[LINK] AT&T plans 3G 7.2-500+ mb/sec

[Stilgherrian]

On 28/05/2009, at 10:39 PM, stephen at melbpc.org.au quoted some PR fluff:
> Carlsbad, CA -  AT&T announced moves Wednesday that could double the
> speeds of its wireless technology.
>
> The second-largest U.S. telecommunications company announced at the  
> All
> Things Digital conference here that it will upgrade to High Speed  
> Packet
> Access (HSPA) 7.2 wireless technology by the end of the year.
>
> The upgrade could deliver downloads at a speed of 7.2 megabytes per
> second, compared to the current 3.6 megabytes per second.

Erm, and Telstra's Next G has been using this technology from its very  
inception in October 2006. During my trial, I was getting consistent  
download speeds above 6Mb/s from a network rated 14Mb/s in inner  
Sydney, and that was on HSUPA (optimised for upload) rather than HSDPA  
(optimised for download). Next G now advertises 21Mb/sec download, and  
plans to increase the speed up to 42Mbit/s in 2009.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Next_g
http://stilgherrian.com/internet/the-pleasure-and-minor-pain-of-telstra-next-g/

(The Wikipedia entry would appear to be out of date in terms of what's  
available in terms of modems.)

This announcement is purely about what AT&T's network is capable of,  
not what mobile broadband technology is in production.


> Current devices cannot make use of the faster speed, but AT&T said  
> phones
> and 3G laptop cards that can are under development, according to  
> PCWorld.


Ditto. I don't know what they mean about the cards etc being "under  
development", 'cos you can but them off the shelf from a variety of  
card and handset makers.

Disclosure: Telstra provided Next G for free during my trial period.

Stil


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