LTE in Vegas?

[sting7k]

Has anyone been on LTE in Las Vegas? I was there this past weekend and cell service for every carrier was absolutely terrible. Even though everyone's phone said they had nearly full bars data was simply unusable and text messages were delivered hours later. AT&T already got an earfull from me.

I didn't know there was LTE there until the third day I was there. I had both my iPhone and Lumia and neither was doing well on EDGE/3G/HSPA+. EDGE was the only one remotely usable at times. Then I tried LTE and my Lumia said it had full signal. But it did not connect at all to data, worse than the other networks.

I understand the old networks being clogged. It was packed in Vegas between the fight and music festival going on all weekend. But still it was really unacceptable IMO being what we pay for this service, and that I did not bring a laptop and the hotel I was at only offered wired internet....

Has anyone been there and used LTE? Does it ever work? I was just wondering because it should be relatively open being so new and so few devices using it. Or I guess the cell sites were just completely jammed across the board.

 

[bigkevbosky]

Well, I haven't used LTE on a Windows Phone yet, but I had a Pantech Burst Android LTE phone for a few months, and it was stupidly fast.

I think peak I got about 40-45 mb/sec downloads with 10-15 mb/sec uploads. Normally its anywhere between 10-20mb/sec down and 3-5 mb/sec up.

I did notice that certain areas of Vegas were better covered in LTE signal than others. For example, at the South end of the strip, near Mandalay Bay, there's no LTE signal. But as you get closer to New York, New York at Trop/LV Blvd, you pick up LTE. On the East side of town on the outskirts of Henderson you'll get little to no LTE, but drive a little further into Henderson and LTE rockets up.

AT&T has always had wonky coverage in Vegas. Its particularly bad at the "spaghetti bowl" where the 95 and 15 freeways intersect - I would always drop calls in that area in the past, but that was with an iPhone.

 

[ninjaap]

I live in Vegas and I pretty much get LTE everywhere I go, except when inside casinos and hotels on the main strip, where there are tons of people.