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I have an iPhone 5S 64 GB, ME312LL/A) I purchased as a refurb from a reputable vendor in November 2014. It's my wife's, and her previous phone didn't have LTE, so neither of us noticed right away that even in areas AT&T has good LTE service, her phone never registers an LTE connection. Only 4G.

Update:

When a SIM card from a phone with working LTE is inserted into this iPhone 5S, the service indicator shows LTE. I suppose I need to contact AT&T then?

By all appearances the phone had never been used (original packaging, pristine accessories,OEM screen protector wrap still on). What would cause a phone to function normally all ways, but not register an LTE connection?

I've tried:

  • toggling LTE off/on in Cellular Settings.
  • checking for carrier updates
  • resetting network settings
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2 Answers 2

Reset to default
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I assume you should try to test the SIM with another phone in order to see if it really works.

Test

All you have to do is pretty simple:

  1. Get your SIM ejector and take it off from your current iPhone

  2. Get another iPhone and put it in

  3. Unlock the SIM on the new iPhone and make sure LTE is activated properly under Settings > Cellular > Cellular Data Options

Once done this, I'd definitely try to contact your carrier's support (which if I'm not wrong is AT&T in your case) and report them the result of the test and see how they can help you.

Hope this helped you out, and don't forget to let me up to date on the question!

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  • Turns out, the issue wasn't with the SIM card itself. Somehow, AT&T's system had the phone as a 4S instead of 5S, and since the 4S wasn't capable of LTE it wasn't enabled on that line.
    – samh
    Sep 23, 2016 at 1:07
  • Oh wow, weird! Well, I'm happy AT&T could finally reveal you this mistery ahah and glad you solved it now, enjoy LTE then @samh !
    – FET
    Sep 23, 2016 at 5:04
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As far as I know it is two different things, which means it can only show 1, not according to your phone, but according to your network. You won't see LTE or 4G if your service provider doesn't support it. Eg, your wife is Verizon and it shows LTE and you are AT&T and it shows 4G.

My situation: In Dubai I have LTE and my phone shows LTE labels instead of 4G, but when I swop sims to go back to South Africa it all changes to 4G with 4G labels. And both countries have both LTE and 4G. So to me, it depends on your service provider, although I have never been to USA so I'm not familiar with your networks but this is my experience.

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  • We both have AT&T. My iPhone 5 and 6S both showed/show LTE no problem.
    – samh
    Jun 26, 2016 at 13:28
  • Furthermore there are areas that AT&T has HSPA+ support but not LTE, and the phone should show 4G there.
    – samh
    Jun 26, 2016 at 20:05
  • Ah okay, good to know! Maybe it's a part inside that is non-branded or something, as you said it is refurbished so.. Can be faulty antenna?
    – emotality
    Jun 26, 2016 at 20:07

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