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AT&T Defends Controversial FaceTime Policy Following Widespread Backlash
zacharye writes "AT&T is wasting no time hitting back at critics of its decision to limit the use of popular video chat app FaceTime over its cellular network to users who sign up for its shared data plans. In a post on the company's official public policy blog on Wednesday, AT&T chief privacy officer Bob Quinn sneered at criticisms that restricting FaceTime over cellular to shared data plans violates the Federal Communications Commission's network neutrality rules for wireless networks."
File a complaint against AT&T here: http://www.fcc.gov/complaints
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> AT&T chief privacy officer Bob Quinn sneered at criticisms
"On retrospect, I probably should have turned off face chat before doing that."
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Bullshit!
They just don't want to bother upgrading, it is more profitable to rate limit and jack up prices.
What will be interesting is if they try this crap on LTE, where there are contractual obligations to not discriminate based on application usage in the Block-B spectrum they purchased. Verizon has already gone down this road with something more ambiguous (tethering) and lost. This is an actual application that they are discriminating against.
AT&T may not be able to get away with this shit for very long before running afoul of the FCC.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
The block is done the same way the tethering block is implemented. There's a setting in the carrier file which controls whether or not FaceTime is allowed over 3G. The processing of said file is built into the iOS and can be downloaded over the air and time the user connects to the carrier network. AT&T sets the FaceTime flag to no or yes based on user's the chosen plan. Other carriers simply set it to yes.
For example, when I went to China with my iPhone and connected to China Mobile the tethering option suddenly became available (since China Mobile doesn't block tethering). When I got back to the U.S. and connected back to AT&T, the tethering option was disabled again (since I'm on the grandfather unlimited plan).
Processing of the carrier file is built into iOS and it doesn't care if your phone is unlocked or not. Unless AT&T sets the FaceTime flag to true for unlocked iPhones, then you still won't be able to do FaceTime over 3G, unless you switch to a Mobile Share plan (which is a rip off if you ask me).
To bypass this block, your iPhone would have to be jailbroken.
Their thinking simply doesn't make any sense.
- Androids are outselling iPhones (globally, maybe not AT&T specifically)
- iPhones currently don't have real 4G, which is over 3x faster than 3G on AT&T's network
- Android users now consume more data, faster, and put more strain on the wireless network at any given time, compared to iPhone users
- Skype is available on all major platforms and works over even 3G; quality is surely better on 4G/LTE.
And yet, they're blocking Facetime "out of an overriding concern for the impact this expansion may have on our network and the overall customer experience"??
Logic fail, AT&T. Just admit you're being greedy bastards and think iPhone users are more easily ripped off, that way you'll just be extortionists without also being liars.
The controversy is that this is the latest in a long line of examples of AT&T bitching about people overburdening their poor network with their evil data-hogging ways instead of spending a goddamn dime to upgrade it from its current twine-and-tin-can infrastructure into something that can handle the needs of a 21st-century world superpower.
Everything you just said is valid, and parallels the situation with another utility, namely the power grid. All of the arguments against why we can't have rural cell coverage were previously used to explain why we can't have a rural electrical grid.
The answer turned out to be that government needed to set up power companies, and that utilities needed to be publicly-owned or closely watched and directed (i.e., regulated). Initiatives like the Tennessee Valley Authority meant that my grandparents got to trade in their lanterns and candles for electric lights.
The simple fact is that there are a few core infrastructure industries that need to be either publicly-held (power, water, sanitation, mail) or kept on a very, very tight leash (Banking, see "Glass-Steagal").
AT&T is making a very convincing case that communications infrastructure -- which was already developed and built by tax dollars -- needs to be another publicly-held infrastructure. Here's how you know this is true.
Every time some local municipality gets together and starts putting up their own wreless network, the telecom lobbyists always descend like locusts screaming that "It's not fair to make us compete against government entities!" What they're saying is that private companies in this industry, with their need for profit, can't ever be as efficient as a public effort. All that means is that as technology has progressed, we've simply discovered another industry that operates as a classic "market failure."
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."