“AT&T had seen something like this coming. Almost as soon as the first iPhone was introduced in 2007, the carrier realized it might run short of bandwidth. Within just a few months, the first wave of iPhone customers was already sucking down about 15 times more data than the average smartphone customer and 50 percent more than AT&T had itself projected. In a bid to avert the looming problem, a team headed by senior vice president Kris Rinne met with Apple to ask for help,” Vogelstein reports. “Of course AT&T was planning to upgrade its network to handle the increased demand, Rinne’s team told Apple executives, but that was going to take years. In the meantime, would Apple take measures to help throttle back the traffic? Perhaps Apple could restrict its YouTube app to run only over Wi-Fi. Maybe the iPhone could feature a smaller, lower-resolution videostream or cut off YouTube videos after one minute. Rinne, who had already met with Apple’s iPhone team at least half a dozen times, fully expected the company to play along. After all, manufacturers agreed to such restrictions all the time. It didn’t make sense to build phones and offer features that carriers couldn’t support.”
Vogelstein reports, “But in meetings with Apple engineers and marketers over the subsequent year, Rinne and other AT&T executives discovered that Apple wasn’t playing by traditional wireless rules… The two corporations have argued about almost everything. Jobs has been apoplectic about the state of AT&T’s network and what he views as its slow-footed upgrade efforts almost since launch day three years ago. One Apple source says that Jobs has discussed dropping AT&T at least half a dozen times.”
Much more in the full article – highly recommended – here.
MacDailyNews Take: #attfail
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Lynn W.” for the heads up.]
In Canada we’ve enjoyed FREE internet tethering over the Roger’s network for at least a year. Canadians tend to think of Rogers as the “evil” cell phone company, but in comparison to AT&T it has been generous … once you get past the mandatory 3 year contract.
Seriously FREE tethering??? I mean I guess I only paid a one time $10 fee with the net sharing app.
ATT has never gotten over being “The Phone Company” and never will. Give any opportunity, they would still add $1.10 a month to your bill for TouchTone dialing.
Don’t forget to tell them about the 6GB data maximum that Rogers has and how hard it is to get the sales staff to sell it to you if you want the maximum amount. Then mention the exorbitant overage charges.
Friggin pirates.
@ lurker:
Verizon was part of the same Ma Bell monopoly. Plus, I feel Verizon tries to nickel and dime customer more than AT&T.
6gb is still three times the amount that ATT is now offering…
Tethering should be free if you pay a data plan IMO – you can’t use both devices for data at the same time very easily or often, we only have two hands.
Kris Rinne?? The name Rinne is from Finland. I wonder how much connection there is to Nokia?
All wireless carriers suck and are greedy bastards. Except Virgin Mobile. $25 unlimited web, text, email and 200 minutes talk time per month. Match that ATT, Verizon & Sprint. Go!
lurker, pastry chef
Keep in mind, ATT’s Bell system was broken up in 1984. The one who couldn’t get over being “The Phone Company” was a guy who came up through the ranks at Southwestern Bell named Ed Whitacre, and after he became CEO he cobbled the whole thing back together again a decade later. He did it by buying off the execs of the disparate parts. But the pieces weren’t always a smooth fit, especially mobile.
I think this sentiment that the iPhone is an amazing phone being handicapped by AT&T’s incompetence and old-fashioned business mentality is a bit short sighted, as is this theory that Apple is just aching to throw AT&T under the bus.
AT&T has given Apple tremendous freedom. They’ve kept their grubby mitts off the iPhone- they haven’t loaded it with crapware, adware, and bloat (see Verizon.) They haven’t handicapped its usefulness to the extent its competitors do (like Verizon) , and frankly their only limitations have been due to the fact they can’t handle the additional traffic load.
Yes they have network issues, but Apple has stuck up for AT&T a lot more than the article acknowledges. During Verizon’s attack ads, Apple helped run iPhone ads (which the article seemed to forget.)
Not to say AT&T’s perfect or that there haven’t likely been issues- far from it, but they’ve been a better partner to Apple than Verizon likely would be. This article is honestly just a load of crap that sounds believable so people take it at face value.
Best line in article:
(reply of a SJ-aide on some AT&T bozo suggesting that Steve wear a suit when meeting with AT&T top brass):
“We’re Apple. We don’t wear suits. We don’t even own suits.”
Haha. I’d liked to have seen the expression on the face of that guy. Priceless.
Since around April ATT has changed it’s Apple friendly attitude with customers, which kind of made up for their technical stumblings.
They started taking forceful stands with customers and actually blaming their recent documented new network problems on the iPhone4, but when proven to be wrong by showing them that the 3GS has the same weak and fluctuating network signal strength, they actually have been pushing customers to return their phones and get less problematic phones…
It’s like they know that this exclusivity is about to expire and they don’t give a damn…
Does ATT have a death wish or are they back to business as usual?
Yes Rogers has free tethering included. I’m on their 6GB/month plan and just put a small dent in it with all my iPhone usage.
I really want to be able to tether to my iPad via bluetooth and take advantage of this bandwidth. I can do it with my MacBook Pro, why not my iPad?
Apple does not allow this for some reason… you have to buy the Micro-SIM from a Cell Carrier and pay more!
I dream that at some point Apple will change this and allow tethering between the iPhone and iPad in a future IOS update — or Rogers will let me piggyback onto my account to share the 6GBs… and then I woke up!!!
What annoys me is why does Apple keep these stupid restrictions (like 10MB limit on downloading podcasts over 3G) with their non-US customers. In Australia we don’t have crap mobile companies like AT&T and therefore there is no reason why I should have restrictions that AT&T demand.
@ Scandalous:
“I really want to be able to tether to my iPad via bluetooth and take advantage of this bandwidth…”
This is exactly why I took the leap and finally jailbroke my 3GS (still on OS 3, waiting for iOS 4 jailbreak to be released). I never felt the reason or risk to do so until I bought my WiFi only iPad. I bought the $10 Cydia app MyWi, my iPad picks up my iPhone’s 3G signal as a wireless access point, and I’ve never looked back!
I’m also on Roger’s 6GB plan so I now I surf to my heart’s content wherever I am, and didn’t have to pay the additional $130 for the 3G iPad model and the over $400/year plan to “legitimately” get an internet connection. There was no way I was going to pay Rogers an extra $35/month for 2 gigs of data when I was only normally using 1-2 gigs on my 6 gig plan on my iPhone.
Break free people!