AT&T has announced that it's now just six 3G markets away from completing its upgrade to HSPA, a technology representing the holy matrimony of HSDPA for blazing downlink speeds and HSUPA on the uplink. Of course, HSDPA has now been fully deployed in AT&T's 3G footprint for some time, but HSUPA's still a
fairly recent initiative for them -- good hustle for a company more accustomed to a relatively glacial upgrade pace. Even better, the remaining six markets are apparently just a month or so away, at which point about 275 US markets will offer the good stuff, and another 75 or so will be coming online by the end of the year. 'Fraid there's no opportunity to relax and take a load off, though, AT&T; it's time for
LTE. Come on, get to it!
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
sbrownla @ May 22nd 2008 11:40AM
It's just entirely disappointing that they're upgrading markets already, but don't even have all markets up to 3g yet. It's entirely too frustrating.
TDG01 @ May 23rd 2008 9:00AM
yeah I'm with you....I'm in SW Florida and south of St. Pete there is no AT&T 3G coverage.....in fact, AT&T coverage is pretty abysmal all around here. I would love an alternative to big red, but for data hungry folks like me, it's difficult here.....
Adam @ May 22nd 2008 11:52AM
I guess you're not in a 3G market, huh?
kachra @ May 22nd 2008 1:34PM
How do i know if my area will have HSPA? Is there a city listings?
Khaytsus @ May 22nd 2008 1:57PM
AT&T Inc. (NYSE:T) today announced that, in the next month, the company will deploy High Speed Uplink Packet Access (HSUPA) technology in the six remaining markets across AT&T's entire 3G (third-generation) wireless broadband network. When done, AT&T will have completed its deployment of HSUPA technology, which complements existing HSDPA technology (High Speed Downlink Packet Access), making AT&T the only U.S. carrier to have fully deployed HSPA technology in its 3G network.
Today the superfast AT&T 3G network is available in more than 275 markets. By year-end, the AT&T 3G network will be available in nearly 350 markets.
--ENDQUOTE--
So, by the above quote from RTFA, it says that if you have HSDPA now, you should have HSPA when the six remaining markets are closed. And looks like they're adding another 75 markets in the near future too. I need to tether my phone and see what speeds I get, even though I generally force my phone to EDGE because the battery usage on HSDPA is more than double that of when on EDGE. Ah well.
kachra @ May 22nd 2008 2:12PM
yes i do get HSDPA on my N95-3 right now. So how would you tell if the HSPA has been enabled in your area? the uplink speed would go up right? Because my downlink on tethering is already 1Mbps but uplink is 200kbps.
xB Owner @ May 22nd 2008 1:47PM
And I keep hearing about the markets they are supposed to be adding, but never a mention of what those markets are. A few months ago it was 80 new markets. Apparently they've upgraded 5 of those markets to 3G now since the new number is 75.
So where the heck is the list?
Robert @ May 22nd 2008 3:03PM
I guess the increased speed is good, but I know HSDPA will wreak havoc on battery life. I currently own a Kaiser and have it configured to only use EDGE, (due to battery consumption), but periodically use 3G when streaming music. I may need to buy a bigger battery and/or carry my a/c power cord everywhere I go. Never the less, I can't really complain.
jfrtwo @ May 22nd 2008 6:43PM
Remember that you need an HSUPA capable device. Most of the current phone are HSDPA only. The SW881 data card is HSPA+
wyerock @ May 22nd 2008 11:04PM
Most of the UMTS devices I've looked at have better battery life when transmitting vs GSM (talk time), but shorter standby time.
Khaytsus @ May 23rd 2008 2:49PM
The way I understand it is that you get better talk time, not sure about standby time, but data transfers eat battery a lot heavier than EDGE does (by a factor of about 100-115% by my estimates with my Kaiser).
I leave mine on EDGE 90% of the time because I like to have online email and IM, and with 3G enabled my battery life is less than 16 hours. It's 36 hours on EDGE. However, on EDGE the data connections get dropped during a voice call, so that and the obvious speed difference makes it difficult to decide to force the phone to EDGE or just to charge more often.