AT&T Rolling out 3G Upgrades, iPhone 2 Soon

By on May 30, 2008 at 10:41 AM
General May 30, 2008

Remember last year just before the initial iPhone launch? EDGE dropped off for a while and then came back with a vengeance. Prior to the iPhone waterfall that clogged up all of AT&T’s shiny new pipes, we were seeing data speeds of up to 200 – 250 kbps on AT&T’s EDGE network in the New York area. Then the iPhone dropped. Here we are again, getting close to the inevitable iPhone 2 release and oddly enough, AT&T’s 3G services started getting spotty yesterday afternoon in the New York area. Outages sometimes lasted several hours at a time. This morning however, 3G seems to be live again in and to the west of New York City. What’s more, it looks like HSDPA speeds have received a nice little boost since coming back up. For the past few months we’ve been seeing average download speeds between 500 – 800 kbps with a spike here and there. This morning’s tests however, are yielding between 1400 – 1500 kbps. Nice. We’re now hearing that AT&T 3G is still down to the north of the city so one can only assume we’re in the midst of some rolling upgrades. Enjoy it while it lasts people; the iPhone 2 will be out soon enough and AT&T’s networks will be hammered just like last year.

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  • luis

    Used my N95 in San Francisco on wednesday and would not work at all. I returned on friday and there is definitely a speed bump!

  • justin

    @ Shelley
    Are you saying you were on a 3G phone in a 2G coverage area moving into a 3G coverage area? If so, 3G had nothing to do with the drops, or shouldn’t have. you can’t hand off from 2G to 3G, only from 3G to 2G. I am not saying UMTS doesn’t support this. I am saying this is how the network is set up, and always has been.

    @Zach Epstein
    AT&T does not schedule network upgrades that result in outages (as any I can think of would) during the day. This would happen in the middle of the night. If someone is intentionally taking down NYC 3G to perform an upgrade that will speed the network they will likely be unemployed very soon. In any case, it would never get by the internal scheduling processes.

  • Jeff B.

    I’m going to say this one last time, fuck apple. Fuck the iPhone…and 2 idk. And fuck att. If this is the shit it takes to roll this crap out then they shouldn’t still be in business. Fuck them all.

  • jase

    I hate to be a rumor monger, and this only happened in a small town outside of NYC but I went to the att store to buy a jawbone 2 and asked the lady when they would get the blackberry bold and she in semi quotes(not exactly but round about) ” We can’t comment because we don’t know ad even if we did they may change the date and people would get pissed. To be perfectly honesty, I am not sure if we will get it.” I also heard rumors of this being a tmobile phone for this summer(before August 1) anyone explanation?

  • jase

    how do you really feel about Apple . come on you can tell us

  • jase

    (I put this below but it better fits here I guess)I hate to be a rumor monger, and this only happened in a small town outside of NYC but I went to the att store to buy a jawbone 2 and asked the lady when they would get the Bold and she in semi quotes(not exactly but round about) ” We can’t comment because we don’t know ad even if we did they may change the date and people would get pissed. To be perfectly honesty, I am not sure if we will get it.” I also heard rumors of this being a tmobile phone for this summer(before August 1) anyone explanation?

  • jdslim

    @Greg I thought the same thing but I was wrong. There was a bit of confusion on that topic but I can tell you that data is availbe using 3g on T-mobile network.
    Now currently the only market that has 3g is the NY market and T-mobiles current 3g phone lineup doesn’t include any type of pda or smartphone.

    Any true data user knows that if you want to use any type of data on a mobile phone it needs to be a smart phone. Who realy cares about wap browsing these days anyway. T-mobiles customer in the NY market can use 3g for data and will get faster speeds but once again its just tzones. T-mobile isn’t stupid when it comes to promoting their network. It would be foolish for them to promote hi-speed wap browsing when the true test of a networks hi speed would be full html web browsing using phone as modem. T-mobiles 3g data network will be fast and those of us who are willing to wait for a reliable 3g network will happy that they did

  • backalley

    Well said jdslim!

  • Torpid123

    getting about 700-800 kbs here in nyc

  • Patrick

    Does anyone think that these increased data speeds might also support the video chat rumor on the iPhone? This addition to the iPhone would truly blow everyone else out of the water, especially if it also interfaced with iChat on Mac computers.

  • youngcalihottie

    i started experiencing this in LA today. it was really bad. it happened in LA and orange county actually. anywhere that was a 3g area had no bars at all! only the 3g icon. i had to turn off 3g and then i got full edge signal. was also happening with someone else on my account who was in the inland empire and valley tonight.

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