AT&T Reveals $65 Million Investment On 3G Infrastructure Around SF Bay Through 2009
The AT&T network has seen unprecedented growth in its bandwidth consumption over the past two years, thanks majorly to the exclusive iPhone deal with Apple.
While this has tremendously helped the company in its earnings, the high data consumption has also led to clogged networks and subsequently to a lot of ridicule from competitors.
No doubt then that Ma Bell has been solely focusing on increasing its network capacity; especially in the high smartphone density areas. As a reflection of this, the company has announced that it has invested close to $65 million to strengthen its 3G wireless network just around the San Francisco Bay area. In a press release posted on their website, AT&T claims that the investment helped in the launch of additional 850 MHz spectrum band that enabled the upgradation of close to 850 cell sites in the area and which would among other things, also help in better in-building network coverage.
Before you get overly optimistic about an improvement in the quality of the network, we must tell you that these upgradations are already done. AT&T says that the aforesaid infrastructure was built from 2008 through the third quarter of 2009, with a major portion of it coming in the last quarter alone. This means that any improvement because of this upgrade should have been already felt by the customers in these parts of the country.
Also, we must realize that the number of iPhone handsets in the region too has been consistently increasing in the region during this period which means that any improvement due to the upgrade would be marginal. Nevertheless, this invesment is just a small portion of the all upgrades AT&T has announced for the next couple of years. The HSPA 7.2 3G infrastructure will be able to offer speeds of up to 7.4 Mbit and this is likely to come to the Bay area by next year.
All said and done, despite a theoretically superior wireless infrastructure, AT&T has had a tough time fighting competition in recent times and the company would very well know that the perfect retort to Verizon's attacks is through improved service offerings. And though the numbers put on the press releases look highly impressive, unless that is backed by a corresponding improvement in ground realities, the attack from competition and customer dissatisfaction would continue unabated.
We would like to know from our readers in the Bay area if they have seen any improvements in the AT&T service over the past few months. Do you think the investments have helped so far? Please tell us in the comments.
[via AT&T Press Room]
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