AT&T pledges to cover roughly 250 million people with HSPA+ by the end of the year

With so much noise ringing strongly around next generation networks, we've heard many times already in the past on how AT&T intends on improving their network – especially the out-pour of dissatisfaction from customers about spotty coverage in some major cities. And even during the last leg of Apple's launch of the iPad, we heard at how AT&T was going to kick it up a notch to accommodate the surge of customers potentially surfing on their 3G enable iPads on their network. This time around, we're hearing at how AT&T is going to attempt to cover 250 million Americans with HSPA+ before the end of the year is over. Quite an astonishing revelation, the news came from the mouth of AT&T's Operations CEO, John Stankey, during a Reuters event where they foresee themselves in doubling its theoretical 7.2Mbps maximum speeds on HSPA. No doubt Sprint's aggressive plunge into 4G with WiMAX. T-Mobile hovering in the 21Mbps sector, and Verizon slowly moving into the 4G game too has caused AT&T to reevaluate its position on its 3.5G HSPA+ network. Let's hope that the upgrade is a smooth process without any decrease in their current output performance level that already follows a fragile foundation.

source: Engadget