AT&T expands 4G LTE to 11 new markets including NYC, San Francisco, L.A.
AT&T announced on Thursday that it has expanded its high-speed 4G long-term evolution network to 11 new cities, including the New York metropolitan area, San Francisco and Los Angeles.
AT&T's 4G LTE is now available in a total of 26 markets to 74 million customers. The announcement was made Thursday by John Stankey, president and chief executive officer of AT&T Business Solutions at Citi's 22nd Annual Global Entertainment, Media and Telecommunications Conference in San Francisco, Calif. The full list of 4G LTE markets recently added are:
New York City metro area
Austin, Tex.
Chapel Hill, N.C.
Los Angeles, Calif.
Oakland, Calif.
Orlando, Fla.
Phoenix, Ariz.
Raleigh, N.C.
San Diego, Calif.
San Francisco, Calif.
San Jose, Calif
"We're building a 4G LTE network that's blazing fast, and we offer dual layers of 4G technologies to provide customers with a more consistent speed experience," Stankey said. "Our network, together with our unsurpassed 4G device portfolio and innovative applications, will give our customers an industry-leading mobile broadband experience."
The latest expansion joins 15 markets that AT&T brought 4G LTE to in 2011. They are Athens, Ga.; Atlanta, Ga.; Baltimore, Md.; Boston, Mass.; Chicago, Ill.; Dallas-Fort Worth, Tex.; Houston, Tex.; Indianapolis, Ind.; Kansas City, Kan.; Las Vegas, Nev.; Oklahoma City, Okla.; San Antonio, Tex.; San Juan, Puerto Rico; and Washington D.C.
The roll-out of AT&T's LTE network has been much slower than rival Verizon, which which debuted its fourth-generation high-speed network in December of 2010 in 38 metropolitan areas and more than 60 commercial airports across the U.S. Verizon's 4G network currently covers more than 186 million Americans, while AT&T's is available to 74 million.
Speculation has suggested that 4G LTE markets and related technology in phones will be mature enough this year that Apple could offer an LTE-capable iPhone model. Last year, Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook said poor battery life and other issues with current LTE technology were not up to standard.
"The first generation of LTE chipsets force a lot of design compromises with the handset," Cook said last April, "and some of those we are just not willing to make."
Comments
Being first isn't always the best.
Agreed. Verizon had 3 major, national LTE outages in just the past month. They have some issues regarding 3G and 4G compatibility. These issues will not go away easily.
Even makes my iPhone and iPad 3G faster by using the Wi-Fi of the hotspot instead of their own 3G capabilities.
I am ready for LTE here in So Cal.
I also should mention that I have unlimited data since I upgraded from my 3G air card which had unlimited. AT&T no longer offers unlimited on new accounts.
Does this mean you can make a call in New York now?
We've been able to make calls in New York for some time now. But that wasn't the biggest issue. When I first got my iPhone about three years ago, 95% of my calls get dropped. Now it's probably 1% or less. There were also places, like Fifth Avenue in the 40s (near the main branch of the NY Public Library), where the phone simply refused to work. That's no longer the case either.
I always thought that I would switch from AT&T back to Verizon, but by the time Verizon became available, it was no longer necessary and with Verizon, you can't browse and talk at the same time.
The big problem I still have is that there are times/areas where weather, stocks or maps just seems to lock up. Don't know whether that's an iOS issue or a communications issue.
LTE in Los Angeles, sorry this area is spread out and i would bet against it's reliability. but i hope its good... and that LTE iphone comes.
or heck LTE windows 8 phones or 7.5 phones come.
The big problem I still have is that there are times/areas where weather, stocks or maps just seems to lock up. Don't know whether that's an iOS issue or a communications issue.
It's a network issue. It happens to me on my iPhone 4S, and my colleagues, some of whom have BlackBerry Bolds running on AT&T's HSPA+ network. Even with 5 bars of signal, from 10:00am-6:00 in many parts of Manhattan the network is jammed with traffic and won't let data through, or lets it through very slowly.
I don't think there is any doubt the next iPhone will include LTE. Verizon might also be at a slight disadvantage in terms of LTE since from what I have read AT&T and Sprint's LTE implementation is a newer and faster version. Sprint and possibly AT&T are using LTE-Advanced whereas Verizon is just using the older LTE. So once all networks are fully deployed in 2013 Verizon might be the slowest of the three. Being first isn't always the best.
Cool info! I read that LTE can offer 326 Mbps while LTE-Advanced can offer 1200 Mbps (1.2 Gbps). Your mileage may vary.
2) I hope that 700MHz spectrum will resolve a lot of the issues residents of NYC and SF experience.
3) I didn't know my AT&T plan worked in Alaska, Puerto Rico, and US Virgin Islands. I thought it was the 48 contiguous US states and Hawaiian Islands.
4) 74 million customers covered is 74% of their subscriber base. That's pretty damn good for the first month of 2012.
PS: Thank you AI staff for putting the article images in the forum thread's article.
Cool info! I read that LTE can offer 326 Mbps while LTE-Advanced can offer 1200 Mbps (1.2 Gbps).
Theoretical limits of a technically are one thing but you have to watch for bottlenecks. Here's a recent example that I'm surprised Apple hasn't already dealt with in their devices.
Why the surprise about NC? It is the 10th largest state with close to 10 million people with 3 metro areas of around a million or more. More than twice the population of Oregon and several million more than Washington. Don't forget their corporate HQ might be in Dallas, but their wireless HQ are still in Atlanta.
Didn't realize NC had so many people but Washington is still 13th with no LTE coverage. The Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue metropolitan area is the 15th largest (3.4M) in the US while Charlotte is part of a NC/SC metro area down at 33 (1.7M). I don't want to get into a numbers battle so I apologize for belittling the people of NC. My comment about lack of support north of SF stands, however.
AT&T's corporate office is in Dallas so I can understand the TX cities but North Carolina?? So far nothing north of San Francisco west of the plains. AT&T is definitely not starting with large cities, probably hoping they can learn from mid size ones (and larger ones close to home). With Verizon leaving WA (selling to Frontier), my state is wide open. They really just need to cover the I-5 corridor through WA and OR to start with since my guess is 80% of the population of those two states live within 50 miles of that freeway.
Believe me. If the carriers could blanket the nation, even the world, with cell sites, they would. Typically city and county governments do NOT like cell sites in their right-of-way. Add the tin foil hat crowd and you have the perfect storm of resistance. It can take years before a carrier or tower company gets approval to construct a badly needed site.
Another factor in play is that the carriers view the cell site as revenue source. They typically calculate how much they are gaining in subscriber revenue per site. If the costs of putting one up and maintaining it outweigh the money coming in, they'll think very hard before putting one up. That's why you rarely see them in rural areas where there aren't a lot of users.
So what's the solution? Scream loudly to both your city and county governments and planning commissions that you want your cell site. Then scream loudly to your carrier that you want your cell site. That is all.
1) Puerto Rico having 4G before major cities in US states is a bit baffling.
Fair probability of them becoming a state this year, so that might be part of it.
Theoretical limits of a technically are one thing but you have to watch for bottlenecks. Here's a recent example that I'm surprised Apple hasn't already dealt with in their devices.
Aren't you the same guy that bragged about AT&T's theoretical max speed of 14.4Mbps while feeling sorry for us poor Verizon and Sprint iPhone users as we hobbled along? Of course you had about 20,000 or more post at that time. What happened? Did they delete your account for your always polite, respectful, and informative posts?
If you want to use WiFi as an analogy to LTE, then LTE-Advanced would be like WiFI-N and and Verizon's current LTE would be like WiFi-B. Sure there will always be bottlenecks, and the most important one will always be the backhaul to the actual tower and the number of users. So even with a slower and older version of LTE equipment, Verizon users could still see faster "real world" speeds than other carriers as long as they have a good and fat backhaul pipe to the tower.
Yes, I've suffered through the recent outages too.
I'm not sure I understand the benefit of Verizon having 4G in airports when ATT has Wifi there. Even if ATT offered 4G in the airports, I'd still use Wifi if it was there. What am I missing?
Not every airport has free WiFi.