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

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the overly-litigious dept.

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."

12 of 230 comments (clear)

  1. Yup by JimboFBX · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:Yup by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.)

    2. Re:Yup by bostongraf · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The reason blackberrys are more attractive to networks than the iPhone is because

      I'm sorry, but I'm fairly certain that most other networks would be more than happy to get a share of the iPhone market. The customers may not be happy with the resulting performance! But the networks would have no problem adding an iPhone, and accompanying plan, to their offerings...

    3. Re:Yup by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      I'm not suggesting that the carriers don't want the iPhone, I'm saying that they're sacrificing their Network in order to do it. AT&T is being sued because their network can't scale up. They'll have to dump a cool billion in order to upgrade.

      The marketing and business people see no problem with that, but believe me, it makes the tech's lives difficult. Blackberry's footprint is significantly lower because of how they handle data traffic.

    4. Re:Yup by dave562 · · Score: 5, Informative

      I'm a fairly long time Blackberry user with AT&T. The network performance and internet browsing from the Blackberry devices was fine up until AT&T rolled out the iPhone. Once the iPhones were on the network, the internet browsing went straight to hell on the Blackberry. Page loads are easily over a minute and in the past they used to be reasonably fast.

    5. Re:Yup by TheMeuge · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

    6. Re:Yup by Bemopolis · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Yeah, too bad they don't have a brand-new revenue stream from a popular exclusive device to finance such an upgrade.

      --
      "I guess the moral of the story is, don't paint your airship with rocket fuel." -- Addison Bain
    7. Re:Yup by donny77 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      This is not about iPhone versus Blackberry. This is 1990 ISPs all over again. AT&T wants to sell "unlimited" data plans knowing you'll pay more for unlimited. It works great because people just check their e-mail on it. Why? Cause the Internet sucks on a Blackberry/Windows Mobile device. The problem is, iPhone users ACTUALLY use the Internet/data other than e-mail. Why? Cause it doesn't suck. Result, oversold bandwidth. Same old story.

    8. Re:Yup by hairyfeet · · Score: 5, Insightful

      And you just hit the nail on the head on why this country is falling apart. Stocks were supposed to be for investing, where you looked at the business's long term game plan and if you supported it bought stock in the company. Now Wall Street is nothing but Las Vegas with nicer clothes. When my parents built their house 29 years ago the ISDN and cable stopped 2 blocks away. Now 30 years later how far is it? Why 2 blocks away, of course!

      Nobody has laid any lines or upgraded shit around here in years because it might hurt the short term stock price if they actually spent a dime. Problem is, if a business isn't growing it is dying. I mean I'm sure they could pay out a nice dividend if they burnt the thing to the ground for the insurance but that doesn't make for much of a business plan. Having everything revolve around the short termers and day traders is the same thing, it just takes longer for the business to burn. for business(and the economy) to grow their have to be INVESTMENTS. Investments in the infrastructure to grow, in the lines, in automation to improve efficiency, in customer service, etc. Instead everything has been low balled and left to rot to please the short term mentality on Wall Street. Is it any wonder that it seems everything is falling apart?

      --
      ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
  2. Re:WTF? by Sigmon · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Um.. yes, AT&T _IS_ forcing one to use their service. You remember that little thing called a contract?

    Granted, nobody forced me to *choose* them, but once they are chosen - I'm locked in for two years!

    But what happens when after 6 months or 1 year my service begins to suck? Have I no recourse?

    I have no idea if this lawsuit has merit or not, but an attitude of 'don't like it, don't use it' is likely an oversimplification of the situation.

  3. Re:3G iPhone not all it's cracked up to be? by Anonymous+Cowbell · · Score: 5, Funny

    Listen, new guy, a word of advice: don't be so quick to jump to a corporate giant's defense here on Slashdot. You'll thank me later. Just toss out a "lame" and be done with it.

  4. Re:3G iPhone not all it's cracked up to be? by novitk · · Score: 5, Informative

    WiFi works well, so it's not the CPU on the phone. At least here in NYC the problem is not even the slow speed, as much as the the network is so oversubscribed that the phone can't get any response and the browser just times out.