MacDailyNews Take: For the umpteenth time: Take those 10+ million U.S. iPhones off AT&T and plop them on Verizon and watch AT&T satisfaction soar (especially in metro areas) and Verizon come to a grinding halt. No carrier, including Verizon’s, is ready for 10+ million devices that are actually used for serious data consumption. Verizon’s network accommodates inferior devices that only sip data in comparison to iPhone due to their unusable web browsers (if they even have them) and generally indecipherable user interfaces which, only benefits the carrier as they get to sell phones on features that most people will never use. The iPhone’s ease-of-use (snap a photo or even shoot a video and send it over AT&T’s network to wherever; robust, real Web Browsing; data-consuming apps which include streaming video over 3G, etc.) combined with the vast, rapidly-growing number of iPhones would cripple any carrier. If AT&T can’t get a handle on it, Apple would do well to reconsider their exclusive U.S. arrangement and spread the wealth – and the data consumption – to other carriers, as soon as (technically and legally) possible.
Hughes continues, “In a daily survey of 5,000 people 18 and older, YouGov’s BrandIndex tracks companies based on factors of quality, value, satisfaction, recommendation, reputation and impression. When combining those categories, AT&T’s index score of 18.3 on June 16 had eroded to a 14.6 on Thursday… [YouGov’s senior vice president Ted Marzilli] “suggests the issue can be traced to the launch of the iPhone 3GS — or, more specifically, the network’s inability to meet the bandwidth needs of users with the device.”
“While the study found AT&T’s score to consistently drop over the last three months, Verizon has stayed much the same as it was in January,” Hughes reports. “Its Sept. 10 score was 21.2. Scores can range from 100 to -100. A score of zero would mean equal positive and negative feedback.”
More info in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: No wireless network was ready for Apple’s revolution which brought 10+ million of devices that actually use copious amounts of data coming online within a few short years. Of course, AT&T is struggling with it. Any network would. Especially in the U.S. where the land mass is huge and the terrain varied. Suffice to say, it’s much easier to properly cover Belgium*, for just one example (hold the emails, we love Belgium, send beer instead!), than the entire United States of America. AT&T is somewhat unfairly paying the price in perception when any wireless carriers’ network would show similar strains. As usual, Apple is pushing forward, disrupting the status quo. It’s not pretty, for AT&T especially, but Apple has caused a paradigm shift in mobile computing and more rapid mobile network improvements will come from it.
All that said, the market will take care of this by either forcing overwhelmed AT&T to keep the pedal to the metal and press even harder if they want to keep U.S. iPhone exclusivity or, if AT&T’s can’t or won’t rapidly improve their network capacity/coverage, causing Apple to pursue a non-exclusive U.S. carrier strategy lest iPhone sales and brand perception begin to suffer.
* Belgium is about about the size of the state of Maryland.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Lynn W.” for the heads up.]
That would be a fun trick. Move 10+M people overnight from one network to another… Watch the network guys jump off the nearest bridge!
10+ million iPhones would still be a problem for any carrier.
I have also observed that many if not most iPhone users are completely unaware of the difference between 3g and WiFi. They are unaware when WiFi is available. Some education in this matter might help.
ok. so if 10 million iphone would be a problem for any carrier, why not spread the pain around? Wouldn’t that help everybody?
Hey.. why doesn’t someone find out how much the top execs at ATT make, and then figure out if it were spend on upgrading the infrastructure, how much more bandwidth it would provide for it’s users…..
I’d like to know if other countries are having the same experience or were they better prepared for the iPhone effect? My understanding is that Europe had already made the transfer to 3G before the iPhone. I guess the US is playing catch up.
The network problems you are having in the US is unheard of in Europe. But then we have several carriers in most countries and GSM and 3G has been around for a long time.
so commiting over 15-20 billion building a better network a year alone is still not enough for you stop complaining about how much excutives make.guaranteed it’s been a litlle late to the game and there is only other carrier that could support the iPhone, Tmobile, and they really can’t because they use a different waveband for 3G, so they killed themselves on that. and Verizon well it doesn’t make business sense after all to make a whole new RnD and customer service department for one signal band that isn’t a worldwide market thats why the pain isn’t spread around.
Sounds like a good problem to have–Becoming so successful that you are standing in your own way!
@Norwegian “The network problems you are having in the US is unheard of in Europe. But then we have several carriers in most countries and GSM and 3G has been around for a long time.”
I know… there’s a lot of infrastructure you can afford when someone else is paying for your national defense.
No way Verizon could handle the IPhone, why do you think they can boast the most reliable network. They control what phones are offered, they are not the highest performers and most of their so called smart phones do not have a wifi option. Verizon is only concerned with maximizing revenue by offering cheap equipment and nickel and dimeing you for odds and ends. You will always be able to claim the most reliable network if you don’t allow anything on it that will give it a true test. We tent to forget that these devices (IPhone included) are basically radios. 4 years ago no one was caught up in the bulls#!t of trying to down load porn to a pocket PC.
Of course, some of us had experienced lousy AT&T;coverage and service BEFORE the iPhone. Our opinion has not changed.
ATT always sucked and they were always behind the curve long before the iPhone came along. It took them years to start building their 3G network after Verizon and Sprint were already chugging along. By the time Verizon and Sprint had major cities covered and started expansion to surrounding suburbs and rural areas, ATT was barely above water in some of the most major metropolitan areas.
And before 3G, ATT (Cingular) is the company that took FOREVER to implement 2.5G EDGE on a wide scale while Verizon and Sprint were already doing 3G trials in the cities! It was such a joke, I could’ve never imagined myself as an ATT customer before the iPhone.
With the added burden of these iPhones, a tremendous tax that grows daily, there is NO WAY IN HELL they’ll be able to build their network to keep up with demand. I’d sooner trust Verizon or Sprint with that task. Maybe it’s easier and cheaper to expand a CDMA network, but they have a long history of out-hustling ATT. Look at Verizon now and LTE. Once again they’re ready to light up cities with 4G and ATT is the little engine that could, once again struggling with what’s about to become dated technology. That’s their MO.
To say that Verizon would suffer the same is to assume that Verizon and ATT conduct business in the same manner. That’s foolish. Verizon is a far better network and they take this stuff very seriously. Their network is their pride and joy. While ATT always needed to hawk fancy exclusive phones like the Razr to bring in customers, Verizon was always able to keep up because their customers love and trust that network and even with the crappiest phones they don’t leave. Don’t EVER forget that Verizon was Steve’s first choice. Verizon was the network that Steve wanted his baby to run on. ATT was an afterthought.
The network problems you are having in the US is unheard of in Europe.
That’s because on that side of the pond, the communications companies actually provide communications!
What do our communications provide?
One word: Profits.
in australia we have the slow 3G network
but our biggest telco has NextG which is faster but more expensive
wifi is still fastest network
but basically the iphone is a device from the future using the network of the past
the iphone is available with all networks here
I can only speak for my own personal experience: So far AT&T;has had the best customer service and local coverage of any of the three carriers I’ve used in the past 5 years (Sprint in particular sucked huge.) The network is superfast, the voice quality is crystal clear, and I’ve yet to drop a connection. I live in a medium sized community (~200,000) and I’ve seen dozens of people around town using iPhones (the line on 3GS launch day went around the block.) I can only assume that the issues I’ve seen reported mostly affect larger metropolitan areas (NYC and SF seem to be the ones mentioned most often) and probably have a larger concentration of users in congested areas. I’m sure AT&T;is focusing most of their resources where they’re needed.
I have no personal loyalty to AT&T;like I do to Apple. But, so far anyway, I have zero complaints.
-Norwegian “The network problems you are having in the US is unheard of in Europe. But then we have several carriers in most countries and GSM and 3G has been around for a long time.”
Jim – TIV – I know… there’s a lot of infrastructure you can afford when someone else is paying for your national defense.
Wow, way to go Norway. Brilliant move. What moronic country did you manage to get to foot the bill for your national defence?
I HATE AT&T;-
Once Verizon jumps in bed with Steve- I’m there and it’s game over for the Blackberrys, the Pre’s, the whatevers. AT&T;won’t be fairing well either.
The iPhone alone generates nearly 70% of all U.S. mobile data traffic? . . . And somehow many people don’t understand the problem?
European cell service is better than America’s, but they’ve envied the U.S.’s landline system for over a century?
Verizon cripples features on its cell phones so it can feature better voice service?
Apple keeps the iPhone on one carrier so it can focus on one architecture and partner?
What’s the real problem here?
Aren’t all us Apple fanbois whinners?
did you not even read the article? Put even half of those 10+ million iphones out there on the verizon network and you will see much slower speeds than you see now. The speed which AT&T;offers now *includes* their 20,000 hot-spots they have to take bandwidth off of their cellular network.
With a CDMA phone, it entirely eliminates any possibility of having to have easy and affordable international plans with an iPhone. Right now, I agree it’s terrible how it’s so hard to get a decent plan when going abroad, but AT&T;have the card in their hand to change that.
@Jim -TIV “I know… there’s a lot of infrastructure you can afford when someone else is paying for your national defense.”
Most of the money the US currently spends on “national defense” is wasted. It goes to wars in the middle east we should never have gotten into, and useless weapons systems that can’t be canceled. Not to mention all the money we’re wasting on “Heads I win, tails you lose” bailouts to the financial industry. The richest country in the world could afford all sorts of things if it had fewer leeches attached to it.
My office is across the street from City Hall in Philadelphia, in the main office building area of Center City. I’m in 2 Penn Center, facing away from JFK, and AT&T;service where I am is f@cking awful, and not just for the iPhone. We wanted to have a single machine with internet access just for checking court dockets and schedules, and some email. No video files, complex sites, large scale data–just very simple, basic stuff.
So we figured we could just add AT&T;wireless data with a dongle to my phone service. Data service fails all the time, download speeds are awful and more than half the time connections just die, both on my iPhone and on the machine with dongle.
Meanwhile, my iPhone drops phone calls all the time when on 3G–one day this week I had five calls in a row dropped.
We finally just got FIOS brought into the office, got rid of AT&T;wireless data, and I have the iPhone when at work set to edge so I’m not using 3G for calls, and use the FIOS wireless router for data.
So yeah, AT&T;is so frigging awesome that I got FIOS service from Verizon just to provide simple data service and to get my iPhone off AT&T;’s 3G network.
Sure, any network would have to build up given the iPhone’s data demands, but they’ve had three years now.
“Put even half of those 10+ million iphones out there on the verizon network and you will see much slower speeds than you see now.”
Uhh, no. Verizon has a far more robust 3G network than ATT. They are not on an equal playing field despite what you may see on a coverage map. ATT, in terms of their 3G network reach, is probably where Verizon was in 2008 and now the big V is about to move forward with 4G LTE. There is no comparison between the two companies. Verizon will have 4G LTE coverage in the 30 biggest cities by the end of 2010 and full 4G coverage 3 years after. Meanwhile ATT is still struggling to deliver the most diminutive of 3G speeds and even the backup 2.5G EDGE is a pain for many customers after all these years.
Comparing ATT to Verizon is like comparing a Ford Taurus to a Mercedes S550. There’s a reason Steve came to Verizon first. He was probably a Verizon customer before the iPhone and now he can’t wait to match his favorite phone with his favorite network just like the rest of us.
@OpJ,
There can be no greater indictment against ATT than their lackluster coverage smack-dab in the middle of the sixth largest city in America.
I won’t do business with AT&T;due to a previous disagreement and don’t have an iPhone for that reason, but MDN’s take is correct. To their credit AT&T;is investing heavily in their network and at least trying to keep up.
ATT works fine in Denver. 3G could be better in a few places but generally it works well.Verizon has awful coverage especially in the foothills surrounding Denver.