Slashdot Mirror
iPhone Straining AT&T Network
dangle writes "More than 20 million other smartphone users are on the AT&T network, but other phones do not drain the network the way the nine million iPhone users do. Because the average iPhone owner can use 10 times the network capacity used by the average smartphone user, dropped calls, spotty service, delayed text and voice messages and glacial download speeds are the result as AT&T's cellular network strains to meet the demand. AT&T says that the majority of the nearly $18 billion it will spend this year on its networks will be diverted into upgrades and expansions to meet the surging demands on the 3G network."
I would have had the first post, but I'm browsing from my iPhone.
All this time, I thought the iPhone was just an overhyped, overpriced smartphone that explodes. Now I see that, incredibly, it is doing some good: a major cell phone company is actually upgrading its network, after all these years of the US falling behind other parts of the world!
Palm trees and 8
The iPhone users pay an ungodly sum for the privilege. The least AT&T can do is make the network adequate for the purpose.
We get so accustomed to bad customer service and lousy throughput and high prices that it doesn't even dawn on us that the problem isn't the usage patterns of iPhone users but rather the consistently half-assed network implementations by American MOs.
As more and more technology floats up into the Cloud, we are going to need more bandwidth to access it from anywhere. If the MOs can't keep up and implement a network that will support the kind of massive usage that is currently envisioned, there will be a massive breakdown akin to what AT&T is experiencing now.
Don't blame the vehicles for bad roads. Blame it on the DOT.
It's about time AT&T put some money into the network. The coverage and the dropped calls suck. I can't wait for the 2 year contract to be up. Seriously, it was only a few years ago that the US had the best networks around and was on the cutting edge with cell phones. But we are seriously lagging now. AT&T wanted the iPhone but thought they would be able to grab it without infrastructure upgrades Be careful AT&T - no good deed goes unpunished!
This should be a useful exercise just for the sheer entertainment:
1) create SETI-On-iPhone app which constantly fetches/uploads data
2) convince large quantities of people to continually run app
3) crash AT&T network
4) ?????
5) Profit
Corollary: send a mirror copy of all data to fbi.gov. See if we can cause two incidents at the same time.
Every mans' island needs an ocean; choose your ocean carefully.
wouldn't it be nice if network operators charged a fair price for Used bandwidth rather than taking $$$ for Jesus-phone "all-inclusive" deals. In suppose all the want is, err, as mucg of our money as they can get, and that's the way they get it. But if their price model would encourage thrifty bandwidth use by iUsers and iAppcoders, that would make it interesting for me, maybe getting a smartphone (more probably G than i) for less than a £35 contract here in the UK.
Maybe if they stopped pricing text at thousands of dollars per megabyte it would free up enough voice traffic that this wouldn't be a problem.
AT&T says that the majority of the nearly $18 billion it will spend this year on its networks will be diverted into upgrades and expansions to meet the surging demands on the 3G network
Oh no! They're being forced to spend most of their network upgrade budget on upgrading their network! How will they possibly cope?
on our side of the pond we have cities with more cell towers than your entire country and we want coverage in every little corner in the US even if no one lives for miles around
I'm happy to hear that AT&T is looking at upgrades. Personally, I have run into almost no issues, but my area is a pretty recent recipient of 3G. Internet browsing got pretty slow midsummer, but AT&T managed through the bulk of tourist season with decent service. Now that most of our state's guests are headed home as the weather starts to cool and school gets back in session, I'm sure the load on the network will decrease.
I'm curious, though. I know very little about Apple's infrastructure on the iPhone, but I know that most of my Internet access on the Blackberry goes through a central server (BES for companies or BIS for individuals) and that data gets compressed en route. The primary reason, of course, is so pages can load more quickly, but it also has a side effect of requiring less data be transferred, therefore less load on the network.
Opera's mobile browser operates on the same basic idea - the "preview" you get of each web page is loaded as a very small and low-res image, then when you click on a section for details you zoom in on that area and it loads more detail. But the entire web page is not loaded to your phone up front - Opera's server serves up the parts you are looking at right now.
Does Safari do this, or does it load the entire page in full detail up front so you can zoom in on the little bit you want to see? If it loads the whole page, Apple and AT&T might want to discuss some form of "preview load" and only load more detail as it is asked for. It'd probably cut data usage considerably and if the preview loads quickly it would even improve the user experience.
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
45/month? That's 1080 Euros in the same time period, which is 1,546.91 USD (according to XE.com today). So, actually, we're not paying that much less than the US. Admittedly that's "high-end" but the US is a helluva lot bigger than any particular EU country and we'd end up paying roaming on top of that if we change countries. Also, some of that $2000 is likely to be things like roaming charges etc. anyway.
So, ern... not that big a shock, really. Though why *anyone* would ever want to pay that amount of money for a damn phone, I have no idea.
....especially Verizon, whose big brother in the UK (Vodaphone) is making them tear up the CDMA network for GSM. In some respects, AT&T is better-positioned today, and the continuing revenue stream from iPhones (something ungodly percentage of their new customers are iPhone customers) will allow them to invest in upgrades.
T-Mobile still doesn't have 3G nearly anywhere, and even the EDGE capability is spotty in places.
Sprint's got a friend-of-Barack, which has allowed them to push forward with their WiMax network faster than Verizon's planned 4G data (VHF analog TV spectrum), but they, too, are going to switch to GSM from CDMA for the Sprint portions of the network. Whatever was Nextel is unchanged.
But none of those providers have any single thing that's generating new customers like AT&T, and some are still bleeding subscribers despite nifty stuff (looking at you, Sprint).
In my experience, AT&T has been at least as reliable for voice. The data hasn't been as reliable as my last provider; but I'd rather have fast data 90% of the time, than unusably slow data 98% of the time.
For ages now, but they keep adding towers to extend their coverage. The problem however is the backhaul, they have not been upgrading those, and while sure everyone will now have perfect tower signal, they still have crappy connections since the traffic is congested on the backhaul.
I came, I conquered, I coredumped
on our side of the pond we have cities with more cell towers than your entire country and we want coverage in every little corner in the US even if no one lives for miles around
That's funny because here in Sweden we are in the process of upgrading to the mobile network to 150Mb/s service in the metro areas and 80Mb/s everywhere else across the country. That's in a country the size of California with a population of 9 million people. What's your excuse?
This is they typical telco story. Be it transatlantic phone calls way back in the satellite era "All outside lines are busy now, please try your call again later, beep!", be it "broadband", or cellular phone service. The telco business model is:
1. Establish a technology
2. Charge an arm and a leg for said technology
3. Oversubscribe said networks until they are practically useless, then blame the customer.
You know, for a company pulling in 12 BILLION dollars a year, AFTER tax, there really is no excuse. It's not like they're going to spend the 18 billion to "upgrade" all at once. And you can BET that the "new" network will allow them to sell even more subscribers and/or charge even more for some new "must have" technology.
Communications is a racket. Is it any wonder that Ma Bell was broken up, and yet her children have mostly eaten each other and are each as big or bigger than she was, in under 30 years? Yet this is the industry that cries poverty and "we can't afford it" when the idea of upgrading to a REAL (I mean Japanese or S Korean style) broadband network is put on the table. Of course not. They don't give a shit about providing service, they just care about their balance sheet and whatever other company they can swallow.
But I for one feel no pity or sorrow for AT&T, and the suckers who sign exclusive multi-year contracts with them.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
AT&T says that the majority of the nearly $18 billion it will spend this year on its networks will be diverted into upgrades and expansions to meet the surging demands on the 3G network.
If they had 18 billion ear marked to spend on their networks what else would they be spending it on besides upgrades and expansions?
I see three possibilities. First, AT&T hasn't invested in their network enough. That's a given. Second, iPhone users are just network hogs, I don't think so.
So that leaves us with possibility three: the iPhone is the first phone that isn't an incredible pain to use.
I think that all other smart phones are artificially low in bandwidth usage because they're hard to use. The IE5 based browser on Windows Mobile (I know they recently improved it) in my experience was a total joke and almost unusable. The browser on BlackBerries, in fact the UI as a whole, is not designed to ease of use at all, it's "here's an empty button we can use". That only really leaves non smart phones, and even IF you had a data plan, I'm sure we all know how easy browsing with those things was.
Basically the iPhone is the first device it's possible to easily surf the web without wanting to throw the phone into a wall.
When you give your customers something that actually works and is usable... they use it.
Go figure.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
We have tons of dark fiber in the US. We just need large ISPs to pay to light it up. Remember the work done by Qwest (before they bought US West)?
Grammer Nazis - I mod you "troll" unless you actually add something on-topic. Yes, I know I have mispellings in my sig.
Recently, I went to Europe for a week with my iPhone and I needed to use the internet frequently while I was there to stay in touch with people back in the States. So after having done a bit of research, I decided to purchase the $60 Global Data Add-on, which gave me 50MB I could use while in Europe. Using that and Wifi, I was able to have internet whenever I needed it during that week, and by the end, I had used just under the limit. Because of that, I really ended up paying only $1.2 / MB, or $60 per week, which I thought was pretty reasonable. Also note that you can monitor how much bandwidth you've used through the phone's statistics (which you can reset when you depart for your trip).
All in all, it worked out pretty well.
Translation: "Now we have to actually spend money to satisfy our customers." Cry me a river.
Higher Logics: where programming meets science.
How about this: Cell phone companies are no longer permitted to own cell phone towers. Instead, we have
(1) Stores selling cell phones.
(2) Service companies offering cell phone contracts.
(3) Cellular Service Providers (CSPs) that provide cellular service to phones, by billing the service companies (2)
So I go to Wal-Mart (1) and buy a phone. I activate it with AT&T (2). My phone finds a nearby tower that speaks a compatible protocol, that is owned and operated by a CSP (3). The CSP then tracks my usage and bills my service company (2), who then bills me.
This basically takes the internet approach, and applies it to the cellular network.
Advantages:
- No more tying of cell phones (1) to service companies (2)
- No more long complex service contracts, because it removes barriers of entry into that business, and because it is easy for cellular users to switch.
- Increased incentive to move toward a single standard. No more CDMA because: who would want to finance a tower that isn't going to work for new phones and customers?
- No concept of "roaming" charges since cell towers are no longer tied to a specific provider.
- More efficient coverage since there are no longer redundant towers. Ex: Today, T-Mobile and AT&T may both build a tower in the same place, to service their own respective customers. In this system, one tower would suffice.
- More incentive to build towers where it is profitable, regardless of whose customers they are. Ex: Verizon builds towers in places where they have customers. But they won't build where they do not have customers.
Why invest in infrastructure that will attract $40/month customers when you can build infrastructure that will attract customers willing to pay almost anything monthly for the latest technofashion device.
Every iPhone thread. There's always someone who thinks they have to share the oh-so-perceptive insight that the iPhone is largely a fashion accessory.
Meanwhile, back in reality, the reason AT&T is apparently having these problems? They brought onboard a device with a featureset which (despite apparent inferiority to half a dozen other devices I'm sure you can find slashdotters to tell you about) has essentially resulted in a huge explosion of actual mobile data usage.
AT&T's problems have nothing to do with the fashionability of the phone. They have everything to do with its features and the typical telco avoidance of actually building out service whenever they can get away with it.
Tweet, tweet.