“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.
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.