3G Available in Downeast Maine!

When I woke up this morning I was a little bummed out because I had to come to work even though it is a holiday today. No big deal really, and it was my own choice (the snowstorm last week stranded me in Pennsylvania for an extra day, so I was making up the day), but you know how it is when you have to leave on a beautiful day and you’d rather be outside enjoying the day.

Well, as it turns out, I was greeted by an exciting surprise, and I’m glad I actually was forced to adventure out into the world this morning. I got in my car, put my iPhone in the windshield cradle as normal, and pulled out of the driveway. As soon as I got far enough away from my house to escape my WiFi signal range, I noticed the happy 3G symbol light up instead of the normal (and depressing) E symbol. I couldn’t believe it. I immediately pulled over (safety first) and launched AirVideo to try out streaming a video off of my home network (I didn’t actually want to watch anything, I was just interested in testing something that I know wouldn’t work at all via EDGE). So, I loaded up some random video and started to play it. It worked fine!

Ellsworth, Maine in Hancock County now has 3G. I’m not sure if it went live this morning, overnight, or sometime yesterday (I didn’t notice anything on the way home yesterday, but I don’t know if I looked either). However, it certainly was not lit up on Monday while I was driving home, and I absolutely did look at it on the way into work yesterday. I was able to keep streaming that video basically until I reached the head of the Island. At that point my signal strength dropped down to 1 bar, still 3G, but the AirVideo connection failed.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear that Mount Desert Island got the same treatment. Or, not yet anyway. I kept that 3G symbol until I reached Hull’s Cove on Route 3, and then the phone switched over to EDGE. I’m assuming that there I’m mainly getting signal from across the bay to some tower in Winter Harbor or something. However, the EDGE coverage continued into Bar Harbor, and even when I was clearly connected to the new tower on top of The Jackson Laboratory.

I’m guessing that they are just rolling it out across the area slowly, and that it will just take a bit more time to light up Bar Harbor. I got word from a commenter, Baughmann, here a few days ago that the AT&T maps showed the Hermon/Levant area with 3G lit up only a few days ago. This was then later confirmed by a number of people who reported actually getting 3G coverage “around Bangor” this week.

So, AT&T, finally. Thank you. I hope lighting up Bar Harbor and the rest of MDI only takes days, not further months. And I can’t really say that you were exactly speedy (I noticed all sorts of extremely rural areas down in Pennsylvania that were lit with 3G on my recent holiday trip), but still… Thank you.