“The fourth quarter could be a bonanza for the wireless industry, combining the usual holiday craziness with the traditional third-quarter new-iPhone bump,” Kevin Fitchard reports for GigaOM. “UBS predicts a whopping 11.7 million iPhone activations between Verizon, AT&T and Sprint in the final three months of the year. That will result in 1.3 million total postpaid adds for national operators, up from 1 million in last year’s fourth quarter, UBS projects.”
“A lot of those customers will go to Verizon and Sprint – as the iPhone newbies – but UBS thinks the big winner will be AT&T. It will have the only ‘free’ iPhone as the 3GS will be entirely subsidized with a two-year contract,” Fitchard reports. “UBS also believes that AT&T’s network will actually work for it rather than against it. The iPhone 4S has a 14.4 Mbps high-speed packet access (HSPA) chip tailor-made for AT&T’s network, compared to the slower CDMA EV-DO chips used to access Sprint’s and Verizon’s 3G networks.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Dan K.” for the heads up.]
While looking into which network to join when I pick up a 4S I came across a Sprint forum concerning pitifully slow download speeds. I read many of those folks will be returning the iPhone. You can’t download anything but it’s unlimited.
Typical of wireless carriers. If they don’t charge you for what they consider too much of the unlimited traffic, they will throttle you so hard you’ll long for the days of dial-up.
I switched from AT&T to Sprint. At&t ‘s service where I work totally sucks. With 5 bars edge I would typically get 2-6 kb/s up/down, with sprint I am gettiing 700kb/s up and down. I used the AT&T “mark the spot app” for almost a year with no success. I am happy with sprint.
It’s times like these I love living in Canada (specifically Ontario) with 5 bars most everywhere we go on Rogers, Bell and Telus. Coverage isn’t the determining factor. Speed and price are. Do you want Rogers cruddy 1.8-2.5Mbps or Bell/Telus 1.8-5.3Mbps for less money. Choices, choices, choices 😉
No offense intended to our friends south of the boarder (we love you like a brother) just don’t understand why you settle for poor coverage from your carriers. I used AT&T during a trip to Cupertino, California and coverage was laughable with 1 bar outside their offsite campus and hardly 2 bars within the LA airport. Given the revenue American wireless carriers earn plus the fact they are allowed by the FCC to extend the range of each tower twice the range we have. The fact that the land mass of the US is smaller to cover and typographically as challenging as ours. It doesnt make common sense. I could see not being able to connect because of too many users on a tower but under no circumstance should you have less than 4 bars in a populated area.
Oh and before this becomes about price I’ll share that we get; 200DTM, evenings at 6pm unlimited, 10 numbers unlimited talk/LD on any network/anytime, unlimited text/p&v plus 6GB of data/free tethering … each month for $65 (before bundled service discount). What I’ve shared is market price and retentions have given even better (like free call display and voicemail) I’m not sure what you pay but maybe that’s the determining factor.
Oh and “any network” also includes calls to landlines.
On the other hand, we’re locked into THREE-YEAR contracts. That’s freaking retarded.
We have a very small consolation in that the subsidized iPhone 4S starts at $159 CAD instead of $199 USD, but I’d gladly pay $40 more if it meant I could get a 2 year contract instead (i.e. not have to wait over 30 months before being “allowed” to upgrade to a newer iPhone!!!)
Doing the math, an extra $40 upfront is only $1.67 extra per month if the contract were 2 years. And even though some carriers allow you to choose shorter contract terms, they never apply to iPhones and are also batshit insane ripoffs: on Bell, a Samsung Galaxy S II is $100 on 3 year contract. No contract is $600. And yet a 2-year contract is only $50 less than the no-contract price (i.e. you’d be brain dead to even consider their “offer”).
Frak you Canadian carriers!
BTW I was in Cupertino, San Francisco, San Jose, Monterey, and San Diego in August, roaming with AT&T. Their coverage was just fine, with bars and speeds comparable to Fido back home.
I live in the Bay Area and I have very good AT&T coverage in all those areas as well. 4 or 5 bars all the time except SF where I have found holes in coverage. My son’s Verizon coverage is about the same with his iPhone. Just sayin’
@CDL: “…The fact that the land mass of the US is smaller to cover.”
That’s not true. Well over 90% of the Canadian population lies in a narrow east-west strip of geography. It is much easier for Canadian carriers to provide cell coverage to 90% of the Canadian population than it is for U.S. carriers to cover the same portion of the U.S. population.
Re: Canadian comment 5 bars all over – almost – try Northern Ontario… Try along the 407… Every carrier has issues…
I don’t know why it doesn’t get much press , but didn’t you notice that the 4S doesn’t drop calls now on ATT ?
Probably because the 4 doesn’t, either. I have had my 4 since it was introduced and lost maybe two or three calls in spots with otherwise adequate signals.