What Rogers does not want you to know about the iPhone 4S

Well after nearly a year of dealing with numerous members of the Office of the President and the Office of the Ombudsman of Rogers Canada, several staffers and others in the industry are still experiencing problems and Rogers has yet to address one serious issue.

The problem is specific to the Apple iPhone4S and the Rogers network. We have tested several other networks including Bell, Telus, and Virgin  and could not replicate the issue. What is the issue? Many of you may be affected but just do not know it, so as we describe the symptoms we are hoping many of you will come forward.

The issue at hand: The iPhone 4S continues to fail back to EDGE mode and while on a phone call no data is available. Mobilesyrup also reported they too experienced this issue back in October of 2011.  So for an entire year, many have complained but the issue remains.

How to identify you do not have any data:  We seem to think many people are connected to WiFi a majority of the time the iPhone 4S is in use so instead of seeing your current cellular network status, all you see is the WiFi antennas. The best way to troubleshoot is to leave WiFi off. (please note you may incur higher than normal data charges while WiFi is disabled).

By disabling the WiFi you should see the 3G indicator to indicate you are indeed connected to a 3G network. Now that you can see the network indicator, you can attempt to make phone calls and just keep an eye on the status. By theory the 3G should stay active for the entirety of your phone conversation but we have been noticing in some cases even after just 3 minutes, the 3G icon disappears and there is  no icon at all. This indicates that you no longer have access to your data plan and if you try to access the browser, or check your mail during the call you will be presented with an error that “No Cellular Data is available” during a call. To regain network status, you can disconnect the phone call and you will notice a recovery which takes about 3 minutes to be put back on the 3G network.

Another issue we have been noticing is when you do go underground or into a spot where there is no signal (ie: Elevator), it could take more than 5 minutes for the device to regain a status and continues to show No Service. Now in this case, by either switching into Airplane mode, or disabling Cellular Service and re-enabling, this will bring back connectivity immediately. So explain why we need to pro-actively remind the iPhone 4S that a signal is present to regain our service?

If you notice the indicator is a circle this indicates the device is  coming out of “no data” mode and about to enter into EDGE mode. This is what happens once you end a call if you have experienced the issue.

Now keep in mind, in less than two hours we will be posting the details from the Apple iPhone 5 media event and a new iPhone is expected to land in Canada beginning October 1. This phone will most likely be carried by all the carriers so if you have been having these issues, please be sure to contact Rogers and report the issue. Ensure your escalation hits the proper channels.

You can also contact the CCTS via an online form to contact Rogers on your behalf if you are attempting to break free of your contract.

With an iPhone 5, expected to have LTE capabilities this problem may or may not happen but we are confident this issue will not be experienced with LTE and iPhone 5. The problem with LTE and our carriers in Canada however is that they are  very slow to rollout across a majority of smaller cities so you may find the device landing back into 3G mode.  Lets meet back in October and if you are encountering these issues, please be sure to comment and let us know!

UPDATED: Adding some more photos we have gathered from some of our devices over the past year.