1FPS|by David Chartier

The clamoring for a 3G iPhone to arrive in June with Apple’s release of third-party installable software is nearly deafening, so I figured I’d look into exactly where 3G is up and running here in the US. It isn’t nearly as wide-spread as EDGE (the iPhone’s current data network besides WiFi), and I suspect a good portion of feature-lusters who are calling for this hardware upgrade may not even be able to take advantage of it (yet).

AT&T maintains an interactive map detailing 3G coverage, broken down by state and city. You can toggle 3G’s visibility on the map to get a better idea of where it is and isn’t. I suspect this map is fairly up-to-date as I was told late last summer that Denver was getting 3G in October, and that coverage is listed on this map.

As I understand it, 3G phones can still fall back on EDGE when 3G is unavailable, so if you aren’t a lucky winner of the AT&T 3G Lottery, you aren’t dead in the water.

So AT&T has begun its takeover of T-Mobile’s Starbucks hotspots. A friend in Texas saw that AT&T has already moved into one of his local Starbucks, so he did some poking around.

Now under AT&T’s reign, users can get two free hours of WiFi every day. However, the company also designed a portal to make it easy for iPhone users to log in (blurry screenshot above), complete with the ability to purchase memberships or day passes, and even use a coupon or prepaid card, right on the handset.

This is a great idea for coffee drinkers who want to sign up but don’t own notebooks, and those who simply want to roll with an iPhone.

I spoke with a manager in one of my local Starbucks today and asked about how long the AT&T switchover is going to take. She wasn’t positive, but she believes she heard that the plan is to have all ~7,000 stores finished by summer.

Macworld says AT&T has begun taking over Starbucks WiFi hotspots from T-Mobile. Straight out the gate, AT&T is already doing a bunch of interesting things with the service:

For those who aren’t in AT&T’s thrall already, you can get up to two hours of consecutive free access every day by putting value on a Starbucks stored-value card, and either using it or adding funds to its balance at least every 30 days.

Smart way to add another benefit to those recently refreshed Starbucks Cards.

I’ve been a T-Mobile Hotspot customer for years as I’ve always needed a place to do work and school stuff away from home, and I’ve always thought T-Mobile’s overall handling of the service was pretty pathetic. Never any real promotions, and never a change from the ridiculous prices of $30/month with a one-year contract, $20/month if you’re a T-Mobile wireless customer or Starbucks employee, or a whopping $40 month-to-month.

If you need more than two daily hours, service is $20 a month (I believe without a contract) for non-AT&T broadband customers, or free if you have at least 1.5MB DSL/broadband service as a home customer.

Great move all around. Two hours is a generous offering for the casual user, and $20/month is definitely reasonable for people like me who spend a little more time than the normal customer actually sitting down in a Starbucks to do work.

I, for one, welcome our new Starbucks AT&T hotspot overlords.

Hooray! Not only does the monthly subscription get cheaper (though it should simply be free), AT&T will offer two hours of free WiFi each day to users before they need to pay $3.99 for additional chunks of time, or of course ante up for a full subscription. AT&T broadband customers also get a free subscription to the 7,000+ hotspots already in place.

Brilliant, brilliant move. T-Mobile couldn’t have sucked any worse at coffee shop wifi, unless they hired someone to kick customers in the pants when they walked in the door. T-Mobile’s subscription plans were $40/month on a monthly basis (no, not a typo), $30/month if you sign a frigging one-year contract, and $20/month if you’re a T-Mobile phone customer, or a Starbucks (and probably T-Mobile) employee.

Those prices remained the same for years, probably since the service debuted. While completely free WiFi would arguably bring in more coffee-slugging customers, AT&T’s ideas are a welcome change to a painfully stagnating service. Starbucks says the market-by-market rollout begins in Spring 2008.

Sinead Carew for Reuters:

AT&T Inc said on Wednesday it would expand its high-speed wireless service to 80 additional markets in 2008, increasing the number of markets where it offers the service to 350 big U.S. markets. [From AT&T plans 80 new high-speed mobile markets in '08]

Strangely, the specific technology used for the rollout isn’t mentioned, even though a lot of people keep banging the 3G drum. But I’m hearing from my brother, a networking engineer for the company that got bought to provide AT&T with much of its equipment for this rollout, that 3G might very well get leapfrogged for high-speed mobile access. Several telecoms are spending billions this year rolling out WiMAX across the country, as it is apparently cheaper, faster, easier to gain compatibility for, and more energy efficient (3G chews through batteries like a brat through too much candy). This fact helps fuel the theory that the iPhone may never get actual 3G technology. Apple may just stick with EDGE, perhaps dropping a model with WiFi/WiMAX support later this year or early 2009 when the new tech gains some reasonable momentum.

Congrats to my brother, Michael Chartier, and his coworkers at World Wide Packets in Spokane Valley, WA:

Ciena Corp. (Nasdaq: CIEN - message board) announced today a deal to buy privately held World Wide Packets Inc. , signifying the importance Ciena is placing on the carrier Ethernet market… On top of that, Ciena announced it has won a multiyear deal to supply WWP’s equipment to AT&T Inc.

Ciena is offering up $200 million in cash and 3.4 million shares of stock, worth roughly $90 million, for World Wide Packets.

The deal, which doesn’t require the approval of Ciena’s shareholders, is expected to close by April.

Michael is a Principle Software Engineer at WWP, and he’s been busting his ass there for a while now. I’m sure he’s enjoying the sweet taste of success that’s been a long time coming. Congrats to Mike and everyone else at WWP!

I admittedly didn’t exhaust everyone one of my investigative options, but I have to ask: why aren’t Cingular and AT&T blogging about the merger? First Cingular buys the AT&T name in 2004, spending who knows how much to promote the new brand across America, and now AT&T is turning around and cannibalizing all this hard work back into their brand? This just screams the perfect opportunity for these companies to embrace blogging a lá Google and Microsoft. They need a blog - with at least a respective but minimal blogroll and a pleasantly witty tone to help the vast majority of us understand what the hell is going on.

[tags]Cingular, AT&T, blogging, business, culture[/tags]