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May 19, 2010

Some wireless industry analysts are thinking that AT&T Mobility might be on the verge of updating its current 3G network with HSPA+ technology, just a few weeks after saying it would stop 3G upgrades at the 7.2 specification.

There's no question now that the Number Two largest wireless carrier in the U.S. is feeling some hot and very intense competition coming from the likes of Verizon and others.

On AT&T's blog this morning, company CTO John Donovan said the wireless carrier planned to upgrade to HSPA+ later this year ahead of its planned launch of LTE services beginning next year.

Donovan also noted the move to HSPA+ would be based on its recent 7.2 upgrades that included increased backhaul capabilities at mobile sites that will also be used for its LTE deployments.

While Donovan didn't provide details on the depth of upgrades the carrier would make along the HSPA+ path, published reports indicates that the company was looking at going to the 14.4 specification that would provide for theoretical network download speeds of up to 14.4 megabits per second compared with the 7.2 Mbps currently possible with the 7.2 specification.

AT&T has recently launched a new advertising campaign with the “Rethink” tagline and images of advanced telecommunications services. This new marketing emphasis would seem to dictate that the carrier stay as far ahead of the competition as possible when it comes to wireless capabilities, thus the new plans to move ahead with HSPA+ deployments.

However, with its competitors moving aggressively with advanced deployments, AT&T Mobility seems to have little choice but to move ahead with HSPA+, though the carrier sees itself in a different position.

"As the LTE ecosystem evolves over the next few years, 3G is going to be very important because customers will fall back to it frequently," a company spokeswoman noted. "When they do, we want to ensure they have a great experience. That’s why, unlike our competitors, we continue to invest in our 3G network to increase its speeds – first with HSPA 7.2 and now with HSPA+."

"Our competitors are not increasing the speeds of their 3G networks, which we think doesn’t service customers well. They are in a big hurry. But that doesn’t mean they are ahead," the AT&T spokesperson said.

But the new emphasis isn't expected to dampen the carrier's plans for LTE. The company's president and CEO Ralph de la Vega has noted on several occasions that the greater efficiency that AT&T Mobility will gain from the move to the all IP-based LTE technology as well as the eventual scale the technology will garner with broader deployments.

For its part, Verizon Wireless said it plans to cover at least 100 million pops in up to 30 markets by the end of 2010 with its new LTE network that the carrier said was showing peak download speeds of up to 50 Mbps in testing, though a video the carrier recently released showed real-world download speeds of around 8.5 Mbps.

T-Mobile USA announced at the recent CTIA event that it planned to cover 185 million potential customers with the HSPA+ 21 standard – providing download speeds up to 21 Mbps – by the end of this year.

And Sprint Nextel is partnering with Clearwire to launch WiMAX services covering 120 million pops by the end of the year, and already offers the service in dozens of markets providing real-world download speeds of around 6 Mbps.

Clearwire has also hinted that it could look towards other technology deployments, including LTE, going forward.

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Source: AT&T.