AT&T Says Software Bug, Not Throttling to Blame For Poor Upload Speeds

From DailyTech: When it was revealed that the iPhone 4 and other AT&T 3G smartphones were suffering from miserable upload speeds in some cases, it was another embarrassing moment for the nation's second largest carrier. In New York City, where AT&T has had its fair share of voice network issues in the past, upload speeds were reportedly as low as 50 kbps -- a disappointing show for what is largely been show to be the nation's fastest data network.

In their over-zealousness, though, some of its critics mistakenly blamed the carrier for throttling uploads, perhaps as an effort block filesharing. This didn't make much sense to us, considering that it doesn't seem like many people would be foolish enough to fileshare under AT&T's capped data plan (with pricey overage fines) in the first place, and even if AT&T did want to throttle traffic it would likely then be throttling uploads as well.

A new statement from AT&T confirms that no throttling was involved, and a bug in AT&T's core software was to blame. Writes the company:

AT&T and Alcatel-Lucent jointly identified a software defect — triggered under certain conditions – that impacted uplink performance for Laptop Connect and smartphone customers using 3G HSUPA-capable wireless devices in markets with Alcatel-Lucent equipment. This impacts less than two percent of our wireless customer base. While Alcatel-Lucent develops the appropriate software fix, we are providing normal 3G uplink speeds and consistent performance for affected customers with HSUPA-capable devices.

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