Sidecut Reports

As you may have heard, AT&T officially launched its first salvo of live Long Term Evolution (LTE) services Sunday, in five cities: Chicago, Dallas, Austin, Houston and Atlanta. Above is the new updated map that is serving as Ma Bell’s announcement platform for its clear-as-mud 4G rollout; if you are following this story closely you know that in January AT&T decided to call its existing HSPA+ services “4G,” even though real faster speeds weren’t (and still aren’t) widely available across the entire AT&T service area.

Never you mind! AT&T has a really big problem right now with its planned digestion of T-Mobile and — well, it probably can’t be bothered with marketing semantics. Or with nitpickers like us pointing out that even though AT&T launched its LTE services in the “summer” around here the third week of school is usually seen as “fall.” And hey Kris Rinne — where are those LTE smartphones you promised us? Remember, the ones with all the radios in them — to support multiple bands of LTE, as well as all the flavors of AT&T’s GSM network along with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. Maybe we’ll see some by Christmas, when we can use them to keep warm for the short while that their batteries last?

Seriously, though, it is heartening to see AT&T launching its LTE services with some grainy-edge coverage “maps” which are so small (and not available for zooming in or out) as to be not very useful in determining actual LTE coverage areas, other than to say, well, if you are in the middle of any one of the launch cities then you can probably expect coverage. But out at the fringes? Good luck finding any LTE bars. (Or if you live on the south side of Chicago, which apparently is not getting any LTE love from the map copied below.) And remember: It’s only hotspots and USB modems for AT&T LTE to start with, so no smartphones. Yet.



Of course, it’s not like AT&T competitor and 4G LTE trailblazer Verizon Wireless is perfect; a look at Verizon’s similar coverage map for Chicago shows a bit more granularity and the ability to zoom in and out (to help see those annoying non-covered patches of territory) but Verizon helpfully masks your data-gathering with big road maps and huge icons for Verizon Wireless stores. After all, that’s what you really wanted to find out, right?



Kudos once again to Sprint and Clearwire for having much better clarity when it comes to coverage maps; you can go see for yourself, but Sprint has a system for letting you know if you can expect to have 4G coverage inside a building or not, while Clearwire still shows actual tower locations.

However: The real kicker for AT&T’s LTE services are the lack of any number attached to the expected speeds — like with its HSPA+ service, AT&T isn’t committing to any download speed number for LTE yet, only to say… wait for it… it’s… FASTER. Here is the official AT&T LTE FAQ answer for the question “How fast is AT&T 4G?”

How fast is AT&T 4G?
AT&T’s 4G strategy, including HSPA+ with enhanced backhaul and LTE, delivers super fast broadband speeds. 4G HSPA+ with enhanced backhaul delivers speeds up to 4X faster than AT&T’s already fast mobile broadband network. And as it is deployed, 4G LTE will deliver even faster speeds than 4G HSPA+. The combination of the two technologies provides the best option for your wireless work or entertainment.

Note: Limited 4G LTE availability in select markets. 4G speeds delivered by LTE, or HSPA+ with enhanced backhaul, where available. Deployment ongoing. Compatible device and data plan required. LTE is a trademark of ETSI. Learn more at AT&T 4G.

So… buyer beware, I guess. Or… let our merger happen, and it will all get better! Right!

According to an official press release AT&T says it will launch LTE services in five U.S. cities this summer, followed by another 10 before year’s end. Though there are no details yet on prices, plans or devices a recent charm offensive by Ma Bell seems to have convinced many in media-land that the introduction of Long Term Evolution services is going to be a great thing for AT&T. I don’t, but then again AT&T doesn’t need to fool me — it just needs to keep a large percentage of its customers from leaving, and trotting out LTE before it’s ready is one way to do that.

I think AT&T launching LTE is kind of like the Cleveland Cavaliers winning the top NBA draft pick — it’s a great thing for both but it doesn’t make either one an instant playoff contender. Unlike main competitor Verizon Wireless or bronze-level challenger Sprint, AT&T by its own admission did not plan well when building out its wireless infrastructure and is now paying the price, to the tune of $39 billion should its planned acquisition of T-Mobile USA go through. In its filings with the FCC AT&T says it needs to buy T-Mobile because it is running out of spectrum assets and has seen unprecendented growth in wireless data use — but the company never blames itself for selling too many phones for its network to handle. Plus, one year ago AT&T execs were telling anyone who would listen that they had all the spectrum they needed. That’s a lot of change in 12 months.

So why would AT&T’s performance suddenly change for the better because it is launching LTE? As a Chicago Cubs fan I know well the optimism that comes with signing a new pitcher or a free-agent home run hitter. But historical frustration happens for a reason, and with no changes at the top — remember, AT&T Mobility CEO Ralph de la Vega once said his company wouldn’t have any problems handling iPhone usage — it’s unreasonable to think that AT&T will suddenly reverse course and build a powerful new network just because it’s using LTE. Remember, just one year ago AT&T chief technology officer John Donovan was saying that LTE phones in 2011 would be fat bricks that chewed through battery life. Now, he wants to sell you one this summer.

Enhanced Backhaul: Code for getting caught with your network pants down

If there is one thing AT&T does well it is spin bad news in its favor — witness all the media outlets who repeat AT&T’s term about implementing “enhanced backhaul” as something positive; of course we see the term “enhanced backhaul” as code for saying “we got caught with our pants down on our network build and now we need to fix it.”

From here it appears that AT&T’s accelerated LTE launches are chiefly an attempt to keep its current customers from leaving for competitors like Verizon and Sprint, whose 4G offerings are solid and available in multiple markets. Witness AT&T’s botched plan to pitch its HSPA+ service as a 4G equivalent, an effort hamstrung by AT&T first keeping its devices from working at a faster speed and then via an extremely unclear method of revealing where exactly its new HSPA+ services could be found.

Editor’s note: The following is an excerpt from our latest Sidecut Report, the Verizon 4G LTE Business Report for May, 2011, which is available for instant purchase and download for $9.95. In this excerpt we present an “executive summary” of the entire report, giving you a heads-up about the questions we ask, the topics we research and the analysis we apply. Enjoy!


Verizon 4G LTE press conference, CES 2011 Las Vegas. Credit: Sidecut Reports.

Verizon Grabs Early Lead in U.S. LTE Market; Can Competitors Catch Up?

Is there a pent-up demand for high-speed wireless broadband access in the United States? Verizon Wireless seems to have answered that question with a resounding “yes” by signing up more than a half-million customers to its new 4G LTE network in the first three months of 2011. Included in that total are approximately 260,000 customers who bought the new HTC Thunderbolt 4G smartphone, even though the device was only on sale for two weeks during the fiscal quarter.

The quick spike in subscribers to Verizon’s 4G network — which provides data-download speeds that are an order of magnitude faster than previous “3G” cellular technologies — seems to be the first indication that some mobile-service customers are paying close attention to network performance characteristics instead of just picking the coolest device.

By just looking at Verizon’s first-quarter numbers you can see the start of this possible shift in focus, by noting that Big Red sold 2.2 million iPhones during the two months the device was available. While the iPhone remains the gotta-have-it device worldwide, even the latest version can only connect to a 3G network. Already there are scattered reports of the 4G-enabled Thunderbolt outselling the iPhone in Verizon stores — could it be that 4G and network speeds finally matter to the U.S. wireless consumer?

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