AT&T customers in College Station say they’re struggling with service

COLLEGE STATION, Texas (KBTX) - Laura Mann has been an AT&T customer for more than a decade but after she moved to south College Station, she noticed her cell phone became a lot less reliable.

“It’s pretty frustrating,” said Mann. “Especially if I drop a call or the people I’m talking to say they can’t hear me or I have to move to a different area of the house, but sometimes we just have to give up.”

Giving up is what many AT&T customers tell KBTX they’re ready to do after failing to find a solution to their wireless troubles.

Over the past two months, we have logged more than 50 complaints from customers who say they’re experiencing dropped calls, dead zones, and more in growing areas of the city including Towerpoint, Nantucket, Wellborn, and Castlegate. Some users say texts with images aren’t going through, it’s impossible to make phone calls inside a home, and they’re connecting to a 5G network that seems to struggle.

The problem seems to intensify in the early evening hours on weekdays.

“We mostly notice it on weekdays between 4 and 6 p.m.,” said GiGi Carbo. “My husband calls me daily when he leaves work and most of the time, we are unable to sustain the call, if we are even able to get a connection. Sometimes we call again and again and never even get a ring out of it. Calls go directly to voicemail or we just get a message on the phone saying that no connection is possible.”

“Every Friday for the past five weeks and often some other days around 4 p.m. if I am in the area of Barron Road or Tower Point my service literally just stops,” said Amanda Crenshaw.

Their experiences are echoed on a Nextdoor website thread where dozens of residents in the same area have shared frustrations.

“My parents moved to Creek Meadows last spring and there is ZERO service in their home,” wrote Tiffany Brown.

“I’ve called and they reset my network and had me take 5G off but it hasn’t fixed my issues,” said Misty Garner.

KBTX shared Garner’s complaint, along with the complaints of 30 others to an AT&T spokesperson in Dallas and asked for an explanation. We offered to share many other examples and last month AT&T said it was aware of some issues and was working on them. This is the full statement sent to us by Sarah Rodriguez, Lead Public Relations Manager of AT&T Corporate Communications:

“Our technicians completed equipment repairs earlier this month [October] in the south College Station area where some customers may have recently experienced intermittent wireless service. We are also optimizing settings at surrounding cell sites to alleviate any impacts to service. We appreciate the patience of our customers and hope to complete this work soon.”

We received that statement in mid-October and waited for another month to see if there were any improvements.

In short: There isn’t.

Customers are still frustrated and sharing stories online of their challenges.

AT&T says customers currently experiencing service interruptions should contact them at 1-800-288-2020, and anyone experiencing coverage concerns indoors is encouraged to use Wi-Fi Calling. The feature allows users to talk and text from indoor locations where it’s hard even for a strong cellular signal to reach.

Some experts say if you’re having troubles, a temporary fix could come from turning your phone on ‘Airplane Mode’ for a few seconds and back off again will force your connection to the nearest tower and may improve the service. Another option is to try resetting your network settings on your phone or turning off 5G and using LTE instead.

This thread on an AT&T community forum offers other advice and potential solutions although it doesn’t appear any permanent fixes have been discovered for the customers who call College Station their home.

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