AT&T Promises a Huge Increase in Network Speed for 2009

In response to last week's Sprint/Clearwire agreement claiming they will unveil the nation's first 4G network two years ahead of any other mobile provider, AT&T has announced that it will dramatically increase its network speeds starting next year. While the new Clearwire company expects to deliver network speeds up to 6 Mbps to 140 million people by 2010, AT&T plans to deliver speeds of 20 Mbps by next year and a whopping 100 Mbps by 2010. AT&T currently offers DSL-like speeds where it has HSDPA deployed.

The announcement came yesterday at a presentation to Wall Street analysts. While AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile have all chosen to use the not yet standardized LTE (Long Term Evolution) technology, AT&T CEO Ralph de la Vega argued that it doesn't matter and that with simple software upgrades speeds much faster than Clearwire's can be achieved. de la Vega said at the Morgan Stanley event that "we are in the early stages of the wireless data revolution, and there are significant opportunities ahead as we ramp up ... Through interim steps, we can deliver more speeds everyday. It’s a promising time for the business, and we have a strong record of executing, and we have a strong spectrum position that gives us a great foundation for delivering...We are in a new age—as I call it, a great age—of wireless. It is just ahead of us and we are positioned to lead.”

With wireless speeds of a ridiculous 100 Mbps on the horizon it seems that wired connections will rapidly become a thing of the past.

[via mocoNews]

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