One of the big things that the Samsung Infuse 4G on AT&T has going for it is that it will be the first phone on the carrier to support HSPA+ with speeds as high as 21Mbps. That broadband-level speed is undoubtedly going to be a huge selling point, as smartphone commercials in the US dwell heavily on network performance. Just because the phone is capable of those speeds, doesn’t mean that everyone will see them, however, as AT&T appears to not want to make it easy for its customers to find out just where 21Mbps downloads are possible.

In order to offer phones these HSPA+ speeds, AT&T needs to perform upgrades to its cellular towers, wiring them up to a high-speed network connection. There’s no reason why AT&T couldn’t keep track of these upgrades and display them for customers on an easy-to-read map, like it does now to show regional variations in its voice and data coverage. According to a company rep, though, these maps won’t be updated to show where HSPA+ service is in place on a national level. The best he could offer was that a customer might be able to get that information by zooming all the way in and looking at specific towers, but that’s hardly reassuring or as easy as it should be.

Our feeling: if you’re going to sell something that you know underperforms in some locations, you should make it very, very clear to your customers just where those locations are.

Source: Phone Scoop