I have been having an ongoing issue where the Optus 3G service would only come on very rarely. Maybe on average 1 hour per day. The rest of the time the iphone would fall back to standard slow 2G GSM (GPRS) coverage, even though I am near the 3G tower.

So I went into the Optus shop and showed them, no 3G service. Their demo iphone also had no 3G service, even though all the other 3G phones (non-iphone) had plenty of 3G service.

A quick call to tech support solved the issue. Turn Airplane mode on, then back off again. Success, the 3G symbol now appears and internet is now fast again.

There appears to be a bug in the 3G part of the iphone and turning on/off airplane mode effectively reboots the 3G subsystem.”

Filed under: iPhone