Bloomington, IL HSPA+ and Surrounding Areas Getting off Edge [ Edited ]

[JakeT85]

I am curious if AT&T has anywhere you can see their planned network upgrades/expansions?  I live in Bloomington/Normal, IL and if you look at the picture every large city in the area has HSPA+ except us.  Hour and a half north of us is Chicago and a couple hours south is St. Louis on Interstate 55.  The population is around 200,000 with the students at Illinois State and Illinois Weslyan Universities counted (150,000 without), and State Farm and Country Financials corporate headquarters are both here.  I can't understand how we do not have it, yet Decatur, IL does with a population of roughly 85,000?  I'm also curious when all of this Edge network around us will be converted to 3G, does at&t have a goal of having 100% 3G network and above. I am a in sales and it makes traveling to the small towns terrible.  I can either use Verizon and have slow congested data at home (no LTE) but fast connection in small towns, or I can have decent speeds at home and run at a turtle's pace out in the small towns while working. Any information is appreciated.

Here's a little bigger picture that shows how much Edge we have left in Illinois.

[Laid-Back]

I have only seen pages or blogs where AT&T has announced completed network upgrades.  I don't think AT&T announces planned upgrades or upgrades in progress for the same reasons Apple doesn't tell us what they are working on.  

If you have a link of AT&T saying they would plan to convert 100% of their network to 3G speeds or greater I hope you will share it.  I haven't read any talk like that except for the special website created while at&t was trying to sell the t-mobile merger to the public.

[JakeT85]

I haven't seen it on an official press release.  I was just reading this thread earlier and it sparked my curiousity.  Post 4 is from a top contributer that has talked to AT&T about the Edge being completely overlayed with UMTS by the end of this year.  Who knows if the rep actually knew what they were talking about or not........as you know that's about a 50/50 chance, but with the talk of sunsetting Edge to open up spectrum for more efficient technologies in largely populated areas maybe they decided to do it right and jump their whole network ahead into this century. 

http://www.howardforums.com/showthread.php/1760498-Sick-of-only-having-Edge?p=14790327#post14790327

[Tpeltz]

JakeT85, I am TWX from Howard Forums. AT&T is certainly up to something in terms of converting their EDGE-only areas to 3G. A different member on HoFo posted a notification from the AT&T Mark The Spot app stating that 3G coverage will soon be launching in their market (which is currently pure EDGE). I received a call again from AT&T due to a prior network complaint and I was told (again) that my area will have 3G coverage in the very near future. I asked for a date and she said in the next couple months.

Also, I have seen the AT&T tower techs drive around my area almost every day this week. Usually I only see them once a month. I would imagine this means they are upgrading the equipment in the base stations underneath the cell sites to a 3G compatible cabinet. That upgrade and a minor backhaul upgrade is all that is needed to get 3G running in EDGE-only areas. They do not need to climb the tower to change any antennas/cables at all.

I believe that AT&T will be starting to light up 3G in many EDGE-only areas starting in June and then ramping up expansion very quickly through the summer months. By late August or early September I think AT&T will have 3G live in the majority of the EDGE-only areas.

I don't think that AT&T will release a press release about this 3G expansion because then it would show just how much of their network is on 2G. 

[Laid-Back]

I hope your right Tpeltz.  Edge is nearly useless as a data connection compared to 3G.  Do you think any plans to upgrade areas from edge to 3g would involve places that are covered with a 2G partner?  In places like Nebraska it looks like about 90% of AT&T's coverage is using a 2G partner.  If you use more than 24 MB of data in one of those areas per month it looks like you would face some kind of penalty.   Partner 2G Limits

[Tpeltz]

Laid-Back, I do not think AT&T will require their 2G partners to upgrade to 3G. However, the 3rd party firm that runs the 2G-roaming network may upgrade to 3G themselves so they don't look so horrible when compared to a 3G service like AT&T. 

Usually if a subscriber roams a lot, AT&T will ask that subscriber to leave and they would waive the ETF fee. 

[JakeT85]

Hey TWX, fancy seeing you here. I hope you're right. I went on a sales route today through rural areas and Edge is just painful. Nothing would load. Just think if AT&T made nationwide 3G happen with hspa+ in most areas. I wouldn't even care when LTE roll out picked back up, but when it did and they completed LTE their network would be stronger than Verizon's. Right now I can either have 3 Mbps at home in town with AT&T, but slow edge out in the rural areas, or I can have overloaded Verizon evdo in town and super fast empty evdo on routes in rural areas. I'm ready to have it all, a solid 2mbps or higher connection anywhere i go. Here's to hoping for reaching that by the end of the year.