AT&T's brewing HSUPA-gate: the inside story

Though it really came to a head with the recently-launched Inspire 4G, users have noticed that there really aren't many phones in AT&T's stable that deliver stellar upload speeds -- the Atrix 4G is suffering the same sub-megabit performance, as are older devices that should seemingly support HSUPA like the Samsung Captivate.

We've chatted in the past few days with a source who offers an interesting explanation: AT&T currently requires that all handsets that it sells "handshake" with the network as 3GPP Release 5 devices, the last official set of 3G specifications that lacked support for HSUPA. That feature -- also known as EDCH, or FDD Enhanced Uplink -- was added in Release 6. Though AT&T is apparently working on permitting the bulk of its handsets to handshake Release 6, presently only the iPhone 4 (and presumably all of its recent data devices like USB modems, which may also use Release 7) are allowed. Neither we, nor our source, know why this is. Our source believes that the Release 6 certification may happen within a "month or two," which would explain why some AT&T sales reps in live HSPA+ areas are telling customers that the "4G network" isn't live yet.

You can form your own conclusions as to why AT&T might be imposing this arbitrary limitation, but we do know that "enhanced" backhaul figures prominently into the company's 4G story; there may be concerns that flipping on HSUPA for everyone right now would overwhelm its legacy infrastructure. At any rate, it sounds like this could all be solved soon through a combination of network changes and possibly firmware updates for individual devices, so let's keep our fingers crossed.

AT&T's HTC Inspire 4G can do HSUPA, has it disabled for some mysterious reason

There's a story going around the past couple days that HTC's Inspire 4G for AT&T -- a phone that you would assume to be wicked fast on both uploads and downloads in light of the name -- doesn't support HSUPA, a critical element to offering reasonable uplink speeds. Turns out it's not quite that simple. Here's what we're hearing from trusted sources:

• Contrary to AT&T's official line -- which is flatly that the Inspire's specs don't include HSUPA -- the hardware most certainly doessupport it.
• For some reason, HSUPA has been disabled in the current firmware, but could be easily enabled in a future update if HTC and AT&T were to agree to do so. For what it's worth, we're not even aware of an HSPA+ chipset that lacks support for HSUPA, so that definitely sounds right.
• We've also been told that AT&T's network may simply have HSUPA disabled in 4G areas. That doesn't necessarily make sense since other HSUPA-compliant devices on AT&T (like the iPhone 4, to name an obvious example) can regularly hit HSUPA uplink speeds, but we suppose it's possible that there's some specific incompatibility between the infrastructure and the chipset used by the Inspire. An eerily-similar incident has happened in the past, after all.

We'll keep our ear to the ground as we get more on this situation, but the bottom line is that hope is not lost for heavy uploaders with Inspires -- we just need to find out what it's going to take to get HTC to push an update.

HTC Inspire 4G Review and Information - By ShoppingKoo

HTC Inspire 4G

Description

This high-end Android OS model breaks new ground for AT&T in a number of ways.

It is this carrier's first smartphone with a 4.3-inch, WVGA (800 x 480) display.

The Inspire 4G is also AT&T's first with with Google Android OS 2.2, which it runs on a 1 GHz processor.

In addition, this is the first phone to support AT&T's new HSPA+ network, giving it faster data transfers than 3G models.

If all that wasn't enough, this HTC models is this carrier's first with mobile hotspot software.

Quick Specs

Operating System: Google Android OS 2.2
Processor: 1 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon
Memory: 768 MB of RAM, 4 GB of Internal Storage, 8 GB microSD Card
Screen Resolution: 800 x 480 pixels (WVGA)
Screen Size: 4.3 Inch
Keyboard Type: On-screen
Communications: Bluetooth, GPRS, GSM, EDGE, Wi-Fi, HSPA+
Meda Type: microSD, microSDHC
Camera Resolution: 8.0 megapixels
GPS: Yes
Dimensions: 4.8 x 2.7 x .5 inches
Weight: 5.8 ounces
Battery Type: 1230 mAh Li-Ion
Battery: 1230 mAh Li-Ion
Release Date: 2/13/2011