AT&T put out a press release today stating that they’ve done a software upgrade on several of their 3G sites nationwide, making it faster, and starting to deploy high-speed packet access technology in the process. They also state that they’re upgrading the hardware portion of the network this year and next, meaning that soon, AT&T will have a super fast network that will let people rocket data from coast to coast like some weird coked-out cheetah.
Here’s what the press release doesn’t say: “Hey guys, wanted to bring up that tethering thing. Sure, not many of you might actually use the thing, but we really weren’t prepared for that whole ‘iPhone’ thing, so, we’re just gonna pretend that our promise to roll it out by 2010 just never happened, k? Cool. Oh, and we’ve got the fastest network in the 5% of the country where 3G is accessible. Fast. Seriously fast, so for those of you in Phoenix, Miami, Las Vegas (only in the slow season) and other cities like that, you’re good. NYC and SF? Let’s not talk about that.”
This brings up an interesting point though, something which has been speculated upon recently. The Apple Unicorn that’s coming out on the 27th is rumored to have Verizon service bundled in. I find that highly doubtful, but let’s say that it’s true. That means that Apple fanboys would have TWO monthly service contracts to worry about, and both with expensive plans. Realistically, who would do that? For me, that’s just asking a bit too much from my monthly income to make it feasible.