Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
AT&T Expanding Their 3G Network in 2008
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Whoa, watch what you're saying.
EDGE is indeed pretty much everywhere. But it has a theoretical bandwidth maximum that is still far, far less than 3G. I'm not sure what it is but it's around 250kbits/sec. That's the cap as to how fast EDGE can go just because of the technology.
3G I believe can go up to 600-800 kbits/sec while 3.5G (HSDPA) can go way higher than that, 1000-3000 kbits/sec. Again, don't quote me on these numbers but I believe it's around those figures.
The only thing 3G cannot fix is latency times. So casual browsing across lots of pages aren't going to be that much faster unless the page size is huge. That's where the faster bandwidth helps in downloading the page.
I don't know why this has to be reiterated but there is no way the current iPhone can do 3G (short of adding a dongle on the 30 pin connector. There just isn't a 3G radio inside. The SIM card having 3G printed on it means nothing. That's just the same SIM AT&T uses for all their phones.
You Apple fools are a naïve and interesting bunch. For all the posters out there with limited knowledge of what is actually REAL: AT&T has had a 3G network up in major markets for YEARS now. LOL when the IPhone was released with slow EDGE we had had 3G in Seattle for about a full year if not more. Then Jobs filled your little naïve Apple fool heads with "oh no 3G will sap the battery life that's why we didn't include it" LOL. Somebody should tell Jobs and you that there were a bunch of 3G phones out already at the iphone launch, including smart phones like the Blackjack 1 and even cheapo phones like entry level Motorola and Nokia phones. How deluded are you sheep? Now its one year later and 3G chipsets are so ubiqutous and cheap that they are included in Free phones, and the sheep still walk around thinking its some new technology. AT&T isn't launching their 3G network you fools, they are just expanding it in new cities. Its not something new. Apple as usual is fancy looking graphical garbage with old low tech technology.
I *think* the problem is ...
AT&T traditionally had little interest in cellular's success. Their entire "empire" was built and maintained on land-line phones and service like DSL over copper wire pairs, T1 and T3 circuits, etc.
When they finally stepped into the cellular arena, they did so by buying out Cingular Wireless, who really didn't have that great of a network in place.
To this day, I wonder if there's perhaps a bit of "conflict of interest" internally at AT&T when it comes to providing a highly reliable cellular network. At least *some* people in the company surely like the idea perpetuated that cellphones aren't "reliable enough" to justify canceling your home phone service, in favor of them. Their "best business model" is probably a place where their cellular service works "good enough to keep most of their customers" but not *quite* good enough to stop you from keeping BOTH a cellphone and a land-line.
In any case though, AT&T has their work cut out for them, after taking over Cingular. The wireless network of theirs in my city is spotty at best, and I'm in St. Louis, Missouri -- not exactly a "small town". I can almost count on a dropped call in 1 or 2 spots along Interstate 44 as I drive west from the downtown area. I get practically no signal at all inside my workplace, and a wildly varying signal strength if I go outside in our parking lot.
Their EDGE network varies widely in performance too, although I typically find it "molasses slow" pulling up any web content. Oddly, there seem to be specific places I can go and get a pretty "snappy" EDGE experience. It seems like they've only got a few towers upgraded for good EDGE performance or something.
AT&T traditionally had little interest in cellular's success. Their entire "empire" was built and maintained on land-line phones and service like DSL over copper wire pairs, T1 and T3 circuits, etc.
When they finally stepped into the cellular arena, they did so by buying out Cingular Wireless, who really didn't have that great of a network in place.
To this day, I wonder if there's perhaps a bit of "conflict of interest" internally at AT&T when it comes to providing a highly reliable cellular network. At least *some* people in the company surely like the idea perpetuated that cellphones aren't "reliable enough" to justify canceling your home phone service, in favor of them. Their "best business model" is probably a place where their cellular service works "good enough to keep most of their customers" but not *quite* good enough to stop you from keeping BOTH a cellphone and a land-line.
In any case though, AT&T has their work cut out for them, after taking over Cingular. The wireless network of theirs in my city is spotty at best, and I'm in St. Louis, Missouri -- not exactly a "small town". I can almost count on a dropped call in 1 or 2 spots along Interstate 44 as I drive west from the downtown area. I get practically no signal at all inside my workplace, and a wildly varying signal strength if I go outside in our parking lot.
Their EDGE network varies widely in performance too, although I typically find it "molasses slow" pulling up any web content. Oddly, there seem to be specific places I can go and get a pretty "snappy" EDGE experience. It seems like they've only got a few towers upgraded for good EDGE performance or something.
Hey does this board support ignoring posts by certain members? This guy is absolutely useless. Same song and dance in every thread. It's like cuts and pastes and just replaces product names.
Personally, I will be first in line when the 3g iphone is announced. if it's as early as june, awesome.
I also had to laugh at the fool who thought EDGE was state of the art and would match 3G. Lol dude if you don't know what you're talking about go do some frickin research. EDGE is a 2.5G add on to GSM and has a real world max output of about 300kbps in the final EDGE deployment that AT&T is rolling out. 3G UMTS HSDPA that AT&T is/has rolled out has a throughput of 7.2Mbps. Now I don't know where you went to school dude, but 200K aint 7.2Mbps. Do some research.
The sim cards snap out of a business card sized plastic card which displays the fact that AT&T offers 3G network coverage. Its just AT&T's little 'blazing 3g' logo that they like to stick on things. Makes them feel special. Nothing more/nothing less.
I read an earlier post saying it was the 3rd generation of sim cards - wow ... thats all i can say... wow
Hello, Seattle troll .... go back under your rock.
I, for one, am well aware that 3G phones were quite common at the time the iPhone was released. So were MANY people who went on to buy one anyway. We did so because we knew that OTHER aspects of the phone were revolutionary, DESPITE the EDGE network being a negative.
The whole industry has been scrambling to create knock-offs of Apple's touch-screen technology since it came out. And more importantly, it provides a "smartphone" that actually works as advertised! I owned a Palm Treo 650, a 600, and a couple of Kyocera smartphones before my iPhone ... and NONE of them lived up to any of their promised functionality. The Treos were constantly crashing or freezing up, and the Kyoceras couldn't even run quite a few of the PalmOS apps out there, despite claiming to be Palm devices!
And as others have said too, the 3G speed is only really useful when you're downloading large files. It'll be nice for those photos or videos someone attaches to an email you're downloading, but the latency issues will prevent web browsing from working much better than EDGE does. (The average web page consists of dozens of little files that have to be individually downloaded and put together on the screen as a page.)
Apple is "fancy graphical garbage with old, low tech" inside? Wow... not sure where to even begin with that one. I'll just say the pair of 2.8Ghz quad-core Xeon CPUs in my new Mac Pro are *hardly* old, outdated tech. though! Oh, and Apple was among the first to adopt draft wireless n standards, offering a router that was rated "best in class" by several web sites, including arstechnica (NOT a strictly "Mac" site, mind you). But hey, think whatever makes you happy, ok?
I, for one, am well aware that 3G phones were quite common at the time the iPhone was released. So were MANY people who went on to buy one anyway. We did so because we knew that OTHER aspects of the phone were revolutionary, DESPITE the EDGE network being a negative.
The whole industry has been scrambling to create knock-offs of Apple's touch-screen technology since it came out. And more importantly, it provides a "smartphone" that actually works as advertised! I owned a Palm Treo 650, a 600, and a couple of Kyocera smartphones before my iPhone ... and NONE of them lived up to any of their promised functionality. The Treos were constantly crashing or freezing up, and the Kyoceras couldn't even run quite a few of the PalmOS apps out there, despite claiming to be Palm devices!
And as others have said too, the 3G speed is only really useful when you're downloading large files. It'll be nice for those photos or videos someone attaches to an email you're downloading, but the latency issues will prevent web browsing from working much better than EDGE does. (The average web page consists of dozens of little files that have to be individually downloaded and put together on the screen as a page.)
Apple is "fancy graphical garbage with old, low tech" inside? Wow... not sure where to even begin with that one. I'll just say the pair of 2.8Ghz quad-core Xeon CPUs in my new Mac Pro are *hardly* old, outdated tech. though! Oh, and Apple was among the first to adopt draft wireless n standards, offering a router that was rated "best in class" by several web sites, including arstechnica (NOT a strictly "Mac" site, mind you). But hey, think whatever makes you happy, ok?
A good point was made, 3G is not new tech, AT&T is just behind the curve in implementing it. If they were on the ball Apple would of have to use 3G in the iPhone. The fact that it wasn't available really screwed things up. Now AT&T is going to be behind the curve again while other networks are working on 4G they will just be pushing 3G.
I hate to break it to you, but not only was 3G deployed by AT&T well prior to the iphone launch in major cities, at the iphone launch there were a bunch of 3G phones out by AT&T including smart phones.Seattle had 3G UMTS from AT&T since 2004.
Battery is now also finished after 1 day. I have to charge it every night. Ohwell maybe because i'm an heavy iphone user
Consider yourself lucky. I had to recharge my Treo BEFORE the end of the day until I bought an ultra high capacity battery for it. Now I only have to charge it when I go to bed. The iPhone has excellent battery life for a smartphone, especially one that has a massive 3.5" screen and all the other features.
That argument is ridiculous on its face. The fact is that it is easier for AT&T to make one type of SIM card that is compatible with their highest level of service and is also backwards compatible with everything before that. This way they only make one type and it is much easier for them to activate new phones. Can you imagine what a pain it would be for them to have to keep stock of many different types of SIM cards?
Nowhere on any website, box, or literature does it even come close to claiming that the iPhone is 3G. In fact, they go out of their way to tell you that it works on the EDGE network. The fact that you thought it was 3G ready simply because the SIM card is a 3G ready SIM card is ridiculous. AT&T already has 3G networks in place, they just don't have a lot of them. So why would the iPhone not advertise this if it already had the chips in place? What sense does that make?
so i guess everyone with an iPhone now will not be happy. but that's just how technology works i guess
Verizon is already working on 4G (LTE) with Vodafone which will transition them to GSM, which will be good for their phones. Hopefully, with 4G GSM, Verizon customers will finally get some good phones right after they are released, where as now, consumers have to wait for the phones to be converted to CDMA.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071129-verizon-decides-on-lte-for-4g-wireless-broadband.html
Somehow I don't think we'll see a 3G iPhone this year. Battery life was the main concern then, and i'm pretty sure it still is now. Every phone that i've seen released this year still shows half the talk time on 3G UMTS/HSDPA compared to 2G GSM. And i've yet to see any announcement of advances in power usage for 3G chipsets. So, unless Apple has access to special unreleased 3G chipsets that no one else does, I don't think we'll see 3G anytime soon.
That is, unless Apple feels so pressured to release a 3G iPhone that they will make one regardless of the battery life.
That is, unless Apple feels so pressured to release a 3G iPhone that they will make one regardless of the battery life.
You are correct about at&t's network..but..here's the kicker..The EDGE air interface actually can operate at "3G" speeds, but it was cost prohibitive at the time of deployment. Now we all know a redesign is a moot point. There are a lot of factors at play that can make EDGE suck. Its amazing that at&t was able to fix at least some of the issues to give us our 200kbps average data rate on our iphones. Before, the EDGE network could barely top 85kbps.
3G will fix latency a great deal. It wont be perfect, but 100-150ms is a lot better than EDGE's over half second latency + tons of jitter. The GSM 3G takes a lot of steps to treat data as a real data service and significantly reduce latency.
And one final comment about UMTS and "power consumption". A lot of things are changing in the UMTS world, and unfortunately, a lot of things changed slightly after/during apple's final chipset selection.
Two developments: chips with smaller, lower power consumption (some which rival even GSM TDMA idle power consumption) and HSUPA.
Honestly, i think apple's product cycles for the iphone are just in time for these new developments.
Does it matter that we have EDGE? no. we already know the phone can render pages faster than UMTS phones anyway. This is a great ace up their sleeve for the next product cycle.
And please, enough of the WiMax talk. WiMax is a piece of garbage -- especially for voice technologies. If you had a WiMax phone, i doubt you'd even last a week before canceling the service. It also makes a poor mobile data service as well. GSM and CDMA air interfaces are much superior in their scalability and robustness in mobile wireless environments.
Some people want products now, rather than waiting around who knows how long for new versions to come out.
Who is the fool, those who have actual knowledge or those who claim to have a greater knowledge than others and only end up making themselves look foolish?
Cingular had 3G deployed when the iPhone was launched but the footprint was VERY LIMITED compared to EDGE. At the time of the release there were tradeoffs to including 3G coverage and since that coverage had limited availability it didn't really seem worth it at the time. Other phones may have had 3G incorporated but those phones didn't have 3.5" screens and play music and video as well. There are a lot of factors that have to be taken into consideration when deciding what features to include in your phone and you know what, battery life is at the top of the list when you are a heavy phone user, as most smart phone buyers are.
You make yourself look extremely foolish with your last claim. If you actually put your hands on and used an iPhone you might have a different perspective. It has the best mobile web browser, period. No other smart phone even comes close. The UI for making phone calls and checking your voice mail is head and shoulders above the competition. These and other features put the iPhone YEARS ahead of the competition and yet because of the lack of 3G you classify it as "fancy looking graphical garbage with old low tech technology." How silly you are.
Please try to get your facts straight before you try to post something like this.
1) Cingular was owned as a joint venture of SBC and BellSouth
2) Cingular bought AT&T Wireless
3) SBC bought AT&T
4) SBC changed its name to AT&T
5) The new AT&T (SBC) bought BellSouth
6) The new AT&T (SBC) changed the name of Cingular to AT&T Wireless
Turns out that reality is completely out of line with your claims.
A good point was made about 3g. I was referring to his hate on Apple fools and Apple products.
I think most people on the boards know that 3g has been available but not universally. We also all knew the iPhone would eventually have that functionality but until AT&T is able to say 'yeah we have a 3G network' (which they haven't till now because its too small to go claiming this only to have customers come back and complain), the release becomes more imminent I think. Of course Apple has surely been working on it probably since last year or even before as someone suggested.