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AT&T Announces Plans for 7.2 Mbps 3G Deployment
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Isn't that the point behind the first three bullets of their press release?The tubes are already clogged.
Hi, and your country is the size of which one of the US states?!In Germany we're starting to get 21Mbps this fall and AT&T now plans 7.2Mbps HSDPA for 2011. There definetly seems to be something wrong in the US in broadband and mobile internet.
If the US carriers only had to cover an area slightly smaller than Montana, they'd probably bit a bit more progressive with rolling out the new stuff. 
Really, I'm with you. Besides, coverage for me has been more than adequate. They suck in many other ways (SMS text pricing topping the list), however.
I really dislike all the carriers, truth be told. They all continue to collude on many pricing and contractual fronts. They may as well merge and become one company, one monopoly, since there doesn't seem to be any real significant monetary or contract-packaged differences between them.
Competition is supposed to breed value, spur innovation, and/or provide quality to the customer. Quality can be pretty subjective, but I think value and innovation is a red herring when considering press releases like this. Nothing they are doing significantly affects me or my budget now or in the near future.
Forgive me that I'm not particularly impressed with AT&T's 7.2 Mbps 3G announcement.
Hi, and your country is the size of which one of the US states?!
Seriously I really thought that there is at least 7.2Mbps in the big cities in the US. Is it just for AT&T? What about the other carriers?
It's still going to hit battery life-- just the additional radio power required to pump the data out will hit battery life.
In Germany we're starting to get 21Mbps this fall and AT&T now plans 7.2Mbps HSDPA for 2011. There definetly seems to be something wrong in the US in broadband and mobile internet.
Agreed. However there are a lot more people living in a much broader area in the States than in Germany. That still doesn't excuse the lack of technological mobile advancements (Mobile carrier and ISP wise).
Off topic: Frustrating that Verizon FiOS and AT&T's Uverse are still being deployed in many US cities. Especially in Rochester, NY, where Frontier (formerly Rochester Telephone) and Time Warner have monopolies for ISP and television (my Time Warner bill in NYC for cable with HD DVR and Roadrunner is ~$80/month, and that same plan is more than $150 in Rochester). Verizon FiOS is offered in Buffalo and Syracuse (the main Western NY hub is in Buffalo) but due to contracts with the city of Rochester, they can not market there.
Hi, and your country is the size of which one of the US states?!
True up to a point, but let's say it's Vodafone doing the upgrade in Germany ... and the UK ... and France ... and Spain ... and Italy ... and Ireland ... etc, etc.
A single company in Europe can somehow upgrade its network across a multitude of land-areas equivalent in size to the non-barely populated parts of the USA, with a similar population, quite quickly.
Where is 3G in Asheville NC?
It would be nice if AT&T would hurry up and implement 3G in Asheville, NC. Right now we only have Edge!
It would be nice if AT&T would hurry up and implement 3G in Asheville, NC. Right now we only have Edge!
Not with the latency of mobile broadband.
I've tried the 14.4mbps Vodafone USB dongles here, and they achieve nowhere near the connection they should - partly due to the latency and partly due to the fact you need to be up on the transmitter tower standing right bloody next to the transmitters to actually get that throughput.
Latency isn't that bad.
I don't have a 14.4 Mbps dongle, only a 7.2 Mbps down / 5.8 Mbps up dongle and this is what I get on my Macbook:
Really?
Sprint's "Simply Everything" plans should save you 20%-30% a month compared to AT&T and Verizon, .. T-Mobile saves you around 15%.
Most of the big carriers now have unlimited minute plans for $99/month. That would have cost you over $200 two+ years ago.
Verizon (since merging with Alltel early this year) has the Friends and Family thing where you can get unlimited minutes to a certain number of phone numbers.
Seems like there's been a lot going on with the major US carriers over the last year or two.
Actually Europe is substantially larger than the US both in terms of area and population, and cell service is dramatically better throughout Europe. US carriers are demonstrably inferior. All of them, not just AT&T.Hi, and your country is the size of which one of the US states?!
Substantially larger? Without Alaska perhaps makes the difference about 1,000,000 km^2. Otherwise the difference is about 350,000 km^2. Both the US and Europe are roughly 10,000,000 km^2.
Anyway, Europe has a much higher population density and especially around urban areas. The US isn't built the same in terms of urban layout. So building a cellular network is much easier when the population is condensed into fewer areas.
I was surprised to learn that The European Union is larger in sq footage and population than the United States. The European Union has 493 million inhabitants living in (roughly) 4 million square miles, compared to 307 million living in (roughly) 3.79 million square miles in the United States.
For clarification, European countries consist of:
Scandinavia: Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Denmark
The British Isles: the United Kingdom and Ireland
Western Europe: France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and Monaco
Southern Europe: Portugal, Spain, Andorra, Italy, Malta, San Marino, and Vatican City
Central Europe: Germany, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Austria, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary
Southeastern Europe: Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, Albania, Macedonia, Romania, Bulgaria, Greece, and the European part of Turkey
Eastern Europe: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova, the European portion of Russia, and, by convention, the Transcaucasian countries of Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan
Too true, which is what frustrates me about the US and the automotive industry (thank you Frank Lloyd Wright for forming the new American topography with "Broadacre City" as well as GM for ousting Los Angeles electric cable car system with Diesel buses, the world is doing so much better cause of you lol). Cities were/are built around automobiles, for many obvious reasons. Since NYC progressed (or REgressed) from the 19th century to the 20th century, American cities began building out instead of intelligently building (up). Now we have a social structure (and economic structure) revolving around automobiles and suburbia. One of the many reasons why this nation consists of sparsely populated homogenous suburbs, making for great socio-political tension.
/end rant lol
Yeah, but many people are complaining of getting no 3G in their city of 750,000 people! We're not talking about a community of 100 people up in the hills, or a medieval village of 500 set in a valley in the middle of nowhere, where it would be okay to understand that they're not getting service (even in Europe).
MicroCell Scam
MicroCell is just AT&T's ingenious way of getting its customers to pay for its poor quality infrastructure with a little help from Apple.
MicroCell is just AT&T's ingenious way of getting its customers to pay for its poor quality infrastructure with a little help from Apple.
I don't know, but at some point it's all moot because of the processing power. I was looking up stuff on IMDB on my phone earlier today and it was painfully slow compared to my computer, which was 2 feet away. It seems that 400Mhz shows its slowness in areas like that. The new iPhone's upgraded hardware should help that.
AT&T service even in cities of 5-6 million people in the US is about par with the European standard existing in isolated island villages in Greece. America is not yet par with the third world.
FAIL:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europe
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USA
Europe:
Area 10,180,000 km2 (3,930,000 sq mi)
Population 731,000,000
Pop. density 70/km2 (181/sq mi)
USA:
Area
- Total 9,826,630 km2
3,794,066 sq mi
- Water (%) 6.76
Population
- 2009 estimate 306,500,000[2] (3rd4)
- 2000 census 281,421,906[3]
- Density 31/km2 (180th)
80/sq mi
And yes, this does include Alaska and Hawaii. Time to go (back) to school Marksman and learn something.
Many? One guy. And we don't know which city, nor do we know what his particular situation is. He may live in a cave, or in a building which has a structure functioning as a Faraday cage.
it's about time! AT&T sucks where I am, and I live in a generally large city, and a CERTAINLY large state population-wise... hopefully this will help with service and coverage in my area...
Same. AT&T's signal strength inside buildings has vastly improved since summer 2007.
That's a very good point. Any mobile device lags compare to a computer even when both are on wifi. I think the biggest gains we'll see with the next iphone will come from the updated processor and RAM.
Vodafone appears to be a conglomerate of subsidiaries and joint ventures.
Their website shows that in Europe alone, they have 15 different CEOs, and that in many countries, Vodafone's a joint-venture with a locally-owned wireless provider (where they own between 2% and 100% interest). To point, Vodafone own 45% interest in Verizon Wireless.
That's a 100% different operational ballgame when compared to a "single company" carrier in the US, like AT&T.
I hope AT&T is mindful of the 2010 expiration date of its exclusivity contract with Apple, and this time make serious changes to improve the reliability of its network.
Reliability is more important than speed - a fast network is no use if you can't connect to it.
Reliability is more important than speed - a fast network is no use if you can't connect to it.