AT&T Announces Plans for 7.2 Mbps 3G Deployment

[digitalbiker]

Fact Check:

The continent of Europe is only somewhat larger than the US.
The European Union is less than half the size and population density more than three and a half times that of the US.

I don't think many people realize how remote the US can be. Where I live it is 120 miles between the nearest gas stations and the towns are over 200 miles apart. It is 500 miles to the nearest big city.

How many places are like that on the East coast or in Europe?

 

[MattBaker]

I can't get 3G either

Heck I'm still waiting for 3G. I live in a City of 750K and still do not have 3G. When AT&T speaks I tend to roll my eyes.

I've heard 3G is nice

I'm in a suburb of Los Angeles, and we can hardly get ATT voice signals. Much less 3G.

According to the closest ATT store, the problem is that ATT sold off their old towers to TMobile a few years ago. Then the city wouldn't give ATT a permit to build a new tower, so the end result is that there's no tower within a reasonable distance.

 

[jrahn]

3g here in San Diego seems to be fine in most areas. Having moved from central Ca., it seems to be a little more spotty surprisingly. It seemed pretty dependable in the Valley actually.

 

[casik]

okay so someone answer me this... rogers currently has a 7.2 Mbps HSPA network in canada... does that mean that the current iPhone isn't takeing advantage of that over the older 3.6 Mbps?

 

[DS Flyer]

More at WSJ

The WSJ has some video and more articles on the topic.

http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2009/05/27/att-ceo-on-iphones-lte-and-the-economy/?mod=crnews

They're investing $9 billion to improve their networks. I think they are starting to get the hint at least. We'll see what happens.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124344227596159029.html?mod=crnews

 

[furtherout]

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:

my speeds in the states are pretty good.
but its a city of about >200k

 

[kupua]

I've never had an issue with dropped calls on the AT&T (cingular) network. Might be becuase I'm in a major city but seriously I think they do a pretty darn good job. The boosted 3G network is going to be niiiiiiiiiice.

I'm here in LA, in fact, right next to LAX. If this isn't a major city, oh well! You would think that it should be one of their best local's for good signal. But I do get dropped calls. Many people I know on AT&T are in the same camp as me!

 

[lazyrighteye]

Say you're on a call in your car, then you come home within range of your home wireless network. Couldn't your call "switch seamlessly" over to your Wi-Fi, providing better coverage, signal strength, and potentially better call quality?

I'd say "no," based on the fact that the iPhone 3G can't "switch seamlessly" from Edge to 3G without dropping the call, every time.

But it would be a lot cooler if it could...

 

[kupua]

I live well within, what AT&T terms "Best Coverage". What a joke.

300 dropped calls out of 1400 minutes. Data rates as fast as 156K.

I am certain their going to a faster data rate will effect only a small percentage of customers.

Yeah, welcome to my world! haha. Guess that's why they stopped the fewest dropped call commercial.

 

[macbookftw]

Heck I'm still waiting for 3G. I live in a City of 750K and still do not have 3G. When AT&T speaks I tend to roll my eyes.

I've heard 3G is nice

Yes! I live in... well a really small town, I don't think I'll ever see 3G here.

 

[jeffreyfort]

black hole

I hope this means that NW Ohio, a black hole for even basic coverage (much less 3G) will improve

 

[TuckBodi]

Hopefully this ends the "AT&T sucks in my area" comments that plague the boards.

When AT$T rolled out 3G I went from 3 bars to 2 bars on my 1st gen (my previous phone on T-Mobile would get 4-5 bars). I called and complained and they danced around the issue. About 3 weeks ago I mysteriously dropped now to 1 bar with frequent drops and complaints from people I talk to of static. I called today and had to "schedule" with them to go over to my sister's house (45 min away) so they could call me on a landline. I'll be surprised if they can do anything. Yeah, AT$T sucks!

 

[Bryan Bowler]

Heck, it would be nice if AT&T would deploy 3G in more places before "stepping up to the next level". There 3G footprint doesn't even come close to that of Verizon/Alltel.

Bryan

 

[Nermal]

That's still a lot faster than my home connection! Anything above 0.8mbps download and 0.5mbps upload is better, . Apparently thats set to change later this year with one of the first UK 40-50mbps connections from BT but still doesn't make up for 8 years of a p**s poor connection. Rant over

I just couldn't resist posting this... from an HSPA network here in NZ:

 

[Johnner1999]

Dumb question .... Are MicroCells necessary given Wi-Fi Integration?

Say you're on a call in your car, then you come home within range of your home wireless network. Couldn't your call "switch seamlessly" over to your Wi-Fi, providing better coverage, signal strength, and potentially better call quality?

This would also take traffic off of the burgeoning AT&T network, which is good for everyone.

yeah seems to be logical BUT wait at least my iPhone can't switch from 3g to EDGE with out a called failed screen! I doubt they can handle this...

 

[Johnner1999]

Lets hope so! Definetly doesnt suck here in Connecticut!!

not sure where in CT you are but here in the NW corner all we have is EDGE and over the last month EDGE is about as fast as my old 28.8 modem! And no i'm not making that up. I so want to switch to Sprint but the phones suck!

 

[wizard]

The connection speed is only half the issue.

One big issue with the current iPhone is the rendering speed of Safari. Otis slow so while a faster connection is nice it is a team effort where Safari needs to be a lot faster.

Of coursethis is exactly what the new iPhone's are suppose to deliver. To some extent though I suspect the high speed capable iPhone will be thicker to handle a bigger battery.


Dave

 

[bruinsrme]

Does anyone know if the towers and frequency band being used for the new data deployments are on the old analog TV frequency band?

With Obama pushing out the andlog to digital TV conversion this could explain the delay in Sprint. Verizon and ATT in deploying this

 

[GregA]

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.

Almost sounds like an argument for lots of "baby bells" rather than a single big company

 

[Rs8dude]

Can't wait... my phone is working SLOW..

 

[howyoudoin]

st louis

It comes down to areas but here in st louis I would say coverage and speed is pretty decent. Only time I have issues is at the cardinals game at busch stadium. My iphone refuses to do any data during the game lol


Speed at my house outside of the city limits (in st louis county)

 

[kas23]

I really don't care about faster download speeds. For complex, resource intensive websites, Safari crashes anyways. Faster download speeds won't help with this. And after all, it's just a mobile phone, not something I really rely on to be fast. As for more towers, that's cool. We always need better reliability.

 

[deconstruct60]

Dumb question .... Are MicroCells necessary given Wi-Fi Integration?

Say you're on a call in your car, then you come home within range of your home wireless network. Couldn't your call "switch seamlessly" over to your Wi-Fi, providing better coverage, signal strength, and potentially better call quality?

This would also take traffic off of the burgeoning AT&T network, which is good for everyone.

In short Microcells are not a smartphone only solution. They are useful for non Wifi equipped phones ( of which there is a much larger number.)

One, I don't think your calls are "data" traffic on the cell network. If there is no cell signal you're not making calls on some random Wifi network are you?

I read that as can switch from one part of the AT&T's data network (e.g., their 3G to their Wifi or their Wifi to their 3G) without disconnecting. I can see having control enough on their network to re-route packets and still have a steady IP address. Not quite sure how seamlessly jump to some new address ( which could actually *should be* a NAT/private address. Unless you are providing internet access to your neighborhood.) So if running a HTTPS connection you can't really switch TCP/IP identity in the middle.


The microcell is like a home wifi router. Only it is a "mini cell tower" GSM (and 3G?) in a box which VPN-like transmits that data back into the ATT networks. (http://www.wimax.com/commentary/blog/blog-2008/femtocells-picocells-microcells-what-do-they-all-mean)

In short, not going to take calls off the ATT network with a Microcell. What that pragmatically does is extend the network of cell towers. If anything that will probably increase traffic on the ATT internal network since folks who were previously in crappy cell coverage probably made fewer calls before. Now that it is good they'll probably talk more; not less.

Similar to the Wifi and NAT/private issue, in locations where folks live densely packet wonder if neighbor's phone isn't going to inflate the bandwidth traffic, if their cell phone starts using your Microcell. Or worse, you get battling Microcells if the radius overlap too much.

Offices I can see since, they could be all professionally installed. Someone can work out channel/frequency problems as part of the install process and no close new cells would pop up unsurprisingly ( neighbor DIY installs a couple months after you get yours. )

 

[ghostface147]

Will safari be snappier?

 

[zorinlynx]

How much do you want to bet that even with these massive bandwidth upgrades, AT&T will still charge a fortune extra for tethering on the iPhone and put annoyingly low caps on how much mobile data you can use on their data card plans?

I swear; they could upgrade their wireless network to a gigabit and they'd still slap 5GB caps on you and say you can't do this or that.

Telcos suck. (all of them, not just AT&T. Sprint and Verizon do this too...)