AT&T to Selectively Upgrade to HSPA 7.2

Posted 09/09/2009 at 1:03pm | by Jason Barry

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AT&T announced today that six cities will receive an infrastructural upgrade to the HSPA 7.2 (7.2 megabits per second) service by the end of this year. The cities fortunate enough are: Charlotte, North Carolina; Chicago, Illinois; Dallas and Houston, Texas; Los Angeles, California; and Miami, Florida.

AT&T hopes to extend this same service to 90% of its current 3G area by the end of 2011 stepping into 25 other major cities by the close of 2010.  Further, they claim that the infrastructure upgrade should also be robust enough to handle the throughput of next-generation 4G service, expected to be suitable for deployment in 2011.

The company has been in the crosshairs lately as their current 3G network is being saturated with the exclusive use of 9 million iPhone users in addition to the 20 million other smartphone users on the grid. Still iPhone users await features such as internet tethering and multimedia messaging while AT&T continues to fortify the network for the intense throughput they require. 

Image credit: AT&T logo, USB 3.0 logo