vB Easy Archive - at&t nears HSPA

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at&t nears HSPA
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Posted by: autumninchicago

AT&T Nears HSPA
By Brad Smith
WirelessWeek - April 02, 2008

LAS VEGAS—AT&T will have all of its 3G markets enabled with the high speed uplink capabilities by the middle of the year, according to Hank Kafka, vice president of network architecture for the operator.

AT&T had 255 major metropolitan markets with W-CDMA/HSDPA at the end of 2007 and continues to add markets. Kafka said at a GSM Association roundtable on HSPA that AT&T expects to cover 350 markets with 3G by the end of 2008, including all of the top 100 markets.

The operator started installing HSUPA last year and now is in the process of rolling it out, he said. By mid-year, he said all of its 3G markets will have HSUPA. He says typical data rates on the downlink now are between 600-to-1400 Kbps with a peak of 3.6 Mbps, while the downlink typically is 500-to-800 Kbps.

There are upgrades for HSPA which take it as high as 14.4 Mbps and Kafka says AT&T is studying those. But he declined to say when or if AT&T will raise its data rates to those levels.
Kafka also said AT&T has seen significant data usage increases for customers using 3G.

http://www.wirelessweek.com/article.aspx?id=158686

On a side note:

AT&T CEO Ralph de la Vega confirmed that all of AT&T's smartphones, including BlackBerries and the Apple iPhone, will be running on AT&T's 3G network within months.

Posted by: zephxiii

Nice!!! Very interesting news, especially about the blackberries

Posted by: RogerPodacter

totally tubular dude. pretty quick rollout if they stick to it.

Posted by: urmobilesky

Wirelessly posted (SAMSUNG-SGH-A707/1.0 SHP/VPP/R5 NetFront/3.3 SMM-MMS/1.2.0 profile/MIDP-2.0 configuration/CLDC-1.1 UP.Link/6.3.1.17.06.3.1.17.0)

Sounds like the tower crews have been doing a lot of work for at&t. Now lets see the results by the summer. Too many places are overdue for 3g towers.

Posted by: bodeh6

This is very good. Hopefully everything goes smoothly and the 3G network expands and speeds up.

Posted by: enigma99a

NorCal is currently in the middle of going HSPA. If anybody wants to know what day their city will switch(or if it has switched already), PM me

Posted by: Ludio

I have hspa connection on my 881u aircard in NYC in lower manhattan... its midday still network full but will run test later!

Posted by: bobolito

Quote:

Originally Posted by autumninchicago

...Kafka also said AT&T has seen significant data usage increases for customers using 3G....

LOL! Of course, now that I can tether at 3G speeds and talk on the phone at the same time, it's very hard to resist to stay connected all the time. I've had my V9 for about a week and I already went over 200Mb in usage.

Posted by: geoshale

Hopefully they will fill in the gaps in the LA area, and not by changing the coverage map...

Bill

Posted by: ilvla2

I'm getting HSUPA in some places here on Edge's network, along with the HSDPA.

Posted by: ilvla2

Quote:

Originally Posted by enigma99a

NorCal is currently in the middle of going HSPA. If anybody wants to know what day their city will switch(or if it has switched already), PM me

Just tell them to 3G rolled out north of Sacramento, including Willows, Williams, Corning, Anderson, Red Bluff, Redding, Chico, Oroville, Marysville and Yuba City, Verizon has EVDO in all of those places now, come on AT&T! I have HSDPA and HSUPA here in rural Mendocino and Lake Counties, but I go over to big towns like Redding or Chico and it's still EDGE with AT&T

Edit-Also, there is no 3G between Santa Rosa and Ukiah with AT&T, Windsor, Healdsburg, Cloverdale and Hopland are still EDGE only, again all have EVDO with Verizon. Oh, any idea when Edge's coverage (voice, EDGE and HSDPA) will show up on AT&T's maps as native?

Posted by: formercanuck

I'd prefer Grass Valley, Nevada City, Auburn, Colfax and I-80 up to Truckee.

Posted by: ilvla2

Quote:

Originally Posted by formercanuck

I'd prefer Grass Valley, Nevada City, Auburn, Colfax and I-80 up to Truckee.

I guess they are important too, I don't go up that way too often though

I do occasionally take the California Zephyr from Sacramento to Reno though, but I am usually too busy looking at the scenery and trains to care about the signal

I'm looking forward to the upcoming extension of a couple of the Capitol Commuter Trains to Reno, currently their route ends at Rocklin.

Those areas I am talking about are all on major north south routes (I-5, 99, Amtrak), Redding is home to several colleges, Chico to Chico State and Redding is a major jumping off point for travel into the Siskiyou's, Trinity Alps and Cascades (including Lassen Volcanic National Park) and the fishing, camping and hunting that go along with it. Going between Sacramento and Redding, I'd say close to 1/4 of the plates are Oregon and Washington, bound to and from points across CA.

Posted by: WeatherPilot

When a tower gets upgraded to HSPA 3.6, 7.2, 14.4 or whatever does this improve and increase the range at which you are able to receive the 3G signal?

Posted by: ATnt-RSC

^No.

The message you have entered is too short.

Posted by: autumninchicago

Can anyone confirm they have HSUPA? at&t said all tower should be HSUPA by mid-year.

Posted by: MrDerby

Quote:

Originally Posted by autumninchicago

Can anyone confirm they have HSUPA? at&t said all tower should be HSUPA by mid-year.

Making ALL towers HSUPA means a FULL 3G network correct??

Posted by: DRC72

Quote:

Originally Posted by MrDerby

Making ALL towers HSUPA means a FULL 3G network correct??

I would assume so as well...............

Posted by: soccernamlak

Quote:

Originally Posted by autumninchicago

Can anyone confirm they have HSUPA? at&t said all tower should be HSUPA by mid-year.

I wish I would have taken a picture....when I was going through Winston-Salem on Business 40, my Tilt showed HSUPA (I have it enabled on my phone).

Posted by: autumninchicago

My bad, I meant all their 3G towers would be HSUPA by mid-year.

I don't think all their towers would be 3G, my guess for that would be end of 2009 if we are lucky.

Posted by: stufried

This past week I had HSUPA in central Manhattan and in Detroit. Surprisingly, Chicago was only HSDPA.

Posted by: jmacdonald801

Quote:

Originally Posted by soccernamlak

I wish I would have taken a picture....when I was going through Winston-Salem on Business 40, my Tilt showed HSUPA (I have it enabled on my phone).

I've got a custom rom, and the only thing I can see is the HSDPA enable screen under connections.

My Tilt almost always shows H on my signal indicator.

Where do you specifically enable HSUPA and what indication do you have that you're Tilt is actually using it?

-James

Posted by: Smoates

Yeah, how do you tell is it's HSDPA or HSUPA?

Will all 3g devices support the faster speed?

If I run a DSL Speed report on 1mb I get:
728 kbit/sec
0.339s latency
11.579s d/l time

And I'm in Austin, Tx.

Posted by: Da_G

http://www.dslreports.com/im/51359439/7928.png

2174 down / 291 up.. is a pretty average test result here on an 881u or usb/wifi tethering to a tilt.. which I presume is HSDPA 3.6, but not yet HSPA (HSDPA+HSUPA)

Fastest burst speed i've seen after overhead is 300KB/s, that was with something like -45 dBm signal (the cell was on the roof of the building and i was on the top floor)

Posted by: jtludwig

This is a stupid question I know, but do all 3G devices (phones and data cards) support the enhanced uplink speed or do I potentially need a new card or phone (kind of like when Verizon went from EVDO rev 0 to rev a)?

Thank you

Posted by: Da_G

There are several 'tiers' of 3G service that AT&T has/will roll out:

Type (Real World Down Speed/Real World Up Speed)
-------------------------
Standard 3G/UMTS (~384kbps/384kbps)
HSDPA 1.8 (~1.2mbps/384kbps)
HSDPA 3.6 (~2.2mbps/384kbps)
HSDPA+HSUPA (~2.2mbps/800kbps)

Of course YMMV on the real world speeds, but that's what i'm observing on average.

The highest possible theoretical speeds in the HSPA family are 14.4mbps/11.5mbps, although it's doubtful we'll see that any time soon

A device needs to have support for that particular speed. For example, a phone with HSDPA 1.8 support will operate on an HSDPA 3.6 network, but it will be limited to HSDPA 1.8 speeds. However you may come closer to the upper end of the speed limit than you would on an HSDPA 1.8 network, due to the backbone being beefier to support the faster connections.

Note that some devices have the hardware to support a certain speed but it is not enabled in software, leaving room for hacks or future software updates.

I can't wait for HSUPA, I use the uplink on my phone more than the downlink sometimes