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Can Apps Really Damage a Cellular Network?
schnell writes "In FCC filings earlier this year, T-Mobile described how the behavior of one Android IM app nearly brought their cellular data network to a breakdown in one city. Even more interesting, the US carrier describes how just the 300,000 unlocked iPhones on their network caused massive spikes in data usage. T-Mobile is using these anecdotes as evidence that mobile carriers should be able to retain control over the applications and devices on their network to ensure quality of service for all users. Do they have a point?"
Ssssh! Stop giving them bad ideas!
Why would anyone use T-Mobile anyway? Verizon and Alltel are the only carriers worth considering. T-Mobile wants a network like Cleveland wants a football team.
Best Regards, David Geer
The cake is a lie.
Why then is T-Mobile having no problems in Germany, where they have exclusivity with the iPhone, but yet, apparently they're having problems here, with just a small number of iPhones?
Because it's a small country, the infrastructure isn't as expensive to maintain, and they installed modern tech instead of trying to work with old busted tech. Also, as anyone who plays Civ knows, they're very industrious.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
Why haven't the mobile networks in the EU exploded yet, then, eh?
Clearly it is due to European socialism. Real capitalism explodes!
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Actually, it wasn't necessarily bandwidth that was the problem. FTFA:
T-Mobile network service was temporarily degraded recently when an independent application developer released an Android-based instant messaging application that was designed to refresh its network connection with substantial frequency.
In other words, this app was continually connecting and disconnecting. It didn't really have anything to do with bandwidth.
What's funny to me, though, is the solution:
These signaling problems [...] ended up forcing T-Mobile's UMTS radio vendors to re-evaluate the architecture of their Radio Network Controllers to address this never-before-seen signaling issue. Ultimately, this was solved in the short term by reaching out to the developer directly to work out a means of better coding the application.
So T-Mobile's UMTS radio vendors learned something. The developer learned something. And T-Mobile's network, ideally, won't suffer from this problem again.
Sounds like a win-win to me. I don't see the problem.
And if the ocean was made of taffy we could just walk our way to China.
Poor 3G, it was dead even before it was born.
music lover since 1969
And if the ocean was made of taffy we could just walk our way to China.
Dude, have you ever tried walking on taffy? It's not as easy as it sounds.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.