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Rumor — AT&T Losing iPhone Exclusivity Next Week
MojoKid writes "An inside source over at HotHardware reports that AT&T will lose their iPhone exclusivity on 1/27, coincident with Apple's upcoming press event next week, though it's not yet clear what other carriers will be stepping in to pick up the iPhone. For anyone who has followed the saga, you may notice that you haven't seen AT&T fighting to extend their original exclusive agreement as of late. In fact, they have spent most of their time fighting Verizon's negative ad campaigns. This may not be all that surprising. Inside of AT&T, word is that the iPhone is causing more trouble than ever before. On some level, having the iPhone is hurting AT&T's image. Do you remember hearing about AT&T's 'horrible network' before the iPhone? The iPhone itself doesn't really handle the switch from 3G to EDGE very gracefully, so calls that are in-progress tend to fail whenever 3G connections aren't optimal and the phone attempts to step down to EDGE. It seems that AT&T may finally be tired of taking the heat."
I work in NYC and have the choice between Verizon and ATT for my "company" phone service. I use the data features fairly frequently and when our group of 40-50 folks sits down and chats (we're pretty equally divided between ATT and Verizon users) it seems to me that ATT data service is usually faster and more reliable. Of the people who are most vocal about their Verizon support there, they seem to be mostly voice users and only casual data users.
As far as the iPhone goes, I'd MUCH rather have a Nexus One if I was in the market for a fancy smart phone.
Howdy, I worked with AT&T/Cingular right at the release and that is when "it" happened. From what I was told, AT&T reduced the range of their network to make data transmission more "reliable" for the iPhone, and in so doing, they pissed off a number of end users. We had so many complaints from people about their service no longer working in their homes, work, etc. I was there for the switch to 3G in OH and though the service is fast, the batteries don't last (heh); my phone(s) would be dead with very limited surfing. Oh well, maybe AT&T will rebrand again - back to Cingular and become completely Open Source... and monkeys might flight out of my butt. Bye iPhone.
In Soviet Russia, road forks you!
My fiance works for an AT&T reseller and just verified that they are losing exclusivity this week.
I have a Droid on Verizon and my girlfriend just got an iPhone on at&t. Nearly all my friends have iPhones and honestly I've always wanted one. However I didn't want to carry two att phones, as my work provides me a phone. So I've stuck with alltel/verizon for my personal phone. As a self proclaimed nerd I really enjoy what I can do on my android device and I see a ton of potential in the future but as far as end to end experience goes, the iPhone's interface is a lot cleaner/smoother. As far as apps go on android I've found just about everything I want as far as apps go. Even most of the ones my friends have on iPhone. One thing I really like about my droid is the quality of the calls both on speaker and on the hand set. Sounds really nerdy but I have a friend who works for a bank and he also has a droid, before he got it if he was in his server room on the phone I could hear the noise from all the servers and other equipment...Not with his droid, it sounded DEAD quiet. I kept asking him if he was really in the server room and he kept laughing at me saying he was. I like at&t and the iphone, I also like android and verizon. When it came down to it for me I wanted something new, not what everyone else had.
To get the iPhone, I would need to sign up for a VERY expensive and long term contract. There is no way I'm spending a thousand dollars a year for a friggin phone. To get the Nexus One I can buy a prepaid sim from T-mobile and pay $100/year, using WiFi for network connectivity. This price advantage alone is enough to give the Nexus One an enormously larger market than the iPhone.
No one in the US (except for TMobile customers?) gets a discount on the actual service if they buy their phone outright. From recent postings on other cell phone threads - and my own personal experience with ATT - once your "contract" is up, where the subsidy should disappear... it doesn't. We get to pay the same rates as if we were still subsidizing a phone.
Karnal
The USA really has extremes in population density. We have NYC and we have North Dakota. This is why CDMA was, at one time, the favored technology here in the U.S. GSM cell sizes are fixed at 45km. CDMA can go much larger (for greater coverage area, less capacity), and of course, can also go much smaller (for higher capacity).
It is no wonder that Verizon has the best coverage in North America.
Of course you can make a reliable GSM network that covers a vast area and has high capacity. It just costs a lot of money.
I have never, ever had this problem on my iPhone, and I live in an area of the UK with mixed 3G and Edge/2G coverage - my house is in an area with no 3G, and driving a couple of miles down the road gets you into the 3G zone due to the town nearby. I have never had an issue with dropped calls due to going in and out of 3G coverage.
Whether this is due to the network (I am on O2 in the UK), or the phone I am not certain.
Put it this way, that sentence makes an assertion about what the iPhone does when it tried to fall back to Edge. My own experience is different. The truth is therefore likely somewhere in between, and the call issue may just be related to AT&T and may affect android phones in the same way.
I also think that the "who cares?" post is a little bit naive - clearly a lot of people *do* care, since they are selling iPhones hand over fist. I welcome the introduction of the Android phones - more competition will drive the market (hopefully) to be better for all consumers, but outside of the most hardcore of geeks who have some sort of axe to grind about Apple, the iPhone is still a long way from a "who cares?" device. Proponents of Android that treat the competition that way would do well to be careful (and vice versa - Droid-based phones are going to offer some serious competition to iPhone).