Verizon explains the reason behind LTE outages.

[cereal killer]

As many owners of LTE handsets have seen, December was one heck of a month for LTE outages. In all fairness to Verizon Wireless though the network has been pretty stout. Over the past year the network has had no major outages except for one glitch back in April. We here at Droid Forums are going to steer clear of bashing Verizon because we perceive it as nothing more than growing pains. This is not to say that customers being irate over the outages have no right to be because in reality they do. A lot of people depend on their phones for business and when the data flow ceases it disrupts the individuals capability to do business.

GigaOM sat down with Verizon Wireless VP of network engineering Mike Haberman to discuss just what has been going on with all the recent outages and explain what steps Verizon was going to take to ensure that they don’t happen again.

Haberman explained "Being the pioneers, we’re going to experience some growing pains. These issues we’ve been experiencing are certainly regrettable but they were unforeseeable.”

He goes on to say that all three outages were caused by problems in Verizon’s service delivery core. This is called IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) — which replaces the old signaling architectures used in 2G and 3G networks. Verizon’s network is the first implementation of IMS in an LTE network and it has continued to be a problem spot ever since April, when a software bug originating deep within the IMS core led to a complete failure, kicking LTE customers off both Verizon’s 3G and 4G networks nationwide.

Fast forward to December 7th, the first outage since April. Haberman explained that this was caused by the failure of a back-up communications database. The second, last week, was the result of an IMS element not responding properly, while Wednesday’s outage was caused by two IMS elements not communicating properly. He goes on to explain that every subsequent outage is the result of a new bug and they are going to do their best to minimize them in the future.

There you have it folks. It's a baby learning to walk and there really is no way around this right now. From reading the rest of the interview it does appear that they will be on top of these outages because they are geographically "segmenting" the regions thus cutting down the likelihood of a nationwide outage. Plus you really can't get too mad at them when they say things like.....

“Our goal is to ensure that our 4G network meets the same high standard that our 3G network does. We’re not there yet, but we’ll get there.”

Source: GigaOM

 

[Josefius]

I hope they get there, I'm sure it will be sorted out eventually though.

 

[donzz]

I don't live in a large city so I'm just thankful to have 4G here. The outages suck but I can live with them.

 

[JohnnytheK]

Too fast, too soon, too many customers.

Everyone I've talked to in the Telecom business, says everyone is surprised by the demand. (Seems kinda dumb, because of the devices they're selling, but,,)
Nobody has the bandwidth for demand.

I seem to remember 3G troubles a few years ago, and now 3G is as reliable as it gets.
I almost want to keep my old 3G phone and sit on my upgrade for a while.

 

[Dusty]

I can live with these growing pains. This is worlds better than my experience with AT&T.

For the 7 months I was with AT&T I dropped calls like _--_ from a donkey. Constantly, everywhere, every day.

 

[Big Dawg 23]

I can live with these growing pains. This is worlds better than my experience with AT&T.

For the 7 months I was with AT&T I dropped calls like _--_ from a donkey. Constantly, everywhere, every day.

You have the opposite experience. I never drop a call on AT&T and did all the time on Verizon. Also my HSPA+ competes just fine with LTE. Since I have a Skyrocket I am ready for LTE.


A few coworkers are annoyed with the outages on Verizon since they are in the field an rely heavily on Data for email.

 

[nateohio]

You have the opposite experience. I never drop a call on AT&T and did all the time on Verizon. Also my HSPA+ competes just fine with LTE. Since I have a Skyrocket I am ready for LTE.


A few coworkers are annoyed with the outages on Verizon since they are in the field an rely heavily on Data for email.

Can you get download speeds north of 35MBit on HSPA+? I think not.

 

[Dusty]

You have the opposite experience. I never drop a call on AT&T and did all the time on Verizon. Also my HSPA+ competes just fine with LTE. Since I have a Skyrocket I am ready for LTE.


A few coworkers are annoyed with the outages on Verizon since they are in the field an rely heavily on Data for email.

My wife still uses AT&T and she travels quite a bit, as do I. Her service everywhere is OK at best, and "pretty good" in only 2-3 cities that she travels to frequently. We live in D.C., compared to Verizon AT&T is still horrible. When we travel around town she asks to use my phone because of spotty service more often than she'd like to admit. When I first purchased an iPhone a few years ago AT&T had a huge nationwide outage, and I couldn't even make a phone call, let alone use data.

I had a HORRIBLE experience with AT&T and my wife currently uses AT&T, so I get to see the networks head-to-head. I have no idea why they use AT&T, maybe they get good rates. A lot of people don't notice how bad it really is because they don't have anything else to directly compare it to in real-time. If AT&T is superior in your neck of the woods, based on my experience, you are the exception. If you travel around the U.S. between large cities, using AT&T isn't the best choice.

If you can't tell I don't think very highly of AT&T, and I'm not even that "in love" with VZW.

 

[GeLopez]

I just wish verizon would do a better job communicating the reasons behind the outages and not wait months to let the costumers know. Another thing, when the outages happen verizons CSR dont even know there is an outage. Really?

 

[RyanPm40]

Honestly, 4G isn't that great unless you're trying to tether a laptop. Aside from that, things load pretty quickly over 3G on our smartphones.

 

[pc747]

Honestly, 4G isn't that great unless you're trying to tether a laptop. Aside from that, things load pretty quickly over 3G on our smartphones.

Actually its good for streaming movies and videos. Nfl mobile is leaps and bounds better on lte than 3g.

 

[Dweib]

Very good. Now we know and I can tell my wife to stop peering into her crystal ball. Although you got to admit the solar flare theory made for some entertainment and interesting read on what was otherwise a boring day.


Sent from my DROID RAZR using DroidForums

 

[braveone772]

Lately Verizon has been annoying me greatly. I am a premium retailer in the midwest for Verizon, and, as an example, I had to find out about that failed "convenience fee" they were going to charge for online bill pay from NBC Nightly News. We didn't find out about the Nexus release date(officially) until THE MORNING it was allowed to be released. The outages are also annoying...They have us talking up 4G LTE, and selling someone on the phone...just to have the phone not activate for us after the sale, and have a pissed off customer waiting for their device.

I am extremely unhappy with how they have been communicating thus far. They REALLY need to get their s*** together and come up with a solution to their inability to communicate important things like this.

 

[tjk629]

I really like how you worded your post cereal killer.

Honestly, 4G isn't that great unless you're trying to tether a laptop. Aside from that, things load pretty quickly over 3G on our smartphones.

Assuming you live in a nice 3G area.

Where I live I'm lucky if I get 500kbps on EVDO. It's okay for stuff like using DF app and what not, but when you start downloading, browsing, or even streaming (all my music is on Amazon and Google) it isn't as smooth at all.

I live in a very fringe LTE area, but I do get it. I get 5-10mbps and much prefer it to the below 500kbps on EVDO.

If I lived in an area that could get 2ish mbps on EVDO then I'd be pretty content with it.

 

[metalspring]

I really like how you worded your post cereal killer.


Assuming you live in a nice 3G area.

Where I live I'm lucky if I get 500kbps on EVDO. It's okay for stuff like using DF app and what not, but when you start downloading, browsing, or even streaming (all my music is on Amazon and Google) it isn't as smooth at all.

I live in a very fringe LTE area, but I do get it. I get 5-10mbps and much prefer it to the below 500kbps on EVDO.

If I lived in an area that could get 2ish mbps on EVDO then I'd be pretty content with it.

2mps regularly on 3g is quite rare...i normally have excellent 3g coverage at home and my speeds are from 1.5-2 mbps and only occasionally get 2+mbps (the highest i usually get is around 2.5 mbps but only for a short while)