ATT to give MicroCells and segment 4G
Two leaks on Friday have detailed some of AT&T's plans both to accommodate oversaturation on its 3G network and to segment its 4G network. One slip has revealed that AT&T will hand out free 3G MicroCell routers to the 7.5 percent of customers likely to have poor indoor reception. The only limit Engadget noted was a one-year contract specific to the femtocell; breaking the term would cost the newly raised $200 price minus $16.67 per month for every month the user remains with AT&T.
As with phone trade-ins and arange of other sweeping changes, the deployments would start on January 23. Only those who received direct mail would qualify for the upgrade.
The gesture is likely to address criticism from customers in areas with overloaded 3G service, such as New York City and the San Francisco Bay Area. AT&T has had a trial program in place, but those who haven't qualified have had to pay on their own, even when they could demonstrably prove that they had no cellular service at home.
Separately, an internal memo has given away some early if tentative plans for AT&T's LTE-based 4G service. The BGR note hinted that AT&T will still cap the service for at least some subscribers but may also separate it by speeds. At least on lower tiers, customers would have the option of Speed Up Sessions that would temporarily supply a faster connection. Rather than pay per gigabyte for extra bandwidth, they would also have the option of Top Up Sessions to add a fixed amount.
What the speeds and caps would involve isn't known. AT&T is likely to raise the caps for the much faster 4G speeds as users would otherwise run out of their available bandwidth almost immediately. LTE in its current form peaks at 100Mbps downstream in ideal conditions, although Verizon has said its already active service should get 5-12Mbps under a full load at realistic distances.
The company has only officially said it would take LTE live in mid-2011, but the internal data has trials starting with the speed-limited plans in May.
Read more: http://www.electronista.com/articles/11/01/21/att.to.give.microcells.and.segment.4g/#ixzz1BhgCXo9a
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