ATT says upgrading hard but needs to continue

AT&T CTO John Donovan mentioned at a San Francisco conference today that the speed of the carrier's 3G network upgrades have been slowed by some extraordinary factors. He noted that parts shortages have been a significant factor and have prevented the company from upgrading when it would like even when the plans were in place. The explosion of interest in smartphones has also "broken down" the usual testing routine by providing many more chipsets and devices to verify, the executive said.

The technical lead was adamant that finances and willpower weren't the problems and told VentureBeat that AT&T "will move heaven and Earth" to keep upgrading.

Speed-ups were characterized by Donovan as not only urgent today but mounting in importance over the next few years. In spite of the seeming rush triggered by the iPhone 3G and later hardware, AT&T still considers itself in an early period where growth is still happening in the context of traditional cellular data. The next phase, "application readiness," would take place shortly and would need more involvement to ensure the network could handle certain kinds of demanding tasks. A third phase, by 2014, would cover very high-bandwidth tasks such as widespread user-to-user video.

Although not mentioned explicitly, much of the leap in use should come from the upgrade to LTE for 4G service in 2011. At a 100Mbps theoretical peak, it will be almost seven times faster at its best than the imminent 14.4Mbps HSPA+ network and could permit previously wired-only usage habits like HD video streaming and action-driven multiplayer gaming. LTE is also entirely IP-based and could have AT&T ultimately putting both voice calls and data on the Internet.

By Electronista Staff