If there's one thing AT&T's network could use, it's
more network. Particularly in major cities (we're looking at you and your dastardly street parking situation, San Francisco), AT&T's 3G network is perpetually
overwhelmed, oftentimes forcing users to switch to EDGE just to tweet about how awful the coverage is. Thankfully, the operator is making good on its
earlier promise to roll out HSPA 7.2Mbps to select cities, with Charlotte, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles and Miami now destined to get lit this year. Potentially more interesting, however, is the deployment of "additional backhaul capacity to cell sites," which will also support
LTE when the time comes. All told, around 2,000 new cell sites should be added before the year's end, and at least a half dozen 7.2Mbps-capable smartphones should be in AT&T's portfolio by the same deadline. Feel free to express your joy in comments below -- that is, if you can get comments to load on your existing 3G connection.
posted Sep 9th 2009 8:44AM
Here's one for the execs at AT&T. Let alone satisfying your existing customer base, I won't switch UNTIL you fix your issues and get more data coverage. I went through this 8 years ago with limited digital voice coverage and some nasty customer service reps that could care less that calls were being dropped and dropped. How ironic at that time I was speaking with a disconnect rep and the call dropped. I can wait to avoid your problems.
8 years was a long time ago. Have you used the service lately? if not, then the rest of your comment is just noise.
I believe you misunderstood my comment. I agree that AT&T voice coverage has improved, esp since 2000. My point was I didnt want to go through with data what I went through with voice and getting slapped with breaking my contract for coverage problems that are due to the carrier's issues. IPhone is a great success for Apple and AT&T, without it they would just be Cingular or worse, Cellular One TDMA. HA!
I think bashing AT&T's network is a bit unfair, or at least your reasoning is not quite sound. AT&T has a great network. Unfortunately, neither Apple nor AT&T anticipated the demand the iPhone would place on it. The iPhone user eats up four times as much data as other 3G phone users. No network could withstand it. If the iPhone had come out on Verizon, they might have slightly better coverage, but 3G speeds would be just as spotty and slow in certain places.
Is AT&T still at fault? Absolutely. They should have started these upgrades at least a year ago. I'll be surprised if we ever see the iPhone on another network. Those network operators know that the iPhone will bring their network to its knees, and they'll decide that its not worth it (look at what it did to AT&T).
I Agree with you 100% on top of the fact that SPrint/ Verizon both cap their unlimited data plans to 5GB imagine if the iphone 3G would've hit sprint / verzion we would have a 2GB data cap because they don't want to strain their networks.
THat is one thing people could at least give credit to ATT for is that they still remain giving iphone users Trully unlimited data and not capping it like the other carriers.
@drew well in one way you have a point the iphone will weaken verizon/sprint data but not as much as att since their 3g still wasn't good even before the iphone. Now one question i ask myself is why att didn't do this shit earlier after all the profits. One thing for sure the iphone won't affect coverage since right now sprint/verizon offer twice more 3g coverage or more.
@many sprint doesn't cap their data to cellphones such as the pre,tour, touch pro2 etc they do cap their broadband data something att and verizon also does and remember sprint was the last one to cap their broadband use.
AT&T didnt start having problems until the iPhone 3GS came out and demanded full use of the network. When the iPhone 3G came out it only supported like 3.8Mbps, am I wrong? Anyways, when the 3GS came out it seemed like spotty service and crashing was inevitable.
This is hopeful :)
Yes, the iPhone 3G only supports 3.8 Mbps. But although the 3GS supports 7.2 Mbps, the AT&T network itself is just rolling out 7.2 Mbps coverage. Thus you still only get 3.8 on the 3GS, even though it supports higher speeds.
3.6, but who's counting.
i honestly don't know what people are talking when they at&t has bad coverage.
i live in the north texas area and at&t is the best thing you can possibly have here.
i haven't seen any other carrier where i have 3G and full bars 95% of the places i go.
and my 3G S runs amazingly well on it, i haven't had any network issues so this 7.2 jump
is only going to make service better here.
I have no problems with AT&T's 3G network here in Milwaukee (I use an unlocked Nokia E71), but earlier this summer when I was in Orlando for a few days, I was getting dropped 3G signals left and right! The signal would drop entirely for a minute or two, then it would return at full strength.
I would have to drive for 45 minutes just to find the closest 3G coverage, but I am totally satisfied with AT&T.
WiFi is everywhere I live, work, eat, and visit.
Speaking of WiFi, do you think that the bandwidth faster than 3.8 is wasted on my 3G iPhone? With home and work at 15 and 8 Mbps, respectively, I would love to think that the 3GS would take advantage of THAT action.
So they are added beefed up 3G (I guess it's 3.5G?) to some cities, while mine still doesn't even have 3G... we're still stuck on EDGE here in Vermont.
Bastards.
To be fair, they claim 3G is coming in November, but if some places are getting beefed up 3G, why not just start with that here?
ya i understand your frustration and what ur saying. but it seems like a logical business move to me. how many customers do u think they have in vermont? now how many do u think they have in cities like Charlotte, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles and Miami? its clear to me where the most benefit for upgrades would be.
I am also in VT and was thinking the same thing. Maybe they are
pulling some of the older 3G from the big cities to put in hspa and
using the old 3G for VT. :-)
So excuse my ignorance on the iPhone 3GS and AT&T's networks, but please answer this for me:
The iPhone 3GS IS CAPABLE of 7.2mbps download speeds, but right now AT&T DOESN'T HAVE 7.2mbps download speeds?
And until AT&T updates all of their locations, the only places that WILL have the 7.2mbps download speeds will be the above mentioned places and the rest will have to wait until their cities are updated (as late as 2011?!?!) in order to get 7.2mbps download speed?
By the time there is 7.2mbps download speeds across the majority of the AT&T network, there will probably be 2 updated versions of the iPhone released.
That's like getting an 8cyl car, and being told you can only use 4cyl until we roll out an update for your car in 2 years.
If that's the case, people who bought the iPhone 3GS are retarded.
A Verizon iPhone would be better even if it saturates Verizon's capacity simply because Verizon's CDMA technology is more flexible than GSM/EDGE/HSPA. On Verizon, your iPhone would be able to performs 'soft handoff' between 1G/2G/2.5G/3G signals across multiple towers simultaneous without interrupting your data or call; on AT&T, this simply isn't possible even in the best engineered GSM/EDGE + HSPA 'hybrid' systems. Verizon also can dynamically manage its all-CDMA system to allocate frequencies according to network needs.
and that is why Verizon is in the process of switching over to a GSM variant (LTE) for thier 4G Technology? Because CDMA is soooooooooooo much better???