AT&T Pushes Network UpgradesAT&T Pushes Network Upgrades

Last week I blogged on the cost AT&T has incurred in being the exclusive carrier for the iPhone in the US market. I've received a response from AT&T's Blogger Relations on some of the issues raised. The cost is still high, but AT&T has reaped a few benefits that aren't as readily obvious, and some of those will in turn benefit their customers.I noted that even though Apple has sold a lot of devices, only 40% were from new subscribers. What that doesn't reflect though is that of the 60% existing subscribers that purchased an iPhone, many of them are upgrading their service to the high end data plans to accommodate the phone's capabilities. In Q2 of 2009, 50% of existing customers began paying that extra $30 per month whereas before that had a more basic plan or none at all for their previous AT&T phone.

AT&T has taken some black eyes on the reliability and performance of the network since the iPhone arrived and began sucking up massive amounts of bandwidth compared to AT&T's other smartphones. iPhone users love the data capabilities and use it prodigiously. Fellow blogger Eric Zeman posted AT&T's latest admission that all hasn't gone as expected.

Jamie Carracher at Fleishman-Hillard for AT&T Blogger Relations wrote to inform me that AT&T had just improved the New York and New Jersey network by deploying the 850MHz band. That will help those in that region and others as that band is ready in other major areas. What will really help though is the rollout of HPSA+ that will have substantially higher bandwidth. Like adding more lanes to an interstate (something New York and New Jersey coincidentally also need), increased network bandwidth will reduce congestion and should reduce downtimes.

As of mid-August, 40% of AT&T's cell sites nationwide are wired for fiber and that number is closer to 60% for metro areas. AT&T's goal is 100% HSPA+ support by the second half of 2011.

We'll have to monitor how the HSPA+ rollout goes to see how well AT&T resolves the customer complaints on the data network. Until then. we'll have to see how well AT&T continues to handle the short term glitches.