Week in review: One iPhone mystery solved?
AT&T says it knows why some upload speeds are sluggish, while Facebook growth has stalled. Also: visiting the Large Hadron Collider.
AT&T says it has solved the iPhone's sluggish upload speeds.
The communications giant is blaming the phone's poor upload speeds in some areas on 3G wireless gear from supplier Alcatel-Lucent. AT&T issued a statement saying a software glitch in the Alcatel-Lucent equipment is limiting data upload speeds for smartphones and data sticks using the latest version of 3G technology known as HSUPA. HSUPA is an acronym for High Speed Upload Packet Access. It increases upload speeds to between 500 kilobits per second and 1.2 megabits per second.
Since the iPhone 4 is currently the only smartphone that AT&T offers that is using HSUPA, AT&T said that the problem only affects a small number of its wireless customers, which includes some laptop data stick users, who also use the HSUPA technology. AT&T said the company has come up with a temporary fix that should restore upload data speeds to regular 3G speeds.
The problem surfaced over the weekend when iPhone 4 customers started noticing that their upload speeds had slowed to a crawl. People who were previously getting uploads of 1.7Mbps last week, reported that speeds dropped to under 100Kbps. The slowdown affected made it difficult for people to send e-mails and upload or send videos and pictures.
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