AT&T Reveals Details About 3G Network

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Just the other day we showed you how Verizon has launched three new commercials meant to continue their “There’s a Map for That” campaign. Verizon doesn’t seem to care about AT&T’s lawsuit and keeps its guns at AT&T’s 3G coverage. But is Verizon telling the whole truth?

After we’ve seen the new ads and had a couple of laughs it’s only fair to AT&T to show its side of the story too. One of the first things to be mentioned is that Verizon doesn’t compare the two companies’ data networks as it focuses only on 3G coverage. But Verizon’s CDMA 1xRTT service is only capable of providing customers dialup-like speeds if the faster EVDO Rev. A 3G network is not available.

On comparison, AT&T has in place GPRS connectivity which offers dial-up performances but it also has 2.5 EDGE deployed which offers download speeds similar in performance to the low end of Verizon’s EVDO Rev. A network. AT&T’s 3G is actually a lot faster than Verizon’s. While EVDO Rev. A can offer download speeds of 0.6 to 1.4Mbps, the UMTS 3G connection offers download speeds of up to 3.6Mbps and it’s currently being upgraded to faster HSPA 7.2Mbps.

So what did Verizon do? Apparently the company compared only the faster portion’s of both networks. Sure Verizon’s 3G coverage is about five times larger than AT&T’s. But AT&T has better data speeds, at least in theory, and its EDGE network can apparently compete with Verizon’s 3G network.

One other important thing to take into account is that Verizon is advertising its 3G service as 5 times larger than AT&T’s but that number doesn’t mean that Verizon offers 3G services to 5 times more people. In fact AT&T says that its data network reaches 296 million users which is 98% of the population and its 3G service is available in 9,400 cities in 350 metropolitan areas in the USA.

So what do you think about the whole “There’s a Map for That” campaign now? Sure Verizon has a lot more 3G coverage but its network won’t be able to offer similar speeds to AT&T’s 3G network anytime soon. On the other hand, AT&T’s 3G network, although speedier on paper, is not sufficient to the needs of iPhone owners. That’s probably why Verizon keeps pushing its ads hoping to convince people not to buy iPhones from AT&T and purchase a Verizon smartphone instead. But analysts expect 8 million iPhones to be sold during the last quarter of the year and most of those will probably be sold in the U.S. which doesn’t sound that bad for AT&T.

Who will win the high-speed data war in the USA? There are a lot of pros and cons for both networks so we’ll be following closely this conflict between the top two carriers in the USA. Will Verizon succeed in stealing AT&T customers this winter? What do you think?

Coverage map from AppleInsider