service. Wherever we go that has Edge only towers, our phones connect just fine and give great cell and data service. And the cell service at our home is still fine.

The reason I'm bringing it up here is that I am wondering if it is personal. That is, for the month I used it I downloaded almost 2 gig of data off torrent while I was sleeping. And it has been weeks since I opened a ticket and I am told that a technician DID find a problem with the tower, a couple of weeks ago! Is it possible that I am being intentionally blocked on my own tower because of the high usage?


BTW, I'm not complaining about any throttling issues, unless I've been throttled to zero. That would be a problem. I don't care about being throttled back, but getting one or two packets every hour or so is really not useful in any sense of the word.

Another BTW. I am a former employee in the EPO.

Many towers age and I experience this in many areas where EDGE will not work properly on 3 bars half the time and needs full signal to load w/o issue. It doesn't have to do with throttling and to my understanding that is how EDGE can be. It does sound like a bad tower but once its reported don't expect them to work on it right away. It can take months or even over a year depending on what they decide. In my situation they keep telling me that the area needs enhancements and thats all. Its been over a year and still no expansion.

Many towers age and I experience this in many areas where EDGE will not work properly on 3 bars half the time and needs full signal to load w/o issue. It doesn't have to do with throttling and to my understanding that is how EDGE can be. It does sound like a bad tower but once its reported don't expect them to work on it right away. It can take months or even over a year depending on what they decide. In my situation they keep telling me that the area needs enhancements and thats all. Its been over a year and still no expansion.

Dang!  The only reason the tower is there is for the highway. I do think that it could disrupt people trying to use google maps around there though. Well, I'll keep bugging them, or I could jump the fence and try to fix it myself.

Hey, maybe they'll upgrade to 4G while they're there!  :-D

On a side note, I have no karma. I feel like such a user...

Many towers age and I experience this in many areas where EDGE will not work properly on 3 bars half the time and needs full signal to load w/o issue. It doesn't have to do with throttling and to my understanding that is how EDGE can be. It does sound like a bad tower but once its reported don't expect them to work on it right away. It can take months or even over a year depending on what they decide. In my situation they keep telling me that the area needs enhancements and thats all. Its been over a year and still no expansion.

I was at an auction in a building a couple hundred yards from the tower in question last night. I stepped outside and got four bars. I did a google search on an item I was thinking of buying. Google gave me the first page of hits but it would not load anything beyond that. The little "upload" arrow was constant but nothing would download. Without information I stopped bidding on the item at $30. Today I completed the google search (using a different Edge tower) and got results immediately. I also discovered, using the search, that the item had a "real world" value of between $195 and $285.

The connectivity has now cost me REAL dollars. It's starting to irritate me. I have a very long fuse, but when empirical evidence presents itself that I am being taken for a ride, something I call "righteous indignation" kicks in. I pay for this service. The coverage map says I have service, but the tower does not work. And now it is costing me money. Lots of it. That is simply not acceptable.

I will expect a refund of my data dollars for the month in which I have had no service. For both phones. Including the extra I pay for the extra "full speed" access.  And it will need to carry forward until they get the tower working. This is ridiculous.