AT&T's wireless network has just gotten a little faster.
The company announced on Wednesday that enhancements to its HSPA, or High Speed Packet Access, third-generation cellular network will allow wireless laptop users to upload and download content from the Internet faster than they can with 3G services from other carriers.
The top three major wireless operators, AT&T, Verizon Wireless, and Sprint Nextel, have been touting the speeds and feeds of their 3G wireless networks for more than a year in an attempt to lure profitable business customers to their wireless laptop services. These services, which cost about $60 a month, are ideal for road warriors who need consistent high-speed wireless Internet connectivity anywhere.
Until now, they've all offered similar speeds. Verizon and Sprint use a CDMA-based technology called EV-DO. They advertise download speeds of about 600Kbps to 1.4Mbps and upload speeds of between 500Kbps and 800Kbps. And until today, AT&T's 3G network offered similar speeds.
Now AT&T claims it is offering downloads of 700Kbps to 1.7Mbps and uploads of 500Kbps to 1.2Mbps. The faster speeds are the result of an ongoing network upgrade. AT&T uses a GSM-based technology called HSPA. It has recently finished upgrading 275 markets to the latest version of the technology known as HSUPA, which provides faster upload links. The company had already deployed HSDPA, which provides faster download speeds.
As the company upgrades to the faster upload speeds it looks like it's also tweaked its download performance. Last month, the head of wireless for AT&T said that the company will offer theoretical network download speeds of 20Mbps as early as next year as it continues to upgrade and tweak its network. Of course, the real world network performance is far less than this and users can expect to get average download speeds between 4Mbps and 6.6Mbps.
AT&T plans to continue upgrading its network to reach 350 major markets by the end of the year. Sprint and Verizon already serve these market, so AT&T still has some catching up to do. But AT&T is already in most of the major cities. The company also recently started offering free Wi-Fi in its 17,000 Wi-Fi hot spots as an added bonus to its cellular wireless laptop users.
To take advantage of the new fast speeds, customers will need HSUPA-equipped gear. AT&T currently offers four LaptopConnect adapters in either USB, PC Card, or Express card form.
Update 9:52 AM ET: A typo has been fixed in paragraph 6, changing a reference of megabits per second to kilobits per second.
An AT&T executive said Wednesday that the cell phone company will offer 20Mbps downloads over its wireless network as soon as next year. But don't get too excited; the real speed will likely be a lot slower.
Still, AT&T's network upgrade plan is expected to boost speeds significantly, which means that users of the hotly anticipated 3G iPhone, which is expected this summer, will be surfing the Web at lightning speeds compared with the slow 2.5G network they currently use.
It also means that AT&T's network, which is based on a GSM standard known as UMTS, or Universal Mobile Telecommunications System, will remain competitive with the new WiMax network currently being built jointly by Sprint Nextel and Clearwire.
"The two-year head-start that Sprint and Clearwire keep talking about is getting smaller and smaller every day," said Roger Entner, a senior vice president at IAG Research.
On Wednesday, Ralph de la Vega, AT&T's mobility chief, told investors at Morgan Stanley's annual Communications Conference that AT&T is currently upgrading its 3G wireless network to the newest and fastest version of the UMTS technology known as HSUPA, or High Speed Uplink Packet Access-enabled. This new technology will increase the speed of the network fivefold, he said. But exactly how fast the network will run is somewhat debatable.
Today, AT&T's 3G network, which uses the UMTS technology called HSDPA, or High Speed Data Packet Access, can theoretically deliver download speeds of about 3.6Mbps. But in the real world, speeds are closer to 400Kbps to 700Kbps. The new version of the network, which will use HSUPA, will have a theoretical speed of 20Mbps and actual download speeds of between 4Mbps and 6.6Mbps.
Because the actual speed of a network is dependent on several factors, such as how many users are on the network and how far apart the cell sites are spaced, Entner says he typically divides theoretical speeds by three in order to get a ballpark idea of how fast the network actually performs. But even that calculation is likely to be generous. Many experts say real networks typically run only 20 percent of the theoretical speed the technology used allows.
That said, AT&T's HSUPA network will likely provide download speeds that are competitive with speeds that the Sprint Nextel-Clearwire alliance plans to deliver with its new network, which uses a different technology, known as WiMax.
Theoretically, WiMax can deliver downloads between 40Mbps and 70Mbps. But Sprint has publicly stated that its customers will likely see speeds in the range of 2Mbps to 4Mbps, which are in line with expected speeds using HSPUA.
The best part of AT&T's strategy is that it can achieve these new speeds simply by upgrading software in its existing 3G infrastructure. 3G handsets, such as the anticipated new iPhone, will also be able to take advantage of the higher speeds simply by upgrading their software. Meanwhile, the new Clearwire still has to build its network and get WiMax-enabled devices in the hands of subscribers.
"AT&T is in a good position right now," Entner said. "It can ride the technological wave of HSDPA and HSUPA technology for a while and get increasingly faster speeds."
Indeed, other carriers using different technology, such as Verizon Wireless and Sprint Nextel, which have used a 3G technology known as EV-DO, or Evolution Data Optimized, will not have the same growth curve in their existing infrastructure.
EV-DO infrastructure can also be upgraded by combining wireless channels. But even doing that will likely produce only a theoretical maximum speed of about 14.4Mbps. That is one big reason that Sprint Nextel said it will build a 4G network using WiMax and why Verizon Wireless has said it will use newly won 700 Mhz spectrum to build a 4G network using a technology called LTE, or Long Term Evolution.
LTE offers a theoretical download speed of 100Mbps. And AT&T has said that when it exhausts its UMTS/HSDPA/HSUPA network, it will also build a new network using LTE.
AT&T said Wednesday that it's expanding its third-generation wireless broadband footprint and completing the upgrade of its network to the fastest 3G technology available.
The company is expanding its current 3G network to cover more than 80 additional cities in the U.S. this year. The new network, which will add 1,500 new cell sites, will put AT&T's 3G network in nearly 350 U.S. markets, including the top 100 markets, by the end of 2008.
AT&T also plans to upgrade its 3G network to a technology called HSUPA, or High Speed Uplink Packet Access, to provide Internet upload speeds that range from 500 kilobits per second to 800Kbps. The faster uplink speeds will be particularly useful for AT&T's wireless laptop customers. The speed increase will allow them to access large files from the Internet more quickly and upload bandwidth-intensive content such as videos.
AT&T said the deployment of HSUPA, which should be completed by the middle of the year, is the next step in the evolution of its 3G network. And the company believes that it will help pave the way for it to build a 4G network in the future.
"Fast wireless broadband is the foundation for a whole range of new and emerging applications that our customers are adopting, including everything from social networking to sending live video and large business files," Ralph de la Vega, CEO of AT&T's wireless unit, said in a statement. "With these aggressive initiatives, we're expanding the scope and the speed of our 3G capabilities. We're also planning for the future by establishing a clear path to a 4G network that will meet the needs of our customers for years to come."
- prev
- 1
- next
