Interesting Notes on EDGE wireless speeds and AT&T 3G Coverage in Middle TN

I managed to get my MacBook tethered to my iPhone today, and did some testing on the “EDGE” wireless speeds here in rural Crossville, TN. 

As you may know, the new iPhone 3G uses the AT&T 3G network. However AT&T has not rolled out 3G everywhere yet, and if history is any guide, it will be long time coming to Crossville. In those places where 3G is not available, AT&T does have a comprehensive EDGE (that’s 2.5G) network. I have to say that having switched to AT&T from T-Mobile almost 45 days ago, the AT&T Network is much better here in Crossville than the T-Mobile Network ever was. In fact, I get complete AT&T coverage all along I40 from Knoxville to Nashville.

It used to be that the GSM carriers had carved up the country, with various companies building towers in specific geographic regions, and those companies having cross sharing and roaming agreements to allow a subscribers to have “national plans”. Here in Crossville we lived on the cusp between the old Powertel  and Bellsouth PCS territories. After the buy outs and consolidations, we still lived in a cusp, Powertel going to T-Mobile and Bellsouth going to AT&T. When I had T-Mobile, I acutely had better service when I forced my phone to “Roam” on AT&T sense they had the better signal when I was at the office, but T-Mobile had better signal at Home. Because I had a national plan, I was not charged for being on AT&T. It would seem that the old rules have gone away. AT&T now has towers all a long the I40 corridor, crossing the old geographic lines. 

This system is much more like the (superior) European GSM system, which allows a subscribers to “pick” there provider on the fly, because the networks have near total overlap. AT&T also seems to be taking another nod from Europe because their deployment of 3G is the same as that in the old countries. T-Mobile on the other hand has decided to roll out a complete different style of 3G. Ergo, T-Mobile 3G handsets will be little more than paperweights if taken to Europe. I find this to be outrageous because T-Mobile is a company OWNED in part by a German Nationalized Company. This is just another example of a company not understanding technology, and the way the world acutely works, as apposed to the way they want it to work.

For those of you who would like to know, currently the Nashville AT&T 3G network stops around I40 Mile Marker 238/239 (HWY 70 Overpass in Lebanon). The Knoxville AT&T 3G network stops around I40 Mile Marker 362ish. That leaves a 125 mile stretch of I40 uncovered by 3G at this time. 

But back to the EDGE speeds. As I said, I managed to get my MacBook tethered to my iPhone so I could run some real tests. I use the Speakeasy DSL Speed test (http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/) I know there are tones of speed tests out there, but this is the one I know. On the EDGE Network in Crossville I get an impressive 241kbps down and 21kbps up. The down speed is “bursting”, with the fastest speeds recorded in the last few seconds on the test. In contrast the upload speed with constant. Realistically, I got an average of 60kbps down over the course of testing. 

It’s of course slower than my DSL, but much faster than my first Dial-up Internet account. I will be in both Knoxville and Nashville over the next few days, and I will test the speeds there as well and report back.