One of the many great things about Portland is that it’s big enough (without being too big) and techie enough that we tend to be a test city for lots of new technologies. Unfortunately, AT&T doesn’t feel we’re ready for the next generation of cell speeds (4G/LTE).
Though AT&T has not deemed us worthy of the superfast LTE/4G technology, they are working diligently to improve cell coverage. This upgrade will improve AT&T’s fiber and cell towers to support a standard called HSPA+ which is faster than current 3G speeds, but slower than what 4G is promising (which seems to include everything you’d ever want including the ability to regrow hair by placing your cell-phone on your head). Also, in case you’re an iPhone owner like us, the iPhone 4 is not HSPA+ compatible so you won’t see any performance upgrades when they do this.
You may, however, see fewer dropped calls.
So, yay to fewer dropped calls! Boo to not being important enough to AT&T to introduce next-gen tech.
We do know that many companies do like to target Portland as a test city. Feel free to give credit in the comments if you want to give a shoutout (or shoutdown).
Source: AT&T pitches upgrades to its Portland network