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July 9, 2010

Late yesterday, AT&T said that a software glitch in Alcatel-Lucent's wireless network gear is causing very slow uplink speeds for some of its smartphone and laptop customers with 3G HSUPA devices, including those using the iPhone 4.

For the past week, AT&T customers had been complaining about the slower speeds.

The software defect affects only about 1.8 percent of AT&T's mobile customer base and is only triggered under certain conditions, AT&T said.

The Alcatel issue affects customers in markets where it uses its wireless equipment, not just AT&T customers.

But AT&T said it uses Ericsson equipment to power its 3G network in other markets outside the continental U.S.

The software glitch is only part of a whole series of issues that AT&T has had to deal with in recent weeks.

Pre-orders for Apple's iPhone 4 crashed the wireless carrier's website in June, the e-mail addresses and ICC IDs of 140,000 iPad 3G customers were released by hackers who cracked AT&T's poorly secured Web application, and there have been complaints about the signal strength on the iPhone 4, which Apple seems to be partially blaming on AT&T.

AT&T said it is working diligently to battle negative public perception of its network, which has been burdened by the massive amount of traffic generated by smartphones, most notably the iPhone 3GS and 4.

Nationwide data traffic on AT&T's wireless network has grown by a staggering 5,400 percent since 2007, when AT&T started selling the iPhone 2 and 3 with an exclusive contract in all of the U.S. from Apple.

"While Alcatel-Lucent did the appropriate software repair, we are providing normal 3G uplink speeds and consistent performance for affected AT&T customers with HSUPA-capable devices," AT&T said in a statement.

The wireless carrier upgraded its nationwide 3G network to HSPA 7.2 in February and is working to roll out fiber backhaul to cell sites to support the upgrade.

Faster 3G upload and download speeds are scheduled to become available this year and next year as the backhaul deployment progresses.

AT&T added that it will roll out HSPA+ later in October of this year.

A few weeks ago, AT&T said it was taking a cautious approach to its femtocell rollout since it introduced the Cisco-made device in March at CTIA Wireless 2010.

The wireless carrier said femtocell use will count toward its new caps on data use, as it has for all customers but those on unlimited plans only.

AT&T added that about 96.3 percent of its MicroCell users have Wi-Fi routers in their homes, which is better suited to home mobile data usage in the first place.

Overall, Femtocells can take traffic off the macrocellular network. AT&T Mobility's femtocell traffic still counts toward its total data usage as the femtocell is primarily designed to enhance the user's voice call quality experience.

So far, no less than 13 wireless operators have confirmed commercial launches of femtocells, including Vodafone Spain, AT&T Mobility, Softbank in China and Japan's KDDI.

Spain is Vodafone Group plc's second commercial offering. The operator initially launched femtocell service in its U.K. headquarters in October 2009.

Globally, the femtocell market continues to grow and should reach about 48.7 million femtocell access points and about 114.2 million mobile users accessing networks through femtocells by 2014, according to a new report from Informa Telecoms & Media.

“Overall, healthy growth is anticipated throughout the forecast period with femtocell unit sales reaching 25 million in 2014 alone,” Informa said.

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Source: AT&T.