Go to AT&T's website and check out the 3G coverage maps. If you're not in the blue zones, you might want to be prepared to be disappointed.
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AT&T to Complete 3G Rollout by June
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Who knows?
Other cities/counties, that got 3G, are bigger than Santa Cruz (the city or the county), and so that may have played a part. Still, I am surprised at some places that supposedly got 3G, like San Luis Obispo.
DSL will almost always be faster and will have much lower latency (travel time from your computer to the web server), too. These HSDPA/HSUPA speeds they show are best-case scenarios. There are a million
different variables that affect your connection speed, and the average real-world speeds are a lot lower than the stated maximums. I think AT&T's HSDPA speed is rated at either 3.6 or 7.2mbps, but you will rarely see anything over 1.5mbps, and most of the time you will see 1/2 of that.
DSL service speeds depend on many factors, particularly your distance to the carrier's exchange, and the quality of the lines. In the USA, where the lines are usually older and run much further from the carrier's exchange/switch, speeds are generally MUCH SLOWER than comparable service in Europe/Asia. Outside of large cities, most people can usually only get 1.5mbps or rarely 3.0mbps DSL. In Europe and ASIA, they routinely get 15-20+ mbps service.
All the carriers in the United States at least have NEVER charged more for 3G data access versus 2.5G data access. In addition, there are many reasons why they wouldn't do this and wouldn't be able to do this. Would it depend on the device you buy? What if you buy a 3G phone and you don't have access in your area? What if you keep it on 2.5G/EDGE mode to save power?
Besides, people are constantly moving and new 3G areas come online all the time. It would be a billing nightmare to have people constantly changing their data package depending on where they live or if they get 3G service.
And the technical level, it is probably not feasible to have seperate conditional access depending on what network a phone connects to. I would assume all of a carriers diverse networks authenticate the cellphone via the same backend database of subscribers.
This is not the last stopgap to LTE. I believe AT&T is planning to rollout "evolved HSPA"/HSPA+ on their current UMTS/HSPA network sometime in the next 1-2 years which will boost speeds upwards of 20+ mbps.
Unfortunately, without governement mandates in the USA, the carriers will never roll out their premium services to rural areas with low population density. The buildout costs per potential subscriber is probably just too high to make any money.
Wikipedia is your friend; so is Google. But here's a little chart I drew up a while ago:
It's not a matter of flipping a power switch on one giant monolithic network. They have to go around and update all of their equipment in each city. They have actually had 3G services runnning in the metro areas for years. What they are doing now is getting their entire 3G network running the same HSDPA and HSUPA technology.
AT&T's UMTS network runs on both 850Mhz and 1900Mhz indepedently, meaning uplink and downlink are both either in 850Mhz OR 1900Mhz, and NOT both like other networks use. I'm not sure what percentage of their network is running on which frequency or even if it depends on geographic region. It probably has to do with the fact that AT&T is a hodgepodge of Cingluar, AT&T wireless, and many other acquisitions.
Well of course wireless latency is going to be higher than wired. That's a given. Whats important is that both HSDPA and HSUPA vastly reduce the latency of data connections versus plain UMTS and EDGE.
That's "packet access", not "protocol access".
The 1.4mbps the article used is most likely talking about real-world speed, not HSDPA's rated speeds of 1.8/3.6/7.2/14.4mbps
You'll have to look at the coverage map, but I would assume 10 miles our of ANY large city would be covered.
Eh? WTH are you talking about?
Someone was saying how much faster their broadband connection is than 3G. And his reply was "try and take your DSL connection with you on the road". In other words, even if you had a 100mbps fiber connection, it's worthless once you leave your house.
Wow, even the slowest HSDPA would be faster than my home ADSL (1.8Mbps/384kbps vs 1.5Mbps/256kbps), which rarely reaches its top speed anyway.
There seems to be a bit of debate over the fastest ADSL speeds. In Australia, ADSL1 goes up to 8Mb/384kb, while ADSL2+ goes up to 24Mb/1Mb.
There seems to be a bit of debate over the fastest ADSL speeds. In Australia, ADSL1 goes up to 8Mb/384kb, while ADSL2+ goes up to 24Mb/1Mb.
AT&T "markets"
For those of us living in medium sized cities (hmm Santa Cruz and Urbana-Champaign not having 3G - I guess AT&T doesn't care about higher ed) and hoping that we would see some love, this is just another reason to hate AT&T. I hope Apple puts some tasty new features in iPhone 2.0 to make it worth waiting all this time for, otherwise I'm going Verizon:Blackberry (they've had EVDO here for years).
For those of us living in medium sized cities (hmm Santa Cruz and Urbana-Champaign not having 3G - I guess AT&T doesn't care about higher ed) and hoping that we would see some love, this is just another reason to hate AT&T. I hope Apple puts some tasty new features in iPhone 2.0 to make it worth waiting all this time for, otherwise I'm going Verizon:Blackberry (they've had EVDO here for years).
I'm sure there is better information on dslreports.com (not just about DSL -- all broadband is discussed) as a lot of people who hang out there are network engineers and/or have inside knowledge on rollouts. I wouldn't discount AT&T yet; Just within the last 6-9 months or so they rolled out 3G service to two entirely new regional areas in my state. Verizon will probably always have a wider coverage area, especially west of the Mississippi, but they DON'T have the iPhone.
Latency here equals the time delay between the moment a connection to a remote site is initiated, and the moment first bit arrives to the connection initiator.
Ping latency on my cable connection to google.com is generally 50ms or less whereas with the 3G connection it was more than 300ms.
3G 4 Me!
My local AT&T store just confirmed to me that 3G service will be in the Shreveport/Bossier area June 1st.
My local AT&T store just confirmed to me that 3G service will be in the Shreveport/Bossier area June 1st.
They are hoping you'll get frustrated and just close it instead of waiting to see how bad it really is
I agree.
I am so sick of all the discussion of 3G when AT&Ts 3G footprint is so damn pitiful. Why don't they roll out 3G in a lot more cities before they worry about upgrading the 3G network in cities that already have it? They are so frickin' behind the curve when it comes to Verizon and Sprint on this. AT&T needs to get a clue that this is a MOBILE network and unless you can actually travel out of your home city (if you are lucky enough to have their 3G in your city) and still connect then what is the point?
There are about 30,000 cities in the U.S. and AT&T is happily announcing that they are covering 250 of them with 3G? Seriously? Give me a frickin' break and roll out some more towers and upgrade the ones you have!!!!
Well, I probably need my head examined for saying this, but I'll say it anyway: in AT&T's defense, they have been rolling out 3G and upgrading/installing towers. I remember looking at AT&T's 3G coverage maps last July/August, and it was more sparse than it is today. I live in a "fringe area", which had no 3G coverage then, but now has some coverage. (Not that I'm complaining, but I'm surprised that they would add coverage in my area.)
I'd love to make that assumption, but that doesn't seem to be true, if AT&T's coverage maps are accurate. For example, if you look at the 3G maps for the SF bay area, there are a fair number of coverage holes. Parts of the maps resemble swiss cheese.
I live in a county that has over 250,000 people living in it and the only wireless company offering 3G here is Verizon. Right now I have Sprint so I can roam on the Verizon network if I really need 3G but AT&T is pitiful with their footprint.
Actually your statement is a bit ridiculous. Of course they are rolling out 3G. I'm questioning the speed at which they are rolling it out. I also seriously question them upgrading areas that already have 3G to an even better version of 3G without adding it to areas that have none.
I'm finding 3g coverage in new places while driving around every day now. ATT is definitely working on it.
As for your second statement, upgrading existing 3g towers to faster speeds is probably a lot cheaper and faster than putting up brand new 3g equipment on towers. And there's no reason ATT can't do both at the same time, they're a big company.
Where do you live? Because I live in Georgia, which is the 9th most populous state with almost 10 million people and yet only 2 cities are covered with 3G.
By contrast, Arizona has around 6 million people and has coverage in 9 cities.
Virginia, less than 8 million and 5 cities covered.
Nevada, 2.5 million and 8 cities covered.
In a word, ridiculous.
Google "AT&T 3g" and your city name. That should link you to a press release detailing whether or not your city is due for a 3G upgrade.
AT&T will be adding Columbus & Savannah in Georgia sometime later this year.
AT&T will be adding Columbus & Savannah in Georgia sometime later this year.
1) I'll believe it when I see it.
2) Georgia is a big state and for it to be the middle of 2008 and they might bring their total up to 4 cities this year is just pitiful. It really is. Check out Verizon's coverage of GA right now:
http://www.verizonwireless.com/b2c/...NEWREQUEST&lid=//global//plans//coverage+maps
They have broadband coverage over more than half of the state. It makes AT&T look ridiculous. AT&T is the LARGEST wireless company and yet they are getting their butt kicked on coverage by Verizon. How can you defend them when confronted with these facts?
I'm not saying they are all bad but their coverage is ridiculous considering the size of the company and the number of subscribers.
The phone will just handover to EDGE and eventually hand back to HSPA when you re-enter 3G coverage. This happens without dropping the connection.