AT&T's Network - From Fine Edge to Broken Edge

During the week prior to launch, many folks in major metropolitan areas noticed their EDGE speeds increasing to very good speeds. Reports were that 60-75Kb/s downstream speeds had been boosted up close to 200Kb/s. This represented a very large jump both in raw speed and usability.

The theoretical max data throughput for EDGE is 473Kb/s, though I'd expect AT&T to max out around 200Kb/s as that is a reasonable speed which will provide adequate performance for web pages and limited multimedia.

It's not the EDGE technology itself that is slow, but rather the infrastructure that the data travels over between the towers to the internet. Voice calls are obviously the priority, and data traffic has to deal with slow transmissions. AT&T engaged in a project, informally named "Fine Edge"�, that would provide more bandwidth to the towers in an effort to give EDGE a much needed boost given the current slow speeds. Running fiber and furnishing the towers faster throughput speeds to the internet results in a much needed speed boost.

However, real life doesn't always seem so peachy. On the Monday after launch, I proceeded to bring my iPhone to work (as its now my main cell phone and I don't go anywhere without my cell phone). I did five demonstrations throughout the day to my coworkers as they came by asking about the phone, so I showed its capabilities.

However my single afternoon demonstration was thwarted by a problem with AT&T's EDGE network. As reported by MacRumors forums and HowardForums, large parts of AT&T's EDGE data network were offline and inoperable the first business day after launch. Perhaps the overload of 500,000 new devices on the network brought AT&T's system to its knees.

The network was operational the rest of the week without any issues.