Conspiracy theorists, doff your caps! The root of the suddenly slower upload speeds reported by AT&T customers has been discovered, and it’s not just AT&T screwing with people.
According to the carrier, the slowdown plaguing the network does exist — but it’s only affecting two percent of their customers, and, well, it’s not their fault. AT&T is pinning the issue on a software fault found in the Alcatel-Lucent hardware that powers their network in some regions, promising that a fix is in the works.
It’s a bit strange to see AT&T outright identify Alcatel-Lucent hardware as being part of the problem, rather than just going with some unnamed “hardware partner” or something along those lines. Of course, AT&T tends to be everyone’s punching bag 6 days out of the week; it must just be nice to name someone else as the one falling short for once.
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.