Earlier this week we wrote about Cingular rolling out 3G service in Little Rock, and they seem to be standing behind their word of rolling our 3G into more U.S. cities with today’s announcement.
Cingular’s BroadbandConnect service using HSPDA (High Speed Downlink Packet Access) technology is available to nearly 35 million people in 52 "communities" throughout the U.S.. HSPDA is Cingular’s own version of 3G EDGE/GSM and will allow their customers to access video and multimedia content at blazing fast speeds. 3G phones like the LG CU 500 (reviewed here) are now available in Cleveland for $99.99 after a $50 mail-in rebate card and a two-year service agreement.
In 2005, Cingular initially launched the BroadbandConnect service in Austin (TX.), Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Portland (OR.), Salt Lake City, San Diego, San Francisco, San Jose (CA.), Seattle, Tacoma (Wash.) and Washington D.C.
Unlike services offered by some wireless companies, BroadbandConnect stays connected when the user is outside the coverage area. The laptop modem cards are dual-band HSDPA/UMTS (Universal Mobile Telephone System)(850/1900Mhz) and backward compatible with EDGE (Enhanced Data Rates for Global Evolution) and GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) in four bands (850/900/1800/1900Mhz), so the session transfers to Cingular’s nationwide EDGE network or a data network of one of our roaming partners.
Early reports by some of our writers indicated that HSPDA speeds are not as fast as Verizon’s EDGE network.
