LAS VEGAS – AT&T declared its existing HSPA+ network as 4G here at the CES show, but the carrier also said it was speeding up its 4G LTE deployment and detailed plans to launch 4G, Android Honeycomb-based tablets this year.
"Our first 4G tablet will come from Motorola and it's slated to be available in the second quarter," AT&T chief marketing officer David Christopher said. That 10.1-inch, NVIDIA Tegra 2-powered tablet will run on AT&T's HSPA+ network, and it will be followed by an LTE tablet by mid summer. "Additional LTE tablets" will follow in the second half of the year, Christopher said.
The tablets will be part of a major 4G device push from AT&T. The company committed to releasing 20 HSPA+ and LTE devices this year, including smartphones running the Apple iOS, Android, BlackBerry and Windows Phone 7 OSes, tablets, modems, and hotspots. (The company also announced three HSPA+ smartphones from Motorola, Samsung and HTC, and showed a prototype HTC LTE smartphone at the show; see our related stories for more info.)
While AT&T spent a considerable amount of time pumping up HSPA+ (which was recently declared a 4G technology by the ITU), AT&T's CTO John Donovan also said the carrier was speeding up its LTE deployment. LTE devices and the network will appear in the second half of 2011, and the network will be nationwide by 2013, Donovan said.
While Verizon Wireless is ahead of AT&T on initial LTE deployment, the 2013 date puts AT&T's network completion time on par with Verizon's.
AT&T isn't turning on faster speeds city by city, Donovan said. Rather, the company is adding faster backhaul (which increases network speeds) to the busiest cell sites first. By the end of 2011, two-thirds of the company's mobile Internet traffic will be carried on faster backhaul systems, Donovan said.
Current HSPA+ speeds are running at approximately 6Mbps for downloads, AT&T Mobility CEO Ralph de la Vega said.
"We have completed our deployment of HSPA+ to virtually 100% of our mobile broadband network … [and] we expect these speeds to increase as we accelerate our LTE build and further deploy expanded backhaul," he said.
Combining HSPA+ and LTE offers a smoother experience than "some competitors" (read: Verizon), Donovan said. As Verizon's EVDO 3G system is much slower than HSPA+, it makes for a dramatic drop-off in speed when people leave LTE areas, Donovan said.
"We have the best transition path to 4G in the industry," AT&T Mobility CEO Ralph de la Vega said.
Donovan didn't give a roadmap for AT&T to step through the various upcoming versions of HSPA+, though. HSPA+ has various levels, ranging from theoretical speeds of 21Mbps down up to 42, 84, and in the future 168Mbps. T-Mobile has said previously that they're aiming to upgrade their HSPA+ network at least to the 84Mbps level.