WebFire;1263032 wrote:I sent this to my AT&T mobile rep to see her response. Here you go.
Your AT&T mobile rep is correct in some cases. And I did misspeak. On Sprint, the new iPhone will definitely be a 3G phone until LTE markets roll out. On AT&T, the phone will be able to access the HSPA+ network. So basically the phone will be just as fast as the current iPhone's speed performance on AT&T's network until LTE rolls out in the market.
But your AT&T mobile rep is still kind of giving you the sales person perspective (I don't blame her...Always Be Closing). She seems to be downplaying LTE speeds, which if I was a rep for AT&T in a market that didn't have LTE yet, I would be doing as well. And she also seems to exaggerate Verizon's limitations. While true that Verizon's phones will be LTE or 3G...and nothing in between...she makes this seem as though if you don't have LTE you are going to be screwed. You won't be. Yes, AT&T will still offer HSPA+ as a "3.5G" option if you fall out of an LTE market. But HSPA+ isn't much better than 3G, at least not in Cincinnati. And I don't know where she gets the idea that Verizon would cap out in speed while AT&T would not. That just doesn't make sense at all.
As an unbiased outsider, and someone who carries phones on all three major carriers, there is no comparison between the LTE speeds I get on my Verizon phone and the HSPA+ speeds I get on my AT&T phone. I have used the LTE speeds on AT&T during some time I was up in Cleveland. And they were impressive, and would be a very viable solution IF they were available in Cincinnati. But they aren't. It would be my recommendation to take a Verizon LTE device over an AT&T HSPA+ phone assuming all specs on the device are equal (which they will be in this case).
