AT&T plays fast and loose with 4G

By Rodney H. Brown

AT&T has not only given up complaining about T-Mobile’s claims that its HSPA+ broadband cell network is “real 4G,” it has jumped right into the pit with T-Mobile, announcing a slew of new HSPA+ based “4G” phones today at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

Not to be outdone, AT&T is touting that its “100 percent” coverage throughout its entire cell network for this HSPA+ technology. What it doesn’t say in the releases is that only three markets – Chicago, Houston and Charlotte, N.C. – have the fiber or Ethernet connection off the cell tower to allow for 4G-like speeds of up to 6 Mbps. Boston, not so fast.

At this rate, pretty soon we will be calling my old pre-paid Virgin Mobile phone’s web browsing speeds as “4G.” Seriously, just one year ago, both AT&T and T-Mobile were touting the rollout of HSPA+ that would be happening throughout 2010 as a faster 3G.  Now it is somehow right up there with the WiMax 4G offering from Sprint, Clearwire and partners like Comcast? Or the LTE flavor of 4G offered right here in Boston by Verizon and MetroPCS?

To be fair, the speeds achieved over HSPA+, even without the faster backhaul, blow away 3G cell data speeds. But none of the 4G flavors out there right now are even close to what the International Telecommunications Union defined in October as a true 4G broadband speed – 100 Mbps up to 1 Gbps.

None of that is slowing done AT&T in its race to be seen as part of the 4G “in” crowd. While announcing its interpretation of a 4G network today, it also revealed some pretty amazing devices, including the powerful dual-core Motorola Atrix 4G, which will be available in the first half of this year, and the gorgeous Samsung Infuse 4G, available in the second half.

AT&T is also working on a rollout of an LTE 4G network to compete with Verizon’s, which will start by the middle of this year and is slated for completion by the end of 2013. But that will give it two supposed 4G networks, and it will have to carry separate devices for each. Customers may drown in 4G confusion by the end of the year.

Two questions remain. When will Boston get the faster HSPA+ speeds? And just how low can a broadband connection over the air get and still be called 4G by some carrier’s marketing department? Somebody cue the carrier pigeons.

Posted by mlang

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 5th, 2011 at 5:01 pm and is filed under Networks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.