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During my most recent mini-road trip up the scenic A1A on the eastern coast of Florida to St. Augustine, my AT&T Tilt couldn’t offer me more than one and a half bars. Once I got to my destination I thought my bars would come back to normal, since I’m used to constant HSDPA speeds in Central Florida. As it turns out, my phone maintained about three bars of reception on Edge throughout St. Augustine and St. Augustine Beach, and I could forget about actually having anything more than two bars inside the hotel. The recent coverage study conducted by Novarum and published in PC World pretty much vindicates my coverage experience:

The AT&T network’s 13-city average download speed in our tests was 812 kbps. Its average upload speed was 660 kbps. Reliability was an issue in our experience of the AT&T system: Our testers were able to make a connection at a reasonable, uninterrupted speed in only 68 percent of their tests.

During my vacation, I would hop on Wi-Fi every chance I got because phone calls quickly became an unobtainable dream indoors.  Text messaging was still semi-reliable but any kind of data transfer would have to come through the hotel Wi-Fi.  An AT&T press release in May promised to start speed upgrades and widening coverage by nearly doubling its wireless spectrum to 3G speeds in most metropolitan areas by the end of this year for completion in 2011. I don’t want to leave the good customer service I’ve enjoyed at AT&T for almost ten years because of coverage issues when I travel. Plus, having a GSM phone that can be used abroad is a huge perk. I suppose as long as my coverage remains high on a day-to-day basis at work, home, and in-between I won’t be leaving AT&T any time soon, but my highest expectation for the network for starters is to at least retain 3G speeds when traveling in-state.

Source: PC World

Marilyn Torres (39 Posts) - Website | Twitter | Facebook

Marilyn Torres is a contributing blogger for Mobility Site. She also blogs about movies, books, comics, and recipes at her personal blog, marit.vox.com. Marilyn has a Bachelor of Arts in English and currently lives with her other half, Cavalier-Poodle, and tabby cat in Central Florida.