The Dalles, Oregon Now Available in AT&T 3G Speed

The Dalles, Oregon is a cozy community of 13,000 that is sandwiched between Oregon and Washington on the Columbia River that is known as much for its picturesque vistas from the banks of the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic area as the fact that it was home to the first Google data center. So, for such a sleepy little town, it was a treat when residents awoke today to discover that 3G networking had finally been implemented in their community. The long wait for owners of the Apple iPhone 3GS and iPad Wifi + 3G was finally over and the internets could now be surfed at a blazing previously unavailable speed.

Prior to the rollout ATT subscribers in the region had relied on the much slower EDGE network for accessing data over mobile devices. This recent effort by ATT should ease the likelihood of mobile service churn from ATT to their competitors by the local residents in the wake of the recent "Froyo", pronounced like "frozen yogurt", Android 2.2 announcement, and recent new mobile hardware offerings such as the Google Nexus One, HTC Incredible, both of which are expected to offer the new Android operating system upgrade to their owners this June or July, and the Motorola Droid owners sometime soon thereafter.

Apple is expected to announce their fourth generation iPhone hardware upgrade at their World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC) that takes place on June 8th. If leaked hardware seen recently on tech blogs is any indication it likely that ATT will need the expanded bandwith on their network to handle the influx of not only the new iPad users but also photos and video that are expected to be generated from the front facing video cam and greater megapixel still camera upgrade that will be on the fourth generation iPhone. It is hoped by the geeky masses that the new hardware will include a receiver for the even faster 4G networking standard as well as being offered on CDMA phone providers in the U.S. such as Verizon and Sprint. Currently the iPhone has only been available to GSM provider customers such as T-Mobile and ATT, but this hope still seems somewhat tempered by crushing realities of the announcements at the same conference from the past couple of years.

If ATT can keep rolling out 3G to these smaller communities, and boost the networks in hotspots such as New York and San Francisco, they should be able to weather the increased competition as their exclusivity agreement with Apple over the iPhone and iPad in the U.S. eventually expires.

I tested this recent 3G availability with iPhone 3GS by loading the hi-def music video "The Space In Between" by How To Destroy Angels and was pleased with the responsiveness of the network. Buffering was extremely quick, even faster than I had experienced in Portland. To be fair, the result might be skewed by the fact that many users in The Dalles have not become aware of the 3G availability and have yet to enable their 3G roaming in the network settings on their devices.