“The new AT&T has been on a roll recently. It got regulatory approval to acquire BellSouth, and its Cingular Wireless unit (soon to be renamed AT&T) got a lot of ink for its deal to provide the network for Apple’s iPhone. Still, the company faces a number of challenges,” W. David Gardner reports for InformationWeek.
Gardner reports, “Some of those challenges are highlighted by the iPhone deal with Apple, The iPhone will use AT&T’s Edge wireless data network for Web surfing and e-mail and other data services. But, notes Michael Voellinger, VP of telecom consultancy Telwares, ‘AT&T’s Edge is slow. AT&T and Apple are definitely playing catch-up [in terms of speed], but they will catch up.'”
Gardner reports, “Voellinger says the AT&T-Apple alliance is really about content. ‘They are not going to pull users with speed,’ he says. ‘They will do it with content and because of the content, it should be very successful.'”
“The iPod and its associated music features are an example of the superior content the AT&T-Apple combine is expected to generate for the iPhone. And faster speeds are on the way. AT&T has several other high-speed wireless data services in use and under development and Voellinger expects AT&T to eventually upgrade to faster services,” Gardner reports. “Apple seemed to say as much Wednesday at an analysts meeting. Tim Cook, Apple’s COO, said the firm is initially utilizing Edge because of its widespread deployment and indicated the firm will upgrade to a faster service when the technology is widely available.”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “LinuxGuy and Mac Prodigal Son” for the heads up.]
Related article:
How the once-hapless Cingular landed Apple’s iPhone – January 19, 2007