Is AT&T Capping Upload Speeds on HSPA+ Devices?

By

PCMag has a great article up about how they feel that AT&T may be capping upload speeds on many devicesto speeds far lower than its network can support. The site saw evidence of this recently when testing AT&T’s latest round of USB modems, the USBConnect Shockwave 4G and the USBConnect Adrenaline, in many parts of NYC; both devices showed upload speeds far below what they should be capable of. It seems that AT&T devices that should support HSUPA (which should enable uploads up to 1Mbps) are being limited to UMTS (maxing out at 384kbps), which is less than half that speed. I went out and picked up a Motorola Atrix 4G the day they came out and have noticed that in St. Louis, Missouri and the highest upload speed that I have gotten is 0.15Mbps, but usually the device peaks at 0.12Mbps with full bars and H+ showing on the phone. Makes you wonder if they are limiting upload speeds. If you have a Motorola Atrix or HTC Inspire 4G be sure to post up what upload speeds you are getting.

Motorola ATRIX 4G

We tested an HTC Inspire 4G, a Motorola Atrix, and an Apple iPhone 4. The Inspire and the Atrix are supposed to be faster than the iPhone overall, as both devices use HSPA+ 14.4 modems while the iPhone has an HSPA 7.2 modem. These results suggest that AT&T is, in fact, capping upload speeds for at least several different non-iPhone 4 devices. Now, we haven’t worked out the variables here. This could be a problem specifically with the four devices we’ve tested (the two phones plus the Adrenaline and Shockwave USB modems), or a problem that specifically only affects certain parts of New York City.

Comments are closed.