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3G or not 3G: WHERE is the question

by Steven Sande May 22nd 2008 at 6:00PM



With all of the excitement about the 3G iPhone, one question you should ask yourself is "Am I actually in an area with AT&T HSDPA 3G service?" After all, a 3G iPhone will only poke along at EDGE (or even, God forbid, GPRS) speeds unless it is in a 3G service area.

Fortunately, AT&T Wireless has a list of the major markets that have HSDPA service. Unfortunately, you have to go through the list by state and city name before you can actually click on a map and see if your house or office is in a zone of 3G love. My house, which has sucky AT&T service at this time, is allegedly in a 3G-happy area (blue on the screenshot). That's the good news. The bad news is that I'm right near the border of one of those orange zones, which indicate no 3G service.

My sister currently enjoys EDGE service in her home town of Richland, WA, but is anxious to get her iPhone connected with 3G service. I hate to tell her that she's not on the list.

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With all of the excitement about the 3G iPhone, one question you should ask yourself is "Am I actually in an area with AT&T HSDPA 3G...
 

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dustin

yayyyyyy to the richland, wa shout out!
booooooo to the fact that at&t can't figure out that the tri-city area is the third most populated area in washington...

edge? :[

May 23 2008 at 5:14 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to dustin's comment
Derek

Yea to Richland! But the lack of 3G here does suck. Especially when I goto school in Spokane (where the 3G is really good) and then I come back to Richland for the summer and it is only EDGE (and not very good at that). Come on ATT we are a big town, we have a freakin nuclear site and if anything bad happens we need the 3G to send for help haha!

May 24 2008 at 5:31 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
bobeast

These maps are pretty useless, overall. I get great Edge reception at home, yet they list my area as having no service whatsoever. At another property, Cingular put up a brand new cell tower two years ago, and that property is ALSO shown as having no service. ATT doesn't even keep their database updated for their own equipment.

May 23 2008 at 3:35 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
MIchael

if apple had chosen verizon then we wouldn't be having this discussion as we would all know that 3G was already here and waiting for us to use... Just thought i'd point out.

May 23 2008 at 10:53 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Jonathan

You live in my neighborhood. My house is on the pointy end of that orange blob.

I guess I will hold out for 3G until we're all blue.

May 23 2008 at 10:32 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to Jonathan's comment
Bill Nalen

Heh, this is my neighborhood too (I'm in the bottom left corner). I checked this a month or so ago and my neighborhood was orange too, now it looks blue. Perhaps AT&T really is improving the network.

May 23 2008 at 12:57 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Galley

I can see this playing out like Sprint's 3G rollout. Here in Greenville, it took 18 months longer than they originally planned.

May 23 2008 at 9:22 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Ted Fitzgerald

You don't have to click on the list of states to get the 3G map. You just go into the coverage viewer (http://www.wireless.att.com/coverageviewer) zoom in a little, and then check the box to show 3G.

May 23 2008 at 8:42 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
TimmyDax

If anyone was looking for O2s UK equivalent, it's here at:

http://www.webmap.o2.co.uk/

You can select to show just HSDPA coverage, too. Not as pretty as AT&Ts though.

May 23 2008 at 7:24 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
desides

AT&T has South Florida blanketed in 3G all the way up to Orlando.

I'm pretty sure I'm good.

May 23 2008 at 3:16 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Jani

Living on an edge of a network might be a bad bad thing. I live in Finland where 3G is almost everywhere (compared to States anyway). Well I used to live in a place where GPRS and 3G "met". Not good. On 3G my cellphone was constantly changing from GPRS to 3G and never actually settled. I had to keep the phone on GPRS as then it would, like, work.

May 23 2008 at 3:13 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
chad

supposedly 3g is rolling out faster then ever should be fully up soon also if u like iphone news iphonenewslive.com is a great site also is iphone optomized as well

May 23 2008 at 2:50 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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