T-Mobile HSPA+ coverage expands to more U.S. cities

On its way to the promised 100 metropolitan areas in the U.S. that should be basking in HSPA+ glory by the end of the year, T-Mobile rolled out the speedy service to major urban areas in the Northeast. The service started in Philadelphia, it has been available in the Washington D.C. suburbs and New York City, and now the carrier just widens the blanket to the bigger cities in Upstate New York, Connecticut, and Providence, R.I. In the mainland, Memphis and Las Vegas also got upgraded to T-Mobile's HSPA+ network, while the faster speeds will be available in the Boston area and the capital itself in the following weeks.  That makes about 30 million people for now, with the intent to get the service to 185 million by year end.

The nice part about this particular choice of technology is that it can be done as an upgrade to the existing infrastructure, which bumps up the speed for current devices using the T-Mobile 3G network. Theoretically, download speeds with HSPA+ (aka Evolved HSPA) can be up to about 21Mbps, but in practice they will, of course, be much lower. Users have reported the T-Mobile webConnect(tm) Rocket(tm) Laptop stick to get about 3Mbps in an HSPA+ area with 7Mbps peak, while a 3G smartphone is said to have tripled its access speed compared to an area with no HSPA+ coverage to 1.8Mbps. Moreover, the wait for server response is also reported to be better, which could make all the difference.

source: T-Mobile, PCMag