AT&T continues to boast of “the nation’s fastest 3G network” while many customers in various regions across the country seem to think differently. Dropped calls, outages, network congestion and general reliability issues continue to plague the carrier’s 3G network but today we have some good news for those of you currently with AT&T. According to one of our ninjas, AT&T is set to begin a rolling launch of its Network Settings (N-SET) Solution across all networks in the US. The roll out will begin this month. N-SET will balance traffic between the carrier’s 2G and 3G networks, thus reducing the load borne by its 3G network. Essentially, a customer who primarily uses voice services will connect via 2G even if 3G is supported by his or her handset. If and when said customer begins to actively use data services, the network will bounce him or her over to 3G. BlackBerry Bold and iPhone 3G users will not be affected by the change. Assuming all goes according to plan, N-SET stands to have a pretty immediate impact on network performance by freeing up 3G bandwidth for heavier data users. Whether or not it will be enough to impact urban and populated areas — especially once the new iPhone is released this Summer — remains to be seen.
