“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 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.