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AT&T Promises To Expand LTE To More US Markets
WIn5t0n writes "Even though AT&T has now promoted itself to the 'Largest 4G Network' (HSPA+), it is still lagging far behind in advancing its LTE Coverage. AT&T's largest competitor, Verizon, has turned up the heat on the company now that it claims to cover 75 percent of US population with LTE, while AT&T's network only fully covers a few cities. However, AT&T has recognized consumer unrest and has planned to expand its 4G LTE coverage into '48 new markets' by the end of the year. With the iPhone 5 (rumored to have LTE capabilities) likely to be in consumers hands by the end of this month, AT&T is now feeling the pressure to make sure its customers can take full advantage of their new phones on a faster network. The company's full rollout of 4G LTE coverage is not scheduled to be complete until at least 2013."
I want to use AT&T's LTE network, I just don't want to deal with AT&T (or pay their ridiculous markup).
Nothing matters from AT&T until they remove all data caps and follow Sprint and T-Mobile's lead.
This is a somewhat US-Centric question given the braindead and stupid nature of our wireless market.
Is "LTE" a standard that is compatible between different carriers? In the future will we see "LTE" phones that could, in theory, be used with any provider? (Assuming LTE becomes the de facto standard) .. Would it not be great if there was one standard, and all carriers had roaming agreement so your devices worked everywhere?
Any chance they'll raise the data caps high enough to make LTE actually useful?
A water pipe that can fill a football stadium in 1 minute flat does no good if it will only dispense half a glass of water a month.
How is "Largest 4G Network" when it is 3G (HSPA+) NOT false advertising?? I know that the carriers got the standards bodies to relax the definition of "4G" but it still galls me. The only intent is to deceived consumers! When I bought my HSPA+ Android phone in 2011, they salesman kept calling it a "4G phone" to me (though I know better) however my less-techie relatives have gotten similar devices and when they have seen a Verizon LTE commercial happily tell me "I already have a 4G phone!" *facepalm* While not illegal, it is at least immoral to call it the largest 4G network.
How long till they have a network fast enough to pass a voice call to my cell at my house in one of their "excellent" reception areas?
http://www.thelocal.se/43048/20120906/
"The incident, which took place at the Lidköping hospital, has prompted stinging criticism from Sweden's National Board of Health and Welfare (Socialstyrelsen).
The 72-year-old went under anesthetic at 10.45am on the day of the operation, which took place in January 2011.
At noon sharp, the head anesthetist left the operating room to go for lunch. Fifteen minutes later, the head nurse anesthetist also left the patient and went for lunch.
No other anesthetist was called in to take over responsibility for the doctor who was on his lunch break.
And while another nurse was brought in to cover for the nurse anesthetist, the nurse who arrived came from the orthopedic ward and wasn't familiar with the respirator to which the 72-year-old was attached.
Suddenly, the patient started hemorrhaging and his blood pressure started to drop, sparking a "chaotic" situation.
As the patient's condition became critical shortly before 1pm, the substitute nurse tried desperately to reach the lunching anesthetist, but to no avail.
When the doctor and the primary nurse anesthetist returned to the operating room, they discovered that the patient's respirator had been turned off, leaving him without oxygen for approximately eight minutes.
Despite immediately starting resuscitation efforts, doctors were unable to revive the man, who had suffered irreparable brain damage and died several weeks later."
Coming soon to you thanks to his imperial lordness, the Obama.
VOTE ROMNEY
I've been told by AT&T reps for months that LTE is coming to the Salt Lake City area Real Soon Now. I didn't know what I was missing till a recent trip to a few LTE cities. I would love to have LTE, but I am not holding my breath. It was scheduled for Spring, then Some Time over the Summer, and now Maybe By the End Of the Year.
it is better to light a flame thrower than curse the darkness. -Terry Pratchett Men at Arms
No doubt, AT&T also promises a 10% increase in your bill to pay for these expansions.
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
Secondly, ITU revised things just last year once again such that even LTE is not 4G according to them. Only LTE-Advanced and WirelessMAN-Advanced are now officially 4G.
A lot of people misread "4G LTE" as "4G Lite". I guess they're right.
As the patient's condition became critical shortly before 1pm, the substitute nurse tried desperately to reach the lunching anesthetist, but to no avail.
(desperate attempt to swing it back on topic) Perhaps the point isn't that socialized health care kills as much as that loss of the cellular signal kills.
ATT's coverage here in New Orleans is woefully poor. I can get a voice mail notice, but not the original call, all while my phone is laying on a table and not moving. During Isaac, all of my Verizon friends were able to make and receive calls, and surf the net on the cell network while the power and wired connections were down. Not so on ATT's network. While no doubt in a market by market comparison, ATT may be better, what really counts for me is what their service is like here where I live, and it's horrible.
During large pubic events like Mardi Gras and the Jazz Fest, service is non-existant.... These events are not some "flash mob" unexpected affairs, ATT has plenty of warning and time to roll in some cows to take up the slack, but whatever they are doing, it isn't nearly enough.
When I bought my iPhone 4, ATT was the only carrier available. Now, 2 years later and under no contract, for the first time I have other choices in carriers for the iPhone, and intend to switch. Look for a LOT of customer bleed off from ATT when everyone who bought the iPhone 4 finally have a chance to switch.
i have an iphone 4S on AT&T. i was at the store playing with a Samsung Galaxy Note yesterday. it benches at almost 12Mbps but in normal use it doesn't seem that much faster than my iphone
could it be that most phones today are still hardware limited and higher bandwidth speeds are just marketing hype?
I was in the DC metro area recently and took a screenshot of a speedtest because I couldn't believe it. A Samsung SIII on AT&T registered 45M down. Unfortunately, we can't touch that at home because there is no AT&T LTE coverage anywhere in our state.
Apple and Microsoft promise to continue releasing new OS versions.
Obama and Romney promise to continue campaigning for White House.
:-( Maybe next year.
Hopefully they remember to upgrade my area to 3G first... Paying the same price for everyone else for edge speeds is getting old.
"75% of the population"? How about a percentage of the LAND AREA. Like 99+%?
The whole POINT of wireless is that you can use it when you're ON THE ROAD, somewhere OUT OF A CITY, or otherwise anywhere but parked at home or the office. The carriers seem to have lost track of that.
Perhaps it's a side-effect of the FCC's abandonment of access requirements to the legacy, subsidized, landline infrastructure, leaving landlines to a duality of incumbent Tellcos and Cable companies, which only have to incrementally upgrade while their no-longer-existent competition must wire the world from scratch? That ends up with wireless data carriage repurposed as a cheaper-to-install alternative to landlines, driving mobile service into secondary status in corporate mindshare. Of course, in such a market the incumbents (like AT&T), with their existing landline structure, have less incentive to roll out service than their wireless-only and wireless-mainly competition.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I have AT&T, and quite honestly 3G is pretty fast. Its fine for mobile email and browsing, and even when I tether to a laptop, I can pull something like 1.3 Mb/sec. It isn't great for video, but that's not really what I want it for.
However, I can't go two days without dropping a cell phone call. I live in the Denver suburbs (aka not in the boonies), and I have 3 or more "bars" at almost all times. Somehow, I drop calls or get the other person saying "are you there, hello?" and finally hanging up after not hearing me for 10 seconds.
Fast data is great, but could they just make the "phone" part of my "mobile device" work too? It is kind of important to me.
Also, this is the third carrier, third location that I've lived, and fourth phone I've had in the past three years. Same problems with all (sprint, tmobile, AT&T) (Co springs, Parker, Littleton) (blackberry, droid, iPhone). So it isn't like I live in the rare dead spot, or have a lemon of a phone.
Many companies are pushing HSPA+ before they go to LTE.
HSPA is 3G and HSPA is 3.5G NOT LTE!!
Knowing AT&T, the NSA will be underwriting their expenses.
Not much, in fact, there is almost zero difference between Obama and Romney.
Or "Robamneya"
Comcast told me for about 7 years that broadband was coming to my area (one of the three biggest cities in Connecticut). It finally came, the year I left the state.
Of course HSPA+ is not LTE. Who said it was? This is clearly about AT&T expanding its LTE service not HSPA+. Maybe you should relearn how to read? Also, both LTE and HSPA+ are 'evolved 3G'. LTE-Advanced is actual 4G.
No one polices the lies of a company the size of AT&T, and their mission is to suck as much money out of their customer base as possible with the least cost. If they minimized their advert-lying and maximized their performance, it would go a long way to improving both customer service and competition.
The FCC doesn't give a rat's ass whether they offer a 4G network that conforms to the description of "largest" or not, as long as whatever 4G equipment they install meets the technical specifications so it doesn't interfere with that of other competing companies.
FCC is NOT a consumer protection oriented agency. It's mission is to foster so-called competition.
AT&T put the 3 gig limit on my unlimited plan AFTER I renewed a contract.
Bye bye AT&T.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
They brought LTE to Davis, CA, but not the much larger Sacramento, a mere 15 minutes away. I can only conclude that someone at AT&T is throwing darts at a map to decide where they'll upgrade that week.
Does anybody believe any of the so-called "benchmarking" speed test web sites?
I almost believe there's a full time team at every major provider of consumer internet access whose job it is to packet shape and/or outright fake every benchmark web site. Even if the motivation isn't to fool people outright (ie, not provide the service level they're charging people) but to just keep every ignoramus out there from hammering customer service about how their speed tests aren't living up to their expectations.
The only speed test I think I trust anymore is an scp of some decently large block of data output from /dev/random and then run through bdes and gzip to eliminate as much compressibility as possible. This just might be enough anti-snooping/anti-shaping to keep you from getting a false result.
Of course, you're not immune from the shaper from identifying you as ssh traffic and dumping you into whatever bucket that traffic goes into, but it least its what kind of throughput you're actually likely to get with run of the mill ssh tunneled traffic. Maybe a real implementation of this would use a home-rolled protocol on random, encrypted-negotiated ports to prevent anything but the "everything else, unknown traffic" shaper bucket.
If I was in charge at AT&T, I would spend whatever money it took to improve the 2G/3G coverage of AT&T to the point where its better than Verizon. Lots of people have made "I hate Verizon but dont get coverage from anyone else so I have no choice" complaints, if AT&T fixed that, more people would switch over from Verizon and could move towards making AT&T the #1 carrier in America.
Can we please stop calling HSPA+ and LTE "4G?" They're not 4G. Not by a long shot.
LTE-Advanced is the only accepted true 4G system, and it doesn't exist in the US. Period. There is no 4G in the United States. You are all being sold a bill of goods, and it was your government's idea to spur sales to stimulate the economy.
Americans are fucking idiots.
I know that I shouldn't be surprised, and in fact I'm not. However, our AT&T rep has been telling us that AT&T would be rolling out LTE in my market "soon" for over a year. According to this map, we're not even on the "soon" list.
We switched to AT&T because they had the iPhone. Apple tech is a big part of our inudstry, and our President and CEO especially are big fans, and they decided that we couldn't do without. At this point though, 90% of our phones have gone out of contract in the past year and a half, and we've held off on upgrading with the assumption that the next iPhone will have LTE technology. Verizon already has excellent LTE service in our area, and I have always felt that they represented better customer service. I really wonder what AT&T can do to keep us from jumping ship. Probably nothing...
If Murphy's Law can go wrong, it will.