Telstra promises overnight fix for iPhone 4S faults

Telstra has attributed ongoing reception issues for some iPhone 4S users on its network to a "hardware incompatibility" issue with the telco's ongoing LTE network upgrades.

But the company is confident a network settings refresh will fix the problem "overnight".

Users of Apple's fifth generation smartphone have complained about reception issues since the phone's launch, prompting the US consumer giant to ready two software updates in as many months.

The problems have been alternately blamed on the iPhone 4S hardware and Apple's iOS 5 software update, affecting several versions of the phone.

Users have taken to the Whirlpool user forum and official Telstra support forum to complain of the issue, with some complaints dating back to October.

Telstra users have complained of dropped calls, lost reception and in some cases the phone's inability to pick up signal, reverting simply to SOS or emergency only mode.

The telco's support personnel today acknowledged that its network may be at fault for some ongoing reception issues.

One response from Telstra's social media team earlier today said the problem was a "hardware incompatibility" between the smartphones and Telstra's network upgrades.

"Our engineers are currently investigating reports that in certain coverage locations some iPhone 4S customers are experiencing a temporary reduction in coverage," a spokeswoman for the company told iTnews.

"We have already started implementing this change and we expect the glitch to be corrected overnight."

Telstra said further software updates from Apple would not be required to solve the issue.

Telstra customers using the beta version of Apple's forthcoming iOS 5.1 software update have reported that they continue to experience problems.

Telstra has been rolling out Long Term Evolution (4G) upgrades to a five-kilometre radius of Australia's capital cities as well as major regional and metropolitan areas, before expanding the deployment more widely.

Whilst the iPhone 4S is not compatible with LTE technology, upgrades to mobile base stations can change the way some Telstra infrastructure handles the 850 MHz spectrum used for the telco's existing 3G network.

The phone does included an upgraded baseband chip over previous 3G models, improving peak downstream speeds to 14.4 Mbps, compared to 7.2 Mbps on the iPhone 4.