Apple and AT&T Sued, Again, Over 3G

Macworld is reporting that Apple and AT&T are being sued, again, for the lack of delivery on their 3G network. This follows a long line of other lawsuits in San Jose, San Diego, Alabama, Florida, Texas, and New York "The lawsuit charges the companies with Negligence, Breach of Express Warranty, Breach of Implied Warranty of Merchantability, Unjust Enrichment, Negligent Misrepresentation, Violation of the New Jersey Consumer Fraud Act and Other Similar State Statutes, and Breach of Contract. Dickerson is seeking to force Apple and AT&T to correct its labeling and advertising, as well as to recover compensatory, statutory and punitive damages."

Comments

Yup

[JimboFBX]

The problem with AT&T's 3G is that the connection from your phone to their tower is fast but their tower's connection to the internet is 14k baud dial-up or something. Some towers don't even have internet connectivity, I was on a mountain with 5 bars of 3G, parked, and had no internet connectivity whatsoever. I drove down a small town nearby and it worked fine, except of course for that slow page loading issue.

Re:Yup

[Anonymous Coward]

The iPhone has absolutely destroyed AT&T's network. They were simply never built to support that amount of data traffic, and the large-quota / unlimited data plans they sell with the iPhone have crushed them.

The reason blackberrys are more attractive to networks than the iPhone is because they have compression, on-demand loading and data-chunking abilities. The iPhone has none of these things, and the result is AT&T's network speeds being ripped up.

(Anon because I know too much about this.)

Re:Yup

[TheMeuge]

They knew that this was going to happen though. AT&T had their hands full with the 2G iPhone, and knew exactly the kind of demand they were going to get when it went 3G.

But instead, they chose to continue charging outrageous fees (and FORCING you to get an overpriced data plan)... without doing much to upgrade their network.

Furthermore, I believe that AT&T is deliberately throttling speeds to 3G iPhones, because I get much higher speeds using the Samsung Blackjack in the same location, both using AT&Ts service. As a matter of fact, most of the time, the Blackjack is 2X faster (400-1000kbps vs. 200-600kbps).

Now I really like my iPhone and it still does work very well, even despite the slower speeds. Within a year or two, the network will probably receive some upgrades... just like it happened when I first got the Blackjack 3 years ago. Then, I would hardly get 3G anywhere, and when I would get it, it'd never go above 400kbps. Before I got the iPhone, I'd easily get 800kbps 3G virtually everywhere, including places where I had trouble getting EDGE a couple of years ago.

Re:Yup

[frinkster]

The worst part of my iPhone is that it uses AT&T's network.

When I am connected via Wi-Fi, it works great. But here in my office in downtown Chicago, I frequently get "Could not activate cellular data network" errors and have problems with voice calls dropping as well.

Last year I was in rural Indiana, getting 3 bars of EDGE, and I was able to use the maps application to find my way through miles and miles of empty roads with rows of corn as far you could see. In fact, it was a lot more responsive than when I get 5 bars of 3G most times.

Perhaps the key is to be the only person connected to the cell tower.

Re:Yup

[Vancorps]

Given that Blackberry market share is higher than that of the iPhone I wonder where you come up with this statement? Source

The network friendly appearance is due to the fact that it is not new and so RIM has learned a lot of hard lessons over the years that Apple is just now encountering with its partnership with AT&T.

The Blackberry is superior from a technological standpoint. The iPhone is superior from a UI standpoint. It's that simple, at least in my head.

Re:WTF?

[TheRealMindChild]

You see the bit in the summary/article "Breach of Express Warranty, Breach of Implied Warranty of Merchantability, Unjust Enrichment, Negligent Misrepresentation..."? This isn't about whining that it sucks. It is about them misleading you about how bad it sucks. By then, you are already nailed to a contract. If you think this is "ok", I have some free time and an ice pick handy...

Heck I'd settle for 1 G...

[DaSpudMan]

You people on the coasts are so spoiled. Up here in ND, I'd settle for a choice of cell phone companies that provide coverage in most of the state. IPhones are an unkown commodity up here.

Time to break out the Bag Phone or a Brick.

Re:3G iPhone not all it's cracked up to be?

[Volante3192]

I dunno, AT&T's 3G network seems to not be that great all around. I've got an LG CU400 that 'supports' 3G, but every time the phone connected with 3G, it'd stop working. I'd have to powercycle it and use it in the brief period between when EDGE connected and when 3G took over.

I ended up having to find the maintenance code to get into the hardware config and explicitly turn off 3G.

Phone's worked flawlessly ever since.

AT&T is waiting for bailout money

[debrain]

The Economist had an interesting article last year that predicted that the US telecom companies were waiting for bailout money to invest in infrastructure. With this new stimulus package on the horizon, I'm sure some evidence to support their argument (i.e. irate iPhone users) that it's necessary would go a long way. AT&T has every incentive to get taxpayers to foot the bill, and they'd effectively be punished if they spent their own money on it (it's not like they'll get reimbursed).

Wait for Android

[Krneki]

Wait and see what happens with Android and a torrent client. :)