[Droid Incredible Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] bast525:
Very slow 3g, Verizon tech says "your phone is locking on to the wrong tower"

Sorry guys this ended up being a kind of long post...

Ok so, for the last two or three months, my 3g speeds at home and at work (which are very close together, only about 2 miles away from each other) have sucked horribly. It used to be I would average 400-700 kbps down, often getting up over 1000 kbps, now, during the day I'm lucky if I can break 200 kbps, a lot of times I'm below 100kbps. At night it's slightly better, sometimes 300-400 if I'm lucky.

I've tried various radios, including several Evo radios, and the latest radio from the stock GB OTA, but notice NO change, so I'm back on the stock 7.28. I've done *228 options 1 and 2 I don't know how many times. I've done factory resets. I've even RUU'd back to stock. Nothing helps. I called Verizon, told them all I'd done, and they said they'd send someone out to check the signal. Called me two days later and said they couldn't replicate the problem.

My wife also has a Dinc, bought just a few days before mine (I liked it so much I had to get one too), and when I tested on hers, her speeds are also very bad. So I called Verizon back, and they are now telling me that our phones are 'locking on to the wrong tower', that they aren't connecting to the tower nearest to us, but are instead connecting to a tower over 7 miles away. Again, this is after running *228 numerous times, so our PRL's are definitely up to date. The Verizon tech said there is nothing they can do about it except exchange the phones or upgrade us. We can't afford to upgrade and honestly we are both very happy with the Incredible and don't really WANT to upgrade, and I strongly feel an exchange won't fix the issue since it doesn't seem like the PHONE is the problem... I can test from other areas like the local shopping center and get over 1000 kbps.

So it seems to be both time and location, seems obvious that it is at least partially a network traffic issue, not that they will admit to this. I have also asked some of my Verizon-using coworkers to test, I have three in my department, one on a Droid X, one on a Fascinate, and one on a Palm Pre. The Pre guy got 600 kbps while I was getting 200, the Fascinate, who has tested the most for me, half the time gets the same speeds as me, half the time gets double. The Droid X seems to get roughly the same speeds as me most of the time. This is all using the speedtest.net app and also going to the dslreports.com website. And I told all of this to the Verizon tech.

So at this point, the only thing they are giving me to go on is that I'm 'connecting to the wrong tower', which they say they can do nothing about. Can you guys suggest ANYTHING that I may be able to do? Hacked PRL? Changing settings in PST? Anything? It doesn't help that I've been having internet problems with my home internet at the same time (waiting on the cable company to figure THAT out), and I can't use the wifi at work as it's locked down after jackasses got caught downloading movies and Sony threatened to sue our company. So basically my phone is almost useless for internet at the two places where I use it the most....