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AT&T's City-By-City Plan To Up Wireless Coverage
alphadogg writes "AT&T has created different mobile calling models for every major city in America as it tries to improve a network that has come under fire for poor performance as the data-friendly iPhone has proliferated, an executive said Thursday. Other carriers just use one nationwide calling model to plan for all cities, claimed CTO John Donovan, speaking at the Open Mobile Summit conference in San Francisco. The nation's second-largest mobile operator has had a hard time planning for bandwidth needs in the rapidly changing mobile world, Donovan said. AT&T has seen rapidly growing mobile data usage — and much criticism over its 3G coverage — as the exclusive iPhone carrier in the US. 'If a network is not fully loaded, it's hard to know exactly how much demand is out there,' Donovan said. 'You put all you can in the ground, and they eat it all up, and then you put more in there, and they eat it all up.'" The story notes that mobile data at AT&T has grown 4,932% over the last 3 years.
If a network is not fully loaded, it's hard to know exactly how much demand is out there.
And if they didnt sign the exclusive deal with Apple, what do you think that growth would have been? Just saying they are complaining all the way to the bank on this one.
It talks much more about AT&T's push towards IPv6 to accommodate more devices.
However, it's very true that people keep eating up the wireless bandwidth. These companies need to realize that unless something changes, mobile is the new "last mile."
This would of been the first post, but I'm in new york and posting from my iphone
"You put all you can in the ground, and they eat it all up, and then you put more in there, and they eat it all up"
This is the typical, in this case subtle (but in other cases not subtle) blaming of the consumer for overusing network resources beyond some mythical "reasonable/predictable" amount that service providers cling to in rationalizing their retarded infrastructure expansion plans.
News flash: your network and every other corporate network is at capacity already and you're overselling subscriptions. Don't add one tower and then complain that those data-hungry fiends are using the new bandwidth so quickly. Either think big and grow some balls about expanding your network, or quit complaining and admit that you've resigned to mediocrity.
Take any area on Earth where you are not at max capacity and then model data usage per phone. Done. In what way is this difficult for a multi-national megacorp?
This guy's quote is BS, if you as the owner of your traffic don't know how much demand there is either by system monitoring and/or usage patterns for specific type clients (with demograhaphics tagged along with it, because ATT sure as hell knows its clients profiles and/or can buy such data from 3rd parties) then they need to get out of the business. Either way ATT has slacked on its network, let Verizon (good for them) to compete and do it well and then blame poor performance and oversell on its lack of knowledge. That is just BS, they know, don't care until it hurts in the pocket... And exclusive contracts with big hardware vendors does't help the public, its own customer base, as well as its image. Shame on ATT.
"We've upped our 3G network coverage! So up yours!"
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
'If a network is not fully loaded, it's hard to know exactly how much demand is out there,' Donovan said. 'You put all you can in the ground, and they eat it all up, and then you put more in there, and they eat it all up.'"
You've never done any kind of network administration, have you Mr. Donovan? You designed your network for average use, not peak use. As anyone who designs networks for a living will tell you -- it will function perfectly well until it reaches close to or at 100% utilization, at which point it'll choke and die horribly. Had you excercised proper engineering methodology, you would have known to test each product/application being put on the network in test markets and used the use data to predict what the peak would be, and then only deploy it when you had a 20-50% greater capacity than what the data suggests.
But alas, you eschewed best practices to save a few bucks -- all those profitable quarters and executive kickbacks, all the while your towers were backhauled on 512kbit DSL and fractional T1s. Your infrastructure's been rotting for a long time, sir, and the iPhone has nothing to do with your failure as an executive to execute a proper deployment plan that accounts for growth. You should be ashamed: The chinese mobile phone network has over 500 million subscribers, and their plans are cheaper, have better options, and their infrastructure is far more modern. China has similar problems to the United States in terms of rural development and rugged terrain for deployment -- and yet you've abjectly failed to not only do your case studies, but even do exploratory research within your own market.
It's amazing that this level of incompetence is rewarded by our society.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Come on, 4.932% isn't even 5%. Shame on you, AT&T!
"If a network is not fully loaded, it's hard to know exactly how much demand is out there"
If only there was an app for that!
Word game?
As a large corporation, AT&T should have LOTS of people working on demand analysis and usage trends. If it didn't upgrade the coverage is not because it didn't see the Train Headlight on the other side of the tunnel.
Still, this whole network thing has hurt their image. If and when Apple ends the exclusivity, there will be people clamoring to leave AT&T in droves.
If and when Apple allows TMobile to also have iPhones, I will happily stay on AT&T while all the suckers go and collapse TMobile's network, while AT&T's finally has some breathing space...
AT&T needs to get as many network upgrades in as fast as possible, especially now that they understand people are actually going to use mobile data. But I have some sympathy for them as they have seen a level of growth no-one predicted.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
...you offer something useful to people and they use it?
My brother is in mngmnt with AT&T, he tells me the greatest tales of folly, and he's a just a local repair supervisor.
I wonder how verizon would fare if they were able to offer the iPhone with unlimited data as well...
If you build it, they will come. In this case they're coming anyway, you better build something quick!
Sounds like just another group of clueless executives in the communications/IT industry. All they saw was dollar signs with this agreement with Apple. They had no idea of the impact on their network.
Just another day in the IT industry.
Don't sell what you don't have.
If you want to sell more, build more before selling it.
If this were any other industry, I would bring up "if you can't, someone else will" but the market providers are so few that it's not true.
Make America grate again!
The exact same observation is made with highway construction--but it has led transportation authorities to the opposite conclusion: if the more you build, the more people use the resource--then clearly the answer is to not build any because you'll never fix the congestion, and you'll just encourage more people to use the resource.
You've never done any kind of network administration, have you Mr. Donovan? You designed your network for average use, not peak use.
I think what he is saying (badly) is that you can't find the peak if your network is constantly at peak.
Not to mention it's hard to figure out what the real peak will be in a few years with 4600% growth in average use.
To put it simply, that level of growth caught everyone flat footed because people just did not use data plans that heavily before. AT&T is still trying to figure out how to adjust. I know they are building out because service in my town (Denver) has improved, but obviously they are struggling to have improvements match growth rates. And they probably will for some time... hopefully they are starting to realize they need to lay down new network capacity at a far greater rate, whatever that takes.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Does this:
"You put all you can in the ground, and they eat it all up, and then you put more in there, and they eat it all up."
Remind anyone else of this:
"Here, if you have a milkshake, and I have a milkshake, and I have a straw. There it is, that's a straw, you see? You watching?. And my straw reaches acroooooooss the room, and starts to drink your milkshake... I... drink... your... milkshake! I drink it up."
...offer something that is your core competency and people want to use it. This is what AT&T DOES. They sell data transit. Move the bits from here to there. That's their job. Their ONLY job. And they suck at it. If that's not a damning indictment against monopoly/duopoly, I don't know what is.
If only my employer had this problem. People beating down their door to obtain the service they most like to offer. Oh what a terrible fate. And they fumble it and practically fail at it. It would be unbelievable if I didn't already know they're more than half of a duopoly.
Worse, they got a giant government handout a decade ago, before giant handouts were quite so common, and they STILL fail. How much of the free broadband money (tax credits) did AT&T née SBC née Bell South née AT&T get from the gub'ment? Billions. And here it is 2009 and they're having trouble moving data from a few million phones. It's crap like this that is the reason why Third World countries tend to stay Third World. We truly have become a banana republic, and we're going to destroy ourselves if we keep up that habit. It does not work.
What I wouldn't give to go back to when 'Its hard!' was not a valid excuse for not doing your job.
Its our own fault for not demanding better service. 2 year contracts let them get by with murder since you can't just jump ship and go to the better provider. While its not enforcing a monopoly, its certain promoting bad service and limiting consumer choice.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
This guy's quote is BS, if you as the owner of your traffic don't know how much demand there is either by system monitoring and/or usage patterns for specific type clients (with demograhaphics tagged along with it, because ATT sure as hell knows its clients profiles and/or can buy such data from 3rd parties) then they need to get out of the business.
No, what's he's saying is that since the network is already full to 100% of capacity, it's impossible to tell how much more capacity they need in specific areas. Which is true; since every tower is 100%, there's no place that's obviously worse than any other place. They have "capacity clipping", to coin a term.
Comment of the year
I realize people are pretty much free to do what they want... But it's really rude to link to a "print this page" article instead of the actual page, as this summary does. What this does here is tells the target website, you're going to absorb the bandwidth cost of having Slashdot readers view an article, but you're not going to able to show them ads. On a small scale it probably doesn't mean much (just as it probably doesn't mean much if a small percentage uses ad-blocking software), but I still feel this is disrespectful, especially on something that is going to receive high volume.
I got an iPhone to up my wireless coverage, AT&T. Now up yours.
--
make install -not war
They're a bloated company that needs to be split again. I hate saying something like that, but my recent experiences at two different locations with their phone/internet service leads me to believe theyre bumbling idiots that cant get the different depts of their company to work together.
When you pay for a phone line to be reactivated, it needs to be reactivated, not sit idle for a week. The line is_only_ used for DSL purposes. I waited a week for my DSL provider to reactivate the line, cause they say it takes that long to send the disconnect / reconnect orders to AT&T. I waited. And found out the line wasnt going back up, because AT&T screwed up. Got it taken care of, but thats just annoying..
At another location, a sales rep called and said the "contract" needed to be re-negotiated. It was learned a week and a half later, after internet services on that line -- which have two active voice lines, its a BUSINESS -- slowly degraded, and they tried running the poor woman through some lame steps, I got there and talked to a rep myself and they said "Oh, you've got some sync issues, we'll send a tech out" and then promptly gave me the "If its external, its free of charge, if its internal, you pay" b.s. line... Turns out the idiot AT&T sales rep sold a speed upgrade that ISNT AVAILABLE in the area this client does business...
Wow, if this is true "AT&T is in the midst of leveraging its prime 850MHz radio spectrum for 3G in San Francisco, a step that is 90 percent complete, Donovan said." then they have a long way to go.
I just actually canceled my AT&T service after a few years of having absolutely godawful service in downtown SF, and I can tell you that from my perspective NO improvement has been made PERIOD.
This is the biggest load of BS I've read in a long time. They have no clue on how to fix this, and people in my office (including myself) have been able to cancel contracts without an early termination fee because they KNOW their service sucks.
What is truly pathetic is that the old AT&T would have handled this without problem. The company the built the first non-blocking electronic switch (the 1ESS) in 1965 and invented Shannon's law is now sadly but a faint memory.
The only things left are a legacy of Nobel Prizes (still growing) and water towers shaped like transistors.
By targeting Apple iPhone and AT&T together, Verizon lost way too many potential customers. Industry rule is, never ever specifically target Apple since it is something like a cult. I know lots of people around me asking "So what the hell is Verizon and why they hate Apple?". I am thousands of kilometers away from USA, now that should be some real alerting thing.
AT&T could advertise involvement with UNIX (which many don't know), Verizon could inform people about why they have the largest coverage, why their speeds are so higher than the competition. All they do is childish "I do that, I do this" competition with lots of drama. iPhone is a damn UNIX device which is a fairly advanced smart phone in its own right, they should stop treating iPhone users or other smart phone/device users like bunch of rich morons.
Or you could just purchase the iphone outright with no plan and jailbreak it, put it on your verizon plan and have 3G coverage all over the country and laugh as you do things twice as fast as the phone next to you for less a month.
Speaking of Arab TVs, the king of content delivery Akamai has took off Al Jazeera "from the air" (web) because of Sep. 11. That website of TV paid for the contract and they ended up without having a hosting provider. The TV, no matter what you hear about it is extremely mild, run by TV professionals, especially British (Ex BBC) and it is off the web just because it is "Arabic Owned" (UAE BTW) and they possibly had some mails from some idiots connecting that TV Network to Al Queda. (hopefully not @whitehouse.gov) It can't be financially motivated since Al Jazeera is considered as a very rich media company, run by some Arab Prince. These guys use Ikegami HD Cams as ordinary things while other TV stations (including CNN etc) struggle with Betacam SD in some cases.
http://news.cnet.com/1200-1035-995546.html
If I was an American, I would be extremely alerted about the "net neutrality" discussions. That is Akamai doing it, imagine the rest... Like Murdoch buying some financially unstable Tier 0 network. Check the Tier 0 network owners, they are still recovering from dotcom crash...
And if they didnt sign the exclusive deal with Apple, what do you think that growth would have been?
Given the common wisdom that the iPhone isn't actually useful -- it's basically a shiny fashion accessory, right? -- one ought to be skeptical that the deal with Apple has anything to do with increased data usage.
Tweet, tweet.
If he'd been doing case studies from the start and deploying products in test markets on a schedule
Come on, how are you going to "test market" something like the iPhone? It releases everywhere, all at once - and it's been a rollercoaster for them since.
I have seen so many test market plans from large companies go up in smoke. Invariably there is something large no-one accounted for in the testing. You can test and test to some degree, but there are always at least a few huge surprises when you deploy - and the growth of actual data use on hand-held devices is simply something that could not be "tested" for as it also goes hand it hand with application growth, which would not occur at the same rate in test markets.
But they disregarded that in order to release the iPhone nationwide all at once as part of a huge marketing campaign,
But if you want to blame someone for that, it's all on Apple - not AT&T. Honestly though, I don't see that plan really working for them well even if they had been able to do it - as I said before part of the rise in bandwidth is the rise in the number of applications that make use of that bandwidth.
And honestly, who even does small market test releases anymore? Did Verizon do that with Droid? No, because you simply cannot take that kind of time in todays mobile market.
The problem is, it costs more to rush a deployment after a problem like this presents than to do a phased upgrade, when there's opportunities to cut costs by careful selection of distribution channels, contracting during periods of reduced production, etc.
Ah, but this careful approach also would lose a lot of customers, and the iPhone would not have been a success had it been tried as it would have given everyone else way too much time to catch up.
Personally as a customer I'd rather have a network with a few issues and an iPhone than be wondering when it would come to my town... that goes for any device, people always bitch when you release it into a limited market first. Phones are not a thing you can do that with, although it works for other tech sectors.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
But it's also easy to know...
What is the difference in price in your area for a 1.5mb DSL line (20-30 here) versus a T-1 to your home?
I'll stick with my 7mb DSL service for now, thanks.
Platform advocacy is like choosing a favorite severely developmentally disabled child.
Forget about 3g, I'd be happy to just be able to make a phone call when 'off the beaten path'. I've been less than a mile away from the interstate where there is 3g coverage and had zero bars and any attempt at making a call resulted in 'call failed'. Although the Verizon 'map for that' commercials are a bit harsh, they are unfortunately fairly accurate. 3g is nice when it is there, but sacrificing the primary function of a phone (making calls) for faster web browsing is simply not acceptable. Hopefully they put dollars towards increasing basic cellular coverage or I'll be switching networks once the contract is up (and Apple sells phones on other networks).
That's what I'd like to know.
I agree with the parent. I mean, come on. AT&T has one of the largest data backbones in the WORLD. Their command & control center is cooler than Nasa's. They have three hundred thousand employees and do 120 BILLION in revenue yearly. This is BS stuff for a purely PR standpoint. They know exactly what data people want and exactly what their capacity is, trust me. They probably have a couple hundred employees whose full-time job is to manage bandwidth across their worldwide network. They also have very good PR people that know how to spin a story to appease the masses, and this guy is paid very well and does a very good job convincing 98% of subscribers that AT&T is doing their best, when their goal is not to do their best- it is to do the job good enough to maximize profits, which is a very different goal, but one they do very well.
Just because I can hook a shark from a boat, I do no offer to wrestle it in the water.
The iPhone could probably be attributed to a big percentage of the problem with the amount apps that access the 3G network but AT&T in general is highly to blame for the massive increase. They are requiring ALL new smartphone user to get a data plan at $30 minimum (not including text messaging). Since this new requirement in September 2009 if people are paying for data they plan to get their money worth. Personally I am one to use what I am paying for. If they want to fix the problem they can remove the need to purchase the data plan, offer it at a lower rate for a limited about per month, or increase their network bandwidth to account for the influx they created.
That's really not true though, because you can still count devices attempting to connect but being rebuffed. So actually, it's trivial to figure out where capacity is most needed, but not necessarily how much. If they can't make a very good guess, though, then they are even more hard up for talent than I thought.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Well, it's still an excuse. It's just not as lame an excuse as it appears at first glance.
Anyway, I don't fault them. Data in Seattle is a bit slow, but it's pretty reliable, and from my experience, their coverage (in general) is better than Verizon's-- or at least I know plenty of locations where my friend's Verizon phone won't work but my phone works fine.
Comment of the year
> I wonder how verizon would fare if they were able to offer the iPhone with unlimited data as well...
I'd like to see that. I switched recently from at&t to verizon as a Blackberry user, and have seen no discernible difference in web response. Comparing my daughter's Blackberry (still on ATT) to mine, the response is pretty much the same -- crappy, dial-up-era throughput. Page rendering sometimes measured in minutes. I don't think iphone customers would see any better results on Verizon. I don't pretend to know the solution, but something is wrong with the whole cell phone data plan thing.
Since I got my first web-enabled phone (a Treo) in 2004, I've been using this test for wireless throughput: Sitting in some random restaurant, you look up the movie times in this area while I go outside and buy a newspaper. In 2004, I could stop for coffee and a chonga bagel. I have to move more quickly now, but I can still get to the movie section before you can. This is "broadband" only because the vendors say it is.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
I signed up for one of the USB mercury datacards so I could have Internet access from anywhere ATT's network was.
This is in Los Angeles. The 3 places I tried to use it, either the signal was soo poor, or I kept getting disconnected.
The sales rep assured me this wouldn't happen since I get to use all "10" data channels versus those iPhone users who only get 5.
Didn't work for me, so I returned it. Now I need to find another usb card for my wireless access.
Verizon? Sprint? Tmobile?