AT&T's Network Now 80% HSPA+

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American Telephone & Telegraph AT&T is reporting that their HSPA+ network, an enhanced version of the 3G that most of us are familiar with, now covers an incredible 80% of their network. AT&T joins T-Mobile, who has also been aggressively rolling out their own HSPA+ network.

One difference between AT&T and T-Mobile is that T-Mobile is billing their HSPA+ network as “4G”. Previously, we at TFTS had called HSPA+ “3.5G”, as it was faster than 3G but wasn’t a 4G candidate, per the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). Another difference, AT&T does have plans to go to LTE (a real 4G candidate) while T-Mobile US has been handcuffed by their German parent corporation who doesn’t want to spend the money to upgrade their network to LTE/WiMAX.

T-Mobile’s own HSPA+ upgrades have gone rather quickly because they were last major carrier to build a 3G network (using the auctioned AWS spectrum) and are able to upgrade to HSPA+ in a firmware update on the infrastructure radios. In addition to the new radios, AT&T also has to lay more fiber to their towers to enable faster internet. This is the same probably that Sprint is running into with their WiMAX 4G network. The WiMAX is working but it’s being handicapped by the internet connection at the tower. While T-Mobile has some HSPA+ phones that allow 7-10Mbps to the phone, AT&T has none of these phones currently.

You’ve got to imagine what T-Mobile will do once AT&T has matched their HSPA+ network and begins work on LTE. T-Mobile’s billing of their HSPA+ network as “4G” has got the magenta carrier a lot of negative press from some notable tech blogs. T-Mobile had committed to LTE, despite Deutsche Telekom saying that they had no plans to upgrade T-Mobile US to LTE and their constant claims that HSPA+ is good enough right now. You’d think that eventually, Deutsche Telekom will have to bite the bullet and upgrade to LTE. Or sell the whole carrier to AT&T, as some have suggested.