AT&T Upgrades Network Capability On The Peninsula

AT&T announced Friday it has made upgrades in 45 cell sites across San Mateo County designed to increase coverage and expand capacity.

The upgrades should make an immediate impact on both network accessibility as well as staying connected to the network, the company said.

“Adding more capacity to a cell site is like adding more lanes on the freeway so that voice and data traffic flows faster,” said Terry Stenzel, AT&T Vice President and General Manager for Northern California and Northern Nevada.

George Ross, a communications liaison with SCN Strategies, said that data traffic on the AT&T network has increased by 8,000 percent in the last four years.

"All that data usage requires additional spectrum to continue moving at the speeds customers expect," he said.

Upgraded networks are now in place for the following cities:

Brisbane

Burlingame

Daly City

Half Moon Bay (3 carrier additions)

Menlo Park

Millbrae

Montara (2 carrier additions)

Moss Beach (1 carrier addition)

Pacifica (4 carrier additions)

Portola Valley

Redwood City

San Bruno

San Mateo

South San Francisco

AT&T said that it also continues to upgrade cell sites with fiber optic and Ethernet connections back to the central switching facilities, which enables faster 4G speeds.

"Whether customers are talking, texting, e-mailing, surfing the net, streaming music or video, using their favorite apps, or conducting business we want to make sure they have a good mobile broadband experience,” said Stenzel.

The company said that it could not give details on the exact amount coverage and capacity would increase from the upgrades until it could collect data from the sites itself.