Despite now competing against two other carriers for iPhone subscribers, AT&T seems to have an unlikely ace up its sleeve: speed. Some AT&T users are reporting a boost in 3G speed after upgrading to the iPhone 4S.
Although it’s unknown how widespread is the bump in AT&T speeds, but some users of the carrier are reporting anecdotal evidence that the 4S’ support for the 14.4Mbps HSDPA protocol used during GSM connections appears real. In one case, an AT&T user based in Iowa claims 3G speeds of 5.45Mbps, up from 4 Mbps previously registered on his iPhone 4. In another case, a Texas AT&T subscriber reports 3.17Mbps with his iPhone 4S.
AT&T has been referring to its HSDPA support as “4G.”
Ed Sutherland is a veteran technology journalist who first heard of Apple when they grew on trees, Yahoo was run out of a Stanford dorm and Google was an unknown upstart. Since then, Sutherland has covered the whole technology landscape, concentrating on tracking the trends and figuring out the finances of large (and small) technology companies.
