Smartphone Thoughts: AT&T Announces Plans to Increase 3G Upload Speeds By Christmas

"Richard Burns, AT&T's president of wireless network services, revealed in an interview with Reuters that the carrier is working to upgrade its 3G network to HSUPA over the next few months. HSUPA will increase the network's upload speeds dramatically, offering up to 500-800kbps. Currently the AT&T 3G network runs HSDPA, which has upload speeds of only 120kbps. The HSUPA upgrade will not affect the download speeds that customers already experience with HSDPA devices. Burns explained AT&T is implementing the upgrade due to increased demand for upload bandwidth, as more and more consumers are uploading media from their mobile devices to personal blogs and sites like MySpace and YouTube, among others. Existing UMTS and HSDPA 3G devices will not be able to utilize this upgrade, but the carrier plans to launch new devices that will take advantage of this network update."

While I always welcome an update, especially one that might not cost me anything, I have never really had a problem with HSDPA uploading speeds on AT&T's network. Hopefully AT&T extends it's current 3G network to blanket more of the United States instead of just making it faster. With all of the recent traveling I have been doing, it is almost painful when I have to jump down to the current EDGE network. Doing anything on it takes forever!