“The carrier has had trouble keeping up with wireless data usage, leading to dropped connections and long waits for users trying to run programs on their devices,” Svensson reports.
MacDailyNews Take: That’s messy. Programs – or apps – run just fine; it’s those requiring network access via AT&T’s network 3G or EDGE that might cause users – iPhone or otherwise – to wait.
Svensson continues, “AT&T is upgrading its network to cope, but its head of consumer services, Ralph de la Vega, told investors at a UBS conference in New York that it will also give high-bandwidth users incentives to ‘reduce or modify their usage.’ De la Vega didn’t say exactly how or when the carrier would change its policies, but he said some form of usage-based pricing for data is inevitable,” Svensson reports. “Right now, the carrier has a monthly usage cap of 5 gigabytes on its data plans, the same as other carriers.”
Svensson reports, “Just 3 percent of ‘smart’ phone users are consuming 40 percent of the network capacity, de la Vega said, adding that the most high-bandwidth activity is video and audio streaming. Several applications on the iPhone provide nonstop Internet radio.”
MacDailyNews Take: Radio? What’s that? Hey, now that baseball season’s over, at least we’re not streaming full game video and audio every night.
Svensson continues, “De la Vega also defended the network’s performance, saying testing showed that AT&T’s third-generation, or 3G, network was faster than that of competitors, and that major problems are concentrated in New York and San Francisco, which are packed with smart phone users.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: No U.S. network could have handled what iPhone’s thrown at it over the last 2+ years. While immensely irritating, it’s no wonder that AT&T never turns on the iPhone tethering they’ve been promising us for over a year.
What’s the point of offering all these video and audio streaming apps if ATT isn’t going to allow you to use them at your leasure? Apple needs to have a serious talk with ATT if they don’t want to have disgruntled customers in the near future.
“No U.S. network could have handled what iPhone’s thrown at it over the last 2+ years.”
Awwww, poor ATT.
Apple should stamp that as a disclaimer on the back of every iPhone sold in the US.
I cannot imagine watching a video or listening to a radio broadcast via the 3g network on my first generation iphone.The 3g network speed is intolerably slow and I seldom use it. I use it at home to surf the net via the wifi connection.
So just charge 30 cents to send a mms… or even better charge 15 cents for a sms that says “Hi”
Yes AT&T;, blame your customers for wanting to use your network. Good business model!
so it will be just like Verizon’s 5GB unlimited data oxymoron.
AT@T sucks. Just use a jailbroken iphone without the data plan and save big bucks. WIFI is where it’s at, not some stupid monopolistic phone carrier.
This is the attitude from corporations I find most irritating: You’re using the service you’re paying for more than we expected! Now you must be punished!
Instead of looking at it from the customer’s point of view, and saying: Wow, look what they can do now that they could not before!
Yes, I understand if response is overwhelming. But, the response is NOT to blame the customers for that, but to admit you’re overwhelmed and outline the steps you’re going to take to fix that situation. Not talk about gouging people and antagonizing your customers needlessly. They should be proud to have people stretching what they’re capable of doing. And what did they expect in SF?
“No U.S. network could have handled what iPhone’s thrown at it over the last 2+ years.”
The problem looming is not present overloading of bandwidth…it is the future. More and more people are going to smartphones and a vast suck is inevitable. While some “rationing by price” may be inevitable, the only long term solution is vastly increasing bandwidth capacity.
dave smith:
Jailbreaking the iPhone won’t make any difference, other than letting you install applications not in the App Store.
To avoid AT&T’s data plan, you’d have to terminate your contract early (and pay early termination fee), then switch to the ordinary voice plan. No jailbreaking, unlocking or anything.
If you wish to use that iPhone on T-Mobile, you’ll need to unlock it first. 3G won’t work, though, since T-Mobile uses different frequencies.
your 1st gen iphone doesn’t use the 3G network, Edge is pretty slow, I agree, but that was no surprise. I recall several people holding back on first gen iPhone because it was not able to have 3G, which while not perfect, is still significantly more useable than Edge.
I stand by the Verizon ad. My coverage in San Francisco is simply abysmal and AT&T;should be ashamed of their spotty coverage.
I can’t even answer the phone in my house.
Oh— and another thing— I’ve never had any network performance issues really, my problem is finding and staying connected to the network at all.
@ macrick: I cannot imagine watching a video or listening to a radio broadcast via the 3g network on my first generation iphone.
Ummmmm… first-generation iPhone doesn’t have 3G. Only Edge. That might be your problem right there.
Contrary to MDN’s take, plenty of people listen to internet radio. I have several stations that I listen to off and on that have large mixes that I could never afford to buy; in some cases music that probably isn’t available to buy in the US; I know a lot is not available from iTunes.
Further more, I listen to types of music I would not let take up space on my iPhone, much less buy.
I know this piece is not generally about radio but about video, but I’d be careful about blowing off existing uses of bandwidth you don’t care about. Some uses you DO care about might be next.
Predrag thank you for your comments. I have not bought an iPhone because of the data prices. But I notice the data prices are the same everywhere. I will take note of this and buy a new iPhone next year after the new ones come out.
Apparently I’m one of those few people who has no problems whatsoever with my AT&T service. It works just fine wherever I am. I try to recognize that not everywhere is this fortunate, but honestly, some of the hyperbole you guys use starts to sound a bit unbelievable.
@ Ron Robertson – This is the attitude from corporations I find most irritating: You’re using the service you’re paying for more than we expected! Now you must be punished!
That’s exactly what irritates me, too. They’re advertising “unlimited”, and yet they’re shocked that people are using it in an unlimited way! What did they expect? And caps are not the answer. We’re paying them a lot of money they ought to be using to make their network better, not just to make sure their top execs can buy another yacht.
@Predrag
Simply terminating your contract with ATnT to avoid a data plan won’t work. They “require” a data plan with the iPhone and if they detect that you are using one on their network without one, they will add it back on. And supposedly… they really can detect it.
I would rather use T-Mobile and the WIFI actually to avoid the costs. Jailbroken iPhone here I come..
I’m not the most educated in history, but from what I understand, this is no different then roman empire. An emperor had to go to highest to wow the people for popularity and each one following had to do much better because the masses always wanted bigger and better. We’ve progressed too fast for the telcos to keep up to the highest demand for the public. I love new technology and innovations. My New year resolution will be to try to expect too much too fast.
Oops I meant to say I will expect less and be less demanding haha. And a second resolution will be to proofread before I touch submit
The only way to force ATT to get their act together is to keep hammering their network without relent until they have to upgrade it to the point that it can really handle all the traffic. Incentives to “reduce or modify their usage” just enables ATT to keep running their network on cheap, subpar equipment. As long as you can dissuade your customers from using very much bandwidth, you can afford to remain inadequate.
3 percent of users who need to get a life!
Yeah I also like the we made a boatload of money from your data plans but we don’t want to give you the data you’ve paid for thought. How about we’re going to upgrade our network to be better than everyone else’s?
But but i thought Luke Wilson Wilson said in the ATT commercial that we wouldn’t have ‘headless’ 3G? What a bill of goods..
@ Predrag–
You’re wrong about jailbreaking.
Installing unsupported apps is only one benefit of doing so.
Another benefit is having the ability to turn off Edge and 3G, for the purpose of saving money. Buy a used iPhone from Craigslist or eBay, jailbreak it, pop in your sim card, and turn off Edge and 3G.
It works very well if you don’t mind crippling your phone for the sake of saving $30 per month.
Isn’t ATT situation similar to the SF bay area bridges. As the population has grown more and more people use the bridge, particularly at rush hour. Gridlock ensued but raising the tolls has helped limit the traffic. Charging more for multiple axle vehicles and now they are looking to have higher rates for the busiest times, lower rates for less busy. If it truly is just 3 percent using 40% then 97% should be happy to have less traffic on ATT bridge. Do you folks think it is possible for any phone company to just snap their fingers and increase bandwith instantly. It is taking 13 years to build new bridge accross the SF bay. So many want instant gratification. I am part of the 97% who would be happy to see limits in high traffic areas. Just sayin’
Most of you are missing an important point.
I’ll make an analogy that is close but not perfect, but most of you will understand.
20 guys live in a frat house. They all chip in money for beer. Then on Thursday when they decide to start the weekend early they only find half the beer in the fridge. One guy admits to drinking half of the beer earlier in the week.
His comment to all the other guys, “Hey I paid for the beer too, I can drink as much as I want when I want.”
Now that is not a perfect example but you get the idea. AT&T;stated that 3 percent of the users were using almost half of the bandwidth.
There is only so much bandwidth in the telco lines and backbones. What do you think happens when a T3 is saturated? It grows another line? No! When the pipe is full, you get a busy signal or no signal at all.
Too many iPhone users that have no concept of the network behind the scenes.
So go back to the beer analogy, what should they do to solve the problem?
Buy 5 times as much beer so the one guy has enough for himself?
No.
Cut the one guy off at his share of the beer and make him pay for any extra he wants.
No one wants a beer mooch. Hope this helps.
I will add one more thing to my tirade. Tmobile put up a new cell tower near my house. Just turned it on last week. It took them more than three years to get approval to put up the tower because folks in this rather expensive bay area city fought them. They finally were able to get a gated community to let them put it up on a 50′ fence pole on their golf course. Tmobile will pay them $2500 a month for that privilege. I am sure there are other cities where the homeowner fight cell tower construction, not just this one.
@Think, this is where your analogy breaks down: The “beer moocher” was told that he paid for UNLIMITED beer.
Can anyone answer these questions?
1) Why would tethering cause significantly higher usage than the millions of iPhone users who are already using their iPhones to surf the web, do email, and run apps requiring data access?
2) And if bandwidth is so overburdened, why is AT&T;pushing sales of 3G laptop modems? Don’t those also cause high data usage?
I love the 5GB cap = “unlimited.” What’s next? 2GB cap = “almost unlimited?” Hahaha… these wireless companies have us by the dakine…
@Think
Actually, the backhaul network ATT is completely responsible for. The should have done the correct planning. Getting T3’s in this day & age is not a hard or timely process at all.
Having constraints in the backbone network demonstrates ATT’s complete incompetence at managing their network assets.
Also, the GPRS packet core, is an antiquated packet network that GPRS/EDGE/UMTS radio networks operate on that requires much more messaging overhead than the more modern, internet standard, Mobile IP protocol where it is Mobile IP straight from the handset to a standard PDSN in the carrier’s network (3G-EV/DO uses Mobile IP rather than tried ol’ GPRS in the packet network). This also causes bandwidth problems due to the necessity of more overhead signalling…
GPRS was foisted on the European carriers by Ericsson & Nokia in the 90’s to try to keep Cisco out of their business. Foolish waste of money vs. using standard PDSNs in the network for IP mobility management.
I really do have trouble understanding the meaning of some posts. The benefit of using good grammar is not the following of slavish rules for no reason but to ensure that a sentence is understood by the reader as the writer intended. In particular, I cannot make sense of the post of NikonFox:
> I’m not the most educated in history, but from what I understand, this is no different then [sic] roman empire.
I do not understand what this says. Is the writer not the most educated in the subject of history or in the history of man is he not the most educated generally? In any event, I cannot work out what part of this situation with AT&T;is no different from the Roman empire – and what part of that empire.
> An emperor had to go to highest to wow the people for popularity and each one following had to do much better because the masses always wanted bigger and better.
I can make neither head nor tail of this. Is there supposed to be the definite article between the word “to” and “highest”? So, an emperor had to go to the highest – but of what? I assume the phrase “to wow the people” means to please the people and that the popularity refers to that of the emperor rather than the people.
I can’t work out whether the “each one following” refers to the subsequent Roman consuls or our leaders generally following the decline of the Roman empire.
> We’ve progressed too fast for the telcos to keep up to the highest demand for the public. I love new technology and innovations. My New year resolution will be to try to expect too much too fast.
I am not sure who has progressed too fast. I do not know who is part of the pronoun “we”.
Really, I just can’t work out the meaning of the post. It’s a metaphor for the quality of the AT&T;service to which this article relates.
So, AT&T;, already being savaged for bad service, wants us to pay higher prices for data services than the other companies, AND they want to then limit the use of that overpaid data service.
Good plan.
There’s a solution to this and it involves and AT&T;working together and, unfortunately, it will (should) also involve costs to users. If you want to stream a ballgame then you NEED to pay for it. BUT, what you pay should be remarkably cheap. $0.10 for a whole game. If and AT&T;can work out these micro-payments then I think we can make the limited bandwidth work for everyone.
Of course AT&T;will have to charge for bandwidth use… It already happens in most places in the world… A bit of reality is required here for those selfish people who think they should be able to consume more than their fair share of a shared resource…
“I’ll make an analogy that is close but not perfect, but most of you will understand.”
Actually, your analogy doesn’t work at all. Had each of the frat boys signed a contract stating that they could drink as much as they want whenever they want, then it would make sense.
AT&T;signed contracts that give the customer unlimited data. If they couldn’t provide that, then THEY are at fault, not the consumer. The consumer has fulfilled their part of the contract.
@Quad Core
Yes they want us to pay them more. They are not like any other company. All the others want us to pay less. Like Apple, they never charge more than any another computer maker. Yep that is how ATT is different than all other companies.
Bring on the class action lawsuits…
I see what is happening here. For new users of the new 2010 iPhone 4G, there will be a variable pricing data plan. There will be no change for 3G & 3Gs users, BUT, they will offer same as new user 4G upgrade prices to 3Gs and 3G as long as they “upgrade” to the to the variable pay data plan. If one wants the new iPhone at the cheapest price, then a new plan will be required. People will do it to get the new phone. Tethering will be offered and broken out as a separate fee as well at that time. Later in the year, a few month after the initial 4G launch, the phone will be available on T-Mobile, and there will finally be a little carrier competition for the holidays.
When cable Internet provider I am using introduced monthly cap and started enforcing it, in 3 to 6 months quality and speed of my Internet connection improved dramatically.
ATT, your plan is long overdue.
Doesn’t Verizon have a map for this?
just my $0.02
@ de Villiers
Show a little compassion. Not everyone on Reader
Feedback is as brilliant and erudite as you and I.
i tether my iPhone all the time…in fact, im tethering it right now. im also torrenting, facebooking, youtubing, and listening to pandora all through my iphones internet connection. i spacifically asked the man who sold me my iphone at the AT&T;store if the iPhone plan had a 5GB cap, he said it did not. So in other words… I PAY FOR UNLIMITED DATA. IM GOING TO USE EVERY LAST DROP OF IT!
@Think,
Sounds about right to me. My guess is we will end up with some sort of (HOPEFULLY) reasonable limit. Say 5-10 gigs for the average person.
I use and enjoy wireless when ever I can. Its much faster and with the iPhone, McDonalds gives me (most of the time) free wifi, at home, on the job, etc.
The key to 3G for streaming is when you are on the road and cannot get wireless. Then its a major boon. Maps come down quickly, data at my fingertips.
People that think that everything should be free ($$/ infinity) just do not understand. However, greedy companies like Verizon (All things VCAST belongs to us) end up losing. It just takes time.
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Just a thought.
en
Here is a shocking statistic: Apple is more valuable that AT&T;.
According to Yahoo finance, AAPL’s market cap today is 177.82B.
T’s market cap is 162.10B.
If Apple continues to grow at the current pace, it may be in a position to do a takeover of AT&T;- and start providing decent wireless service.
@optimist
We can only hope
AT&T;collects $30 per iPhone per month for the data plan. How little data would each of the users have to use for AT&T;to be OK?
I’d be OK with tiered data plans as long as one of the allowable tiers was zero data. The iPhone would do fine as a handheld WiFi-connected computer that happened to make phone calls.
Hey Think great analogy but you know leaving out core data when creating an analogy can create some interesting variations.
The guy paved the way to letting the other guys think that they could have more than one beer. A case of two four doesn’t go very far with 20 guys anyway.
Half of that amount would be 12 beers. Over a week at a frat house, that’s not much. Yes you could point the finger at the guy for being such a heavy drinker, or maybe the frat house was a little short on cash.
Of course you did not state how much beer was bought and maybe I was being generous with a case of 12 the guys were buying a 12 pack for 20 guys, cause they did not want to be known as raging alcoholics. They drew straws to decide who would share bottles. Gee with those hard core numbers you really want to toss the blame at the guy who drank a whopping 50% of the 20 guys beer. That’s like 6 beers, over most of a week. Heck I have been to parties where more beer is spilled on the floor. You really want to use that analogy to single out the guy who drank half the beer? Not with those numbers.
Or maybe I am not being generous enough and the lads had bought not only several cases of beer, but real beer, Canadian beer, beyond the 5% boundary. Now if they were buying a case of beer each then that would be 10 cases of beer over a week, and with those numbers yes your analogy with a beer mooch makes sense.
Even more importantly a historical context should be given to address this idea of “Just 3 percent of ‘smart’ phone users are consuming 40 percent of the network capacity,”
Wireless data is relatively in it’s infancy. Beer today, can be bought relatively easy and there are drinking establishments. Go back to it’s infancy, well for the modern western world and things were different. It was brewed in small batches, kept in casks that had to be hand made from trees cut down, not mass produced and kept in bottles coming off an assembly line.
So the way I see it, is that 3% of the consumers are using 40% of the network is mostly because only 3% of the consumers have figured out how useful those features are.
Taken from the very first post… “What’s the point of offering all these video and audio streaming apps if ATT isn’t going to allow you to use them at your leasure?”
My car speedometer goes to 140 mph, what’s the point of offering that if the law isn’t going to allow you to go that speed at my leisure?
Here’s what Apple should do: Just buy Sprint. If we are going to be capped in regards to data usage, most of us will leave ATT anyway.
I don’t know about you but I went with ATT to get the iPhone, not vice versa. Having been a long-time sufferer of ATT home phone and internet service I already knew I was going to hate being further under foot. I was a Sprint mobile customer and can say it was a pleasant and painless experience.
Apple has a boat load of cash. The network is already built and Sprint is also part of the WiMax consortium. As ATT places caps on data usage, Apple could offer existing ATT customers discounts and/or incentives to come over to the newly Apple-owned Sprint network, exchange/upgrade their phones and not miss a beat.
Let ATT figure out how to lure customers WITHOUT the carrot Apple provides them now; ungrateful bastards that they are.
No one has mentioned the obvious: stop selling iPhones in New York and San Francisco. Ban all New Jersey iPhones from entering New York, the same with Oakland iPhones.
@ de Villiers
In case you do not understand, the internet is world wide in scope. Not everyone speaks English as a first language.
There’s one problem inherent in AT&T;’s statement: they do NOT clarify what constitutes a “Smart Phone”. While we, as consumers and fans, may assume that it’s items such as Blackberries and iPhones, it’s possible that AT&T;has broadened the definition to include phones that most of us would not consider to be true smart phones. This would result in a lower percentage of the market for heavy iPhone users having a higher percentage of the total bandwidth used.
In example: If what we’d consider to be smart phones includes only iPhones, Blackberries, and Treos, then the iPhone would have a higher percentage of the total (perhaps 50%) and use about 50% to 70% of bandwidth.
However, if the definition of smart phone is expanded to include any phone that is capable of receiving email and web browsing, then even phones like the Motorola Razor would be included. In this circumstance, the iPhone might have only 10% of the total so-called “Smart Phone” market share, but would still use a HUGE amount of the total bandwidth available.
Without having concrete data from AT&T;as regards which phones were included and excluded in the study, it is impossible to draw a true conclusion- and to know if AT&T;is telling the truth. In the end, it is also entirely possible that AT&T;is using the broader definition of “smart phone” so that they have political clearance with the public and government to limit data plans.
I think a lot of readers are missing the point entirely. Supposed you owned an all you-can-eat buffet. You already know how much the average person eats, so you stock up for the average, since some will eat less and some will eat more.
Now suppose right down the street is located a weightlifting gym, an NFL team, and a college gym. Lets say each day you have 3% of your customers, sit in the buffet all day long and do nothing but eat. They are going to ruin your business model by consuming 10 times the food of the Average person. This means all the people who are “average” are going to have to pay increased prices.
The ATT analogy is 1:1. They don’t care if you occasionally watch full length movies, or other bandwidth hogs. They only care when enough are doing it 10 hours a day, hogging all the bandwidth, and knocking others off line.
lots of valid points are being made here. as someone who works for and is disgusted with att (and has the inside scoop), I’d like to offer some helpful hints to customers:
1 – register with the website, gives you more power than you might think
2 – dont be afraid to demand from CSR or the company. they are big, but all they care about is your money and they WILL bend over for you
3 – store reps make TONS of mistakes which gives you licence to stick it ATT for a change, instead of the other way around. let no one tell you diffrent
4 – if we dont see the iphone IMEI, we dont know any better. switch your iphone IMEI with an old flip phone with a $10 or $15 DATA PLAN. you’re golden
5 – KNOW your cycle dates/contract dates.
6 – if you dont use data or sms – BLOCK the services. you have to request it
att’s main campaign besides biggest 3G network is its data products. unbelievably, with this current situation, they are betting it all on data products and services. this area serves as their scrotum. kick it hard by ignoring it and opting out. you will do your part as a cust to give them pain.