US operators AT&T and T-Mobile have separately announced upgrades to their national HSPA networks, claiming to support theoretical peak download speeds of up to 7.2Mb/s. In a statement, AT&T – the country’s second-largest mobile operator – said it has completed a software upgrade to its network, but noted that consumers won’t be able to take full advantage of the faster speeds until the new technology is combined with improvements to its fibre-optic backhaul connections, planned for this year and 2011.
Initial deployment of enhanced backhaul is already underway in the six cities announced in 2009 as initial HSPA 7.2 markets – Charlotte, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, and Miami. “We anticipate that the majority of our mobile data traffic will be carried over the expanded fibre-based, HSPA 7.2-capable backhaul by the end of this year, with deployment continuing to expand in 2011,” noted a company statement. AT&T’s network enhancements are particularly timely, following its admittance that smartphones such as the iPhone are draining network capacity and causing performance problems. As well as the iPhone, AT&T says it currently offers a total of ten HSPA 7.2-compatible devices. After HSPA 7.2, AT&T plans to miss out on a step to HSPA+ technology and will move straight to LTE. Trials of LTE technology will commence this year, with commercial deployment in 2011.
Meanwhile, number-four US operator T-Mobile has also upgraded its entire 3G network to HSPA 7.2. However, unlike AT&T, it claims the faster speeds are available today across its entire footprint. The news coincides with its support for Google’s high-profile Nexus One smartphone. T-Mobile also said that it plans to be the first US operator to deploy HSPA+ across its network by mid-2010. Although a small cable operator in Oregon, BendBroadband, began commercially offering HSPA+ in December, T-Mobile will be the first national operator to widely adopt HSPA+. Once fully enabled, HSPA+ claims to offer peak theoretical download speeds of 21Mb/s.
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