AT&T announced on Friday that they will be expanding their HSPA+ footprint to reach 250 million people by the end of 2010. We previously reported that AT&T would use HSPA+ in certain locations during their transition to 4G LTE in 2011, so this new move sounds like a response to Sprint and T-Mobile who are also upgrading their networks to offer higher speeds.
The HSPA+ implementation being used by AT&T will double their current 7.2 Mbps download speeds to 14.4 Mbps. This is slower than T-Mobile’s 21 Mbps HSPA+, but AT&T will cover a larger area this year. T-Mobile hopes to blanket 185 million with HSPA+, while AT&T is aiming for 250 million.
Now that AT&T is moving to HSPA+ we expect they will have a matching handset by the holidays. It could be the next iPhone, or it could be an Android phone like T-Mobile is planning.
