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AT&T Wireless Data Still Growing At 1000%
jfruhlinger writes "AT&T's wireless network came under a microscope when it seemed unable to handle the massive data use boost that came when the iPhone arrived on the scene. The company has since put money into its infrastructure, and that growth rate has slowed somewhat, but it's still gone up 30 times over the past three years."
"30 times over the past three years."
That would make it obviously 1000% per year.
- Spryguy
There are three kinds of people in this world: those that can count and those that can't
I just asked my friend who works with Verizon, he says if AT&T data usage was at 1000 GB, 1000% more is just (1000GB + 1000GB/1000%) = 1001 GB, so I don't see what the problem is.
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Perhaps your expectations have altered drastically over the years.
You were probably happy to get EDGE and were probably amazed by it. I once took a trip guided only by google maps on a Razr for pete sake!!
Dropped calls have gone virtually to ZERO per month for me on AT&T. Wep page dwnload speeds increased noticeably as well. I first noticed a dramatic drop back in April of 2010.
Perhaps AT&T made dramatic improvements in Network Reliability and speed in my area. That is the date my Android phone arrived and I retired my iphone. I never worry about bars any more.
Its still not "fast enough", and it probably never will be, because "fast enough" is a moving target. But for all the flak AT&T gets, in my area is pretty darn good.
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Your sig makes your post even more awesome!
Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure everything I just said is completely wrong.
30x in three years? That's 1000% every 2.031 years.
There are 2.71828 kinds of people in the world. The kind that understand exponential growth, and 1.71828 kinds that don't.
Yes.
Seven of each.
I hope that clarifies things.
Somebody forgot about compounded growth.
1000% growth over three years (compounded annually) would have them grown a thousandfold over three years. Compounded continuously would be ridiculously large.
If you assume continuous growth, the actual growth rate would be ln(30)/3, or about 113%. If you just want a number to quote as the annual growth rate that would give a thirtyfold increase over three years, go with 211% since (1+2.11)^3 is about 30.
Can I get that in football fields or Libraries of Congress?
Sure. If you took 1000% of football fields and covered them with 1000% of the books from the Library of Congress you would find the single book that had the secret formula on how AT&T calculated their increased data growth rate. Your mission is to find that book so you can decode the ISBN number to be used as an RSA key to decrypt the 11 herbs and spices of the original Kentucky Fried Chicken recipe so it could be posted without payment on Cooks Source.
This is Apple's Achilles Heel. When demand outstrips the AT&T bandwidth, an iXxx will no longer be as desirable.
Demand has already outstripped AT&T bandwidth. That happened two years ago. That's the whole point of the story.
With that as the historical base, we look at AT&T exclusivity ending just at the time when AT&T shows signs of catching up with demand.
Or is that iPhone new contracts actually tapering off. Even tho Apple is selling iPhones like crazy, it hasn't translated into that many new customers for AT&T. They activated a record 5.2 million of the devices last quarter, but gained a net of only 2.6 million new mobile customers. See. So clearly the bandwidth demand growth is starting to slow down.
No one else could have handled the iPhone bandwidth demand back in 2007-2009 period any better than AT&T did.
The Achilles heel of Apple may be when they release a CDMA iPhone for Verizon and people suddenly realize half the stuff they used to do on the iPhone does not work on CDMA where you get Talk OR Data. For that reason, I suspect Verizon does not get an iPhone till Verizon gets LTE.
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The total data volume over the nationwide network went from 1 billion megabytes per year to 30 billion megabytes per year. Or from roughly 900TB/365days or 2.4TB/day to 28,610TB/365days or 78TB/day.
Divide that by their 100 million customers and on average each customer uses not even 1MB/day.
If you want to be an ISP and you cannot carry more than 1MB/day, you should not be an ISP.
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You are correct about that to a certain degree.
They (AT&T) have been shifting frequencies around and putting 3G services on the lower bands with better building penetration and shifting edge over to the higher bands.
Almost all Edge phones are quadband so you don't have to do anything at the headset, and may never notice this unless you live on the fringe of the Edge coverage zones.
Hope you have downloaded the Mark The Spot app and use it regularly.
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There must be some really strong cellular signals and efficient antennae in Fantasyland.
Yes, I think I read somewhere they were planning on service improvements there, in Fantasyland, where iPhone batteries never lose their ability to hold a charge and nobody's ever seen the bottom of the bottomless cup, and everyone at the coffee shop is a published author.
You are welcome on my lawn.
or they could just unload some of that data, you know, stop holding the iPhone as being exclusive to AT&T
The world is how you make it
FantasyLand, Or in the Android world, where I now dwell.
I'll just come out and say it, even tho the Apple Mod Nazis will mark it troll in no time flat:
At least 70% percent of AT&T's bad rap came from Infineon chip sets in Apple iPhones.
Since that was a huge percentage of the userbase, it made the carrier look much worse than it was. AT&T BB users had no where near the same percentage of complaints.
My problems went away with the iPhone. YMMV.
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...decrypt the 11 herbs and spices of the original Kentucky Fried Chicken recipe...
Futurama has told us that the Colonel's secret recipe is:
Chicken
Grease
Salt
(And 11 is binary for 3.)
An ISP that cannot handle their customers getting 100MB/day is not worth being named an ISP imho.
We are talking Wide Area Wireless Network here. You know, there are laws of physics that prevent you from achieving 100MB/day/user in a limited spectrum with cells covering 5 square kilometers.
Comparing mobile wireless network with fixed fiber or cable is simply silly.
Learn to use WiFi on top of a fast fiber/cable link.
And yes, I do wireless network engineering for living.
Or any telco, but especially ATT. When the iPhone/ATT first earned its reputation as a horribly unreliable phone, ATT said they were going to invest $15 billion in the next year to fix the issue. A year later, they boasted that they'd spent $2 Billion in the last year, yet somehow it still wasn't enough. Huh. Pretty sure the ball got dropped somewhere between engineering's requirements and yacht hookers for executive yachts. Just like when the US government handed out tens of billions for infrastructure upgrades that the telcos translated into record profits and third world Internet speeds. Telcos and cable companies enjoy taking the money, see, but the part about investing some of it seems pointless, given their government supported monopolies.
They (AT&T) have been shifting frequencies around and putting 3G services on the lower bands with better building penetration and shifting edge over to the higher bands.
They aren't just moving EDGE to 1900mhz, they've also moved voice services in many areas. All fine and dandy until you get out into the fringe of coverage and can't make or hold a voice call....
As much as I loathe Verizon I've never seen them make changes to their network that dicked over existing customers. AT&T has done so on numerous occasions.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
No one else could have handled the iPhone bandwidth demand back in 2007-2009 period any better than AT&T did.
Verizon could have handled it better than AT&T.
The Achilles heel of Apple may be when they release a CDMA iPhone for Verizon and people suddenly realize half the stuff they used to do on the iPhone does not work on CDMA where you get Talk OR Data.
Verizon is supposedly working on a way to rectify this problem. There was a story about it here or on BBR a few months ago. Here's one link that talks about the upgrade to CDMA.
I'm curious to know if this is really a big issue for a significant number of people? I've had my Android phone now for five months on Verizon and I really haven't had a problem with this. I do have the option to use wi-fi while I'm talking on the phone but I've rarely exercised it.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Smartphones have been available for at least 10 years now. If AT&T and other carriers had started investing in their data networks then, they wouldn't be having this problem now.
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I'm just not able to trust AT&T on anything after seeing these stats:
http://gizmodo.com/5428717/att-has-spent-less-on-network-construction-and-capital-expenditures-every-quarter-since-the-q4-2007
"As much as I loathe Verizon I've never seen them make changes to their network that dicked over existing customers. AT&T has done so on numerous occasions."
Absolutely. Here's some examples:
Analog -- the phone cos (that had 850mhz spectrum) were required to keep analog running until recently. AT&T would keep the *bare minimum* 1 channel running, even in areas where that channel was consistently busy from either analog roamers or TDMA phones still in service. They also didn't maintain the equipment so some of these channels actually didn't work, didn't have the proper transmit power, or were noisy. Verizon tried to maintain the same level of service for analog as for their current services -- if an area had heavy usage they'd run more analog channels, they kept the equipment maintained, and so on, up until the shutoff point.
EVDO -- they made a point of not compromising voice service. In areas where they need plenty of 850mhz voice (CDMA 1X) channels for reliable service, it means they'll have like 1 850 EVDO channel and the rest at 1900 -- it's better to have data slow down at the fringe than to have calls start dropping constantly.
LTE -- they've publicly said they'll keep 1X running until at least 2020, even though LTE will be completed by 2013-2014. (They haven't said anything about EVDO, but once a lot of traffic shifts to LTE they could probably keep 1 channel of EVDO going and it'd be plenty for the remaining EVDO devices) This gives 6 to 7 years for people to switch.
Contrast this to (pre-merger) AT&T Wireless and Cingular, which BOTH quit selling TDMA phones (switching to GSM exclusively) BEFORE they had even finished building out their GSM network. And contrast it to the current situation, where they keep reducing the service levels for GSM-only customers to improve 3G (reducing number of GSM channels, and moving them to 1900 to free up 850 for 3G), while continuing to offer numerous models of GSM-only (i.e. *non*-3G) phones. When I looked a month or so ago, 50% of the models they had on the web site didn't have 3G! THIS is the root of AT&T's present problems -- it's like, if you want people to use 3G, quit selling non-3G phones! Cost isn't an issue any more, there are cheap and basic 3G phones for those who don't want something fancy.
I should note, AT&T's excuses really are excuses -- Verizon's data traffic has been increasing FASTER than AT&T's, to the point that it's predicted VZW will carry MORE traffic than AT&T by sometime in early 2011. Android phones use more data than IPhones, and due to huge Android phone sales, there's more of them too.