AT&T Upgrading to 7.2 Mbps Across Six Cities

AT&T (NYSE: T) has been testing their 7.2 Mbps data network in Chicago since December, but the service is now set to go live in Charlotte, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles and Miami by the end of the year, and another 25 cities by the end of 2010. Rogers (NYSE: RCI) has been working on their own HSPA upgrade across Canada and even reaching for the 21 Mbps mark, but the list of supporting hardware is still short. Six new 7.2 Mbps-capable handsets are expected to be released on AT&T before the end of the year to make use of the higher speeds, and on top of that, there are a lot of existing iPhone 3GS customers who will be benefitting from the higher speeds (that is, if AT&T doesn’t throttle them).  Between the 7.2 Mbps upgrade and increased capacity through the 850 Mhz band, AT&T is trying hard to fix their reputation for a poor network; is that damage already done, or are folks seeing an improvement in coverage?

[via AT&T]