SOUTH U.S. -- AT&T finishing 3G expansion in Texas in September

re: AT&T finishing 3G expansion in Texas in September

Ddeere2, everything you said wrong about Laredo is considerably very TRUE! That's why once I graduate from high school in 2011, I'm out of here, never to return (except for holidays with the family )

But if only there were more people in Laredo that cared about their own city that they could bring this up to the local government or whatever and make this a better place! For now, it's only us plus a few percentage of other people that even dare to let their voice be heard, which is why school uniforms were implemented in both school districts without the vote of the citizens that live here, making these school districts implement other things that can ripoff Laredoans, because they learned that their citizens just follow, they don't have any leadership whatsoever.

One thing for sure is that if more citizens were involved in changing Laredo to a better place, rather than just complain about taxes, their daily life, and other bull**** and doing nothing about it.

By the way, I would like to know if anyone has ever even used the new 3-1-1 service to get contact with the local government.. and if it has worked for them or not... just curious

And to finish this post up, AT&T once again pushes back the 3G turn on date until the end of the year... guess these fools don't live up to their word. Just because a hurricane stroke the East Coast of Texas doesn't mean they can send all of their engineers and leave nothing for us. I'll be calling the Executive Customer Service line I mentioned in an earlier post regularly to demand 3G earlier, and so should the rest of you.

As for 3G tower implementation, the only tower I know that has 3G equipment on there is the one on E Plum Street in Central Laredo. To recognize if a tower has 3G equipment installed, check that a new "floor" of devices has been added to the tower. For example, the "floor/stack" on the top thats the shape of a triangle are the EDGE devices, but if you go down one, the next floor stack is smaller and contains 2-3 large panels.. those are UMTS/3G. A pic example here:



Peace,
-alnandr

 

Hey guys... BIG UPDATE!

FINALLY,as of December 9, 2008 at 8 PM CST, the Laredo area now has 3G coverage! I just turned on my iPhone enabling 3G, and a few seconds later... voila!

After doing a few speed tests, I got speeds from 400 kbps to 700 kbps. I am also getting excellent 5 bar coverage here at my home.

I officially pronounce December 9, 2008 is AT&T 3G Day in Laredo, TX.

It was well worth the wait.. and as of this writing, AT&T's Coverage Map viewer is down, reflecting the new map indicating 3G in Laredo.

-alnandr

 

Yeah they did.. but at least its here before the end of the year .. well im off to surfing on my iPhone 3G. Happy 3Ging

-alnandr

 

Well, after spending through a day at school, I have been fascinated with the 3G's strong frequency that surpasses our school's current cell signal blocker, having five bars everywhere I have been. No dropped calls, never had 4 bars or less, always 5, and speeds from 250kbps to even 1.0 Mbps in a speedtest! I am on iPhone 2.2 firmware. My battery life has also been powerful, having full battery after using it for 3 hours (taking breaks along during class, of course).

I got home with 7% battery life, so it lasted me throughout my day. Pretty decent considering early iPhone 3G's with older firmwares had way worse battery life :-/ At least they fixed the issues before 3G went live here in Laredo.

I am very impressed...

-alnandr

 

I go to United South, and they don't seem to have a very good cell blocker there. Laredo is the only city in South Texas with 850 Mhz UMTS/HSDPA (RGV and Corpus havent been upgraded to 850 Mhz yet) so it makes sense to see better coverage inside crowded buildings. I've been seeing speeds of 500-600kbps on a Safari speedtest, but when I downloaded a speed tester from the App Store I also got around 1.0 Mbps of download speed.. too bad iPhone 3G doesnt have HSUPA, so I get upload speeds below 200kbps. I also have a tower near my house:browani:, but it doesnt have UMTS on it, and since a UMTS tower can reach farther than EDGE towers, AT&T decided to only upgrade a few.

And yes, a lot of people know that Laredo has 3G already. My teachers were running up to me with their iPhones excited about 3G and even a few friends that I have in my Magnet classes who have knowledge in technology also told me about it and we all showed off the faster connection. I also sent an email to the media for them to announce it soon. Laredo isn't a second-world city.. it's pretty modern and everyone gets in the hype when new technologies come around.

And yeah, I can't also wait for LTE in 2010, although I doubt Laredo getting that upgrade for a long while... maybe Sprint's WiCrapx can get her earlier.. idk

-alnandr

 

By the way, have any of you noticed that Sprint completely ignored Laredo when they were upgrading to EV-DO Rev A. in South Texas? Sprint still runs on 2G CDMA!!!

And that is why I recommend everyone of my friends who have Sprint to get rid of their phones and plans.. the ETF is worth paying for!

 

AT&T has released a PDF containing 3G coverage for the Laredo area, available here:

http://wireless.att.com/coverageviewer/maps/Laredo_TX.pdf

It stretches through most of Laredo, bringing coverage to all areas except Rio Bravo and El Cenizo, where EDGE is still dominant (some spots can still receive at least a bar or two of 3G)...

They will soon be updating their national coverage map with 3G info for other cities like Uvalde as well.

-alnandr

 

If 3G was implemented a few days ago, why wouldn't it have HSUPA? All the new 3G cities have the latest from AT&T (HSUPA, 850MHz) including Laredo. The reason why I get such a slow upload speed is because of the lack of it on my iPhone 3G. I don't care about upload speeds much because I rarely do any uploading and its just pure downloading...

Anyways, I've also unofficially tethered my MacBook with my iPhone using a jailbroken app, and it seems pretty good I can have fast connection everywhere.. just make sure I only do basic surfing and I don't go over my 5GB cap. Cool thing is that AT&T doesn't know I use my MacBook on my iPhone's data plan because of how the app works, but once AT&T officially releases their tethering plans for iPhone in a few months, I'll be sure to invest in them .

Also, Im looking to get a new backup unlocked phone that supports 3G and has better battery life just in case I go overload on my iPhone's battery ... I really like the FUZE, and the BB Bold astounds me with its capabilities, so I'm still having quite of a decision here... help! LOL

Cheers,
-alnandr

 

I never really thought about it that way. I believe Apple didn't include HSUPA because of battery management issues with the iPhone that wouldn't allow it to hit 5 hours. Maybe their third-generation iPhone sometime in '09 would include HSUPA, although I doubt it since most users just look for download speeds...

Come to think of it, I would like 3.6/7.2Mbps on the downlink. Maybe the chipset inside the iPhone 3G already has HSUPA but is disabled and can be enabled with a future software update if Apple wanted to, but currently i don't see anyone complaining about lack of HSUPA...

-alnandr