Reports abound that the iPhone 3G isn't living up to its family name: it may be an iPhone, but ordinary owners, reporters, and pundits are saying that in regular usage its actual speed is far below the potential 700 Kbps to 1.7 Mbps claimed by AT&T for its currently deployed HSPA (high speed packet access) third-generation cellular data network.

I have a slight problem with this as someone who has obsessively followed first the evolution of Wi-Fi into something as nearly available as oxygen, and then cellular data networks as they moved from slow 2G into modest 3G rates.

Neither Apple nor AT&T has ever promised those rates to its iPhone subscribers. At the iPhone 3G's introduction in June, Steve Jobs didn't state the speed of the 2.5G EDGE standard that's the fastest supported in the original iPhone--as fast as 200 Kbps with AT&T's version--and then say that the iPhone 3G would be 3.5 to nearly 8 times faster. Instead, he showed a couple of examples, and talked about ranges of 2 to 3 times faster.
If you visit Apple's Web site, you'll note that there's no mention of speed per se: the only mention right now is of a "2.4x" speed improvement (20 seconds instead of 48 seconds) for loading lonelyplanet.com. That may be disappointing, but it's clear that Apple is underselling the speed.
AT&T is a bit broader, stating on its iPhone page that "iPhone 3G harnesses the power of AT&T's broad and powerful 3G mobile broadband network, which offers 3G mobile phones download speeds of up to 1.4 Mbps," with a footnote that doesn't qualify the statement at all, noting a comparison that doesn't exist with the original iPhone model. "Up to" are weasel words, but you'll note that AT&T separately promises its LaptopConnect customers a typical performance range, with 700 Kbps at the low end. (You'll see lower downstream rates on some AT&T mobile broadband pages than the 700 Kbps to 1.7 Mbps rate, but AT&T apparently doesn't update its Web sites very consistently even after they make major press announcements on speed boosts.)
The iPhone is bound by a processor that has to fit its confines, not use too much power, and handle the dozens to hundreds of simultaneous tasks needed for a portable computer that's also constantly connected to a cellular and/or Wi-Fi network. The iPhone 3G is just as limited by its CPU as its predecessor.

I don't own an iPhone 3G, but in several weeks of testing of a loaner unit, I didn't find much difference between using the iPhone on a 3G network and on a 3 Mbps-backed Wi-Fi network. The Safari browser can only load and render pages so fast.

PC World colleague Melissa J. Perenson ">wrote an excellent rundown of her experience in gauging the iPhone 3G speed last week, but she overlooks a few points.
First, AT&T and Apple don't promise the rates for the iPhone that she cites for their 3G network, as I note above.

Second, the only way to

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