AT&T, not ready for 3G, lobbies for 3G Palm Pre

AT&T chief Randall Stephenson warned that US wireless networks aren't ready for a deluge of 3G traffic, while noting he'd like his company to start selling the 3G Palm Pre once Sprint's exclusive contract runs out. "Prepared to handle" and "prepared to sell" are very different things, you see. Speaking at the All Things …

[Andrew Fraser]

The problem is...

The lack of backhaul from the wireless AP, to the main network.

It's all well and good to upgrade the wireless data speeds, but as soon as it his the backbone, your speed takes a massive hit.

This is a marketing tool to get people to buty pretty phone data devices, and advertise speeds UP TO 7.2Mbps, when in reality, due to shitty backhaul bandwidth from the cell tower to the main network, you really only get 100-200Kbps

*yawn*

Paris, because she would know more about network management than these muppets

[Matthew]

Pointless

Really, with the high latency I don't see how a speed upgrade will make any significant difference to the average user.

[Anonymous Coward]

Honesty from @&T

Yup, the service is great if you're on the right two blocks in NYC or within 12 feet of either of two particular cells in San Francis Co. After that, not so much.

[Anonymous Coward]

Once again

A major industry in the United States is lagging behind a large chunk of the rest of the world due to our major carriers lacking any vision, guts, or long term thinking. These are dangerous attributes for any company in any industry particularly in these trying financial times. The sad part is these attributes have been the hallmark for far to many of our major companies in major industries for to many years.

The really sad thing is that historically our government hasn't really done much if anything to help matters any. They all want the big bucks the fast profit and they want 'em yesterday. Concepts like good solid research, making smart investments in the future, improving infrastructure (dirth of decent backhaul anyone?) yeah they've heard of 'em.

[Henry Wertz]

Bull!

Bull both to Iam Me, and to AT&T. AT&T's network in the US **SUCKS**, they kept adding more and more customers to it (making more and more money in the process) while not spending the money necessary to handle the load. Verizon just bought Alltel, which changes the game for coverage and customer count.. before that, Verizon and AT&T were close in customer count, but Verizon was spending typically $5 billion a year in network upgrades to AT&T's ~$1 billion. It's not a lack of spectrum either, there's markets where AT&T's got like 100+mhz of licenses, they just don't have it lit up.

It's a LAAAAME excuse of AT&T to just claim "Well, we're having problems therefore everyone else will soon." No, they've been spending cash to expand capcity *ahead* of problems instead of just pocketing that cash and watching the network go down the tubes.

[Anonymous Coward]

RE: Once again

It is the shareholders that are driving for short-term profits.

[Danny Thompson]

My, how very generous of them ...

" ... AT&T said it will introduce multiple HSPA 7.2-compatible laptop cards and smartphones beginning later this year ..."

This is the same AT&T that BT wanted to buy/merge with? The same BT that sold off Cellnet (O2) and as a consequence now buys airtime from [originally] T-Mobile and [now] Vodafone. Ah the vision and the strategy is jaw-dropping.

As others have said - if AT&T nickel and dime their HSPA deploy, and there is no reason to suspect that they wont, the backhaul will let their customers down miserably. But it is "up to 7.2Mbps" so thats okay then, even if the best you'll ever see is a couple of Kbps in reality.

Good luck our American cousins as you drag your mobile operator kicking and screaming into the 21st century.

Joke = AT&T is just one big one!

[James O'Brien]

Why does this not surprise me?

Oh right. . .because I have been stuck in NYC with the work cell as a data connection. All in all the Tilt is a good phone but honestly I dont think I manage to get more then MAYBE 200k connection speeds. Hell that coupled with the latency and this *3G* speed is appaling. Not to mention ATT apparently change the plan without notice recently and where I used to be able to send text messages to other techs for the company up in Canada, where it used to cost us nothing, suddenly we get a bill (not only for me) for over umm...wanna say it was around $250-300 for them. Yet another reason I refuse to get a cell of my own unless the company I work for pays for it because the providers here in the states seem to like to fuck people in the ass for no reason.

Oh well. Not like we will learn over here. We apparently are so trained to be sheep and follow whatever "big brother" says we must do we do. Oh well.

Im gonna go download something large to see if the "unlimited" data plan we have for these phones really is. Weeeeeeeee Cryostasis here I come.

[sleepy]

unfair?

The headline is little unfair on AT&T when it's the entire US industry that's not ready for everyone to start streaming video to a new smart phone. With AT&T's exclusive iPhone generating 60% of mobile data traffic, AT&T is arguably already serving more 3G data than all the others.

[dracotrapnet]

ATT wireless crap

I'm surprised how terrible G3 is on ATT. I've tinkered with tethering my laptop to my G3 capable phone. At home I have only 1 meg down DSL and this G3 connection didnt even beat that. I felt like I was on dial up watching the twitter picture on the login page download line by line on my laptop. I didnt try a speed test but next time I'm at someone's house that doesnt have wireless, I'll test it out again.

[Danny Thompson]

@dracotrapnet

Its 3G buddy, 3G, not G3 or any other permutation but plain old simple 3G - thats a 3 followed by a G.

Geez, how could anyone get that that wrong ;)

Paris - cos she got a few things wrong in her time [allegedly]