Neil Hughes"AT&T and Alcatel-Lucent jointly identified a software defect — triggered under certain conditions - that impacted uplink performance for Laptop Connect and smartphone customers using 3G HSUPA-capable wireless devices in markets with Alcatel-Lucent equipment," the company said in a statement.
"This impacts less than two percent of our wireless customer base. While Alcatel-Lucent develops the appropriate software fix, we are providing normal 3G uplink speeds and consistent performance for affected customers with HSUPA-capable devices."
On Tuesday, AppleInsider exclusively reported that, contrary to various Internet speculation, AT&T was not intentionally throttling upload speeds for iPhone 4 users. Some in major U.S. markets such as Los Angeles and New York reported upload speeds of around 100Kbps, well below the capabilities of the HSPA-equipped iPhone 4.
Instead, it was revealed Tuesday that the issues were a result of an unintentional software glitch related to High-Speed Uplink Packet Access in some sections of the country. When working properly, HSUPA can allow uplink speeds of 5.76Mbit/s.
Charles Martin
Christine McKee
Oliver Haslam
William Gallagher
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Translation: "We tried to get away with throttling your speeds, but you caught us."
This is interesting. I can at least confirm that AT&T does use Alcatel hardware in the northeast (NY) from working at a previous company providing EF&I for the telcos. My uploads/downloads for about the past two weeks have been terribly slow (such as this page, even). I had just assumed it was added congestion from iPhone4 users or AT&T trying to beef up it's network.
AT&T is quickly running out of fingers with which to point.
... "AT&T and Alcatel-Lucent jointly identified a software defect -- triggered under certain conditions - that impacted uplink performance for Laptop Connect and smartphone customers using 3G HSUPA-capable wireless devices in markets with Alcatel-Lucent equipment," the company said in a statement. ....
At the very least, if it's AT&T's software that has the glitch, it's a glitch that basically says, "throttle these type of connections back." So AT&T is throttling the bandwidth for those particular customers.
It also says "We didn't really even test what would happen with the new iPhone 4 in giant markets like San Francisco or New York, so we were caught by surprise."
350+ people posting about this on Mac Rumors across 30+ markets and it only affected 2% of their customer base? Yet another issue blown out of proportion. PS: I really wonder who these people are in real life that don’t think companies ever make a mistake, that it’s meticulously planned malevolence on par with comic book evil geniuses.