AT&T Admits Network Can't Handle iPhone, iPad Traffic 298
RedEaredSlider writes "AT&T has admitted that the rise of tablets and smartphones like the iPad and iPhone has taken a major toll on its network. In its public filing to the Federal Communications Commission yesterday, the company admitted that its network has been under increasing strain as more and more high-bandwidth devices have been connected. This not only includes smartphones like the iPhone, but tablets like the iPad as well. AT&T says that in many cases tablets put a greater stress on their network (PDF) than smartphones do."
So? (Score:5, Insightful)
You sign the customers first, work out the details later. Customers are committed for 2 years, will likely be on for 4 or 6. They'll be stuck with you.
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If only. You used to be able to move devices between AT&T and T-Mobile, but AT&T is now using their incompetence at managing their network as an excuse to take even that choice away from us.
Given the "bigger is better" mentality in US politics today, the merger is unlikely to be stopped even if the FCC rules it can't go forward. They'll just pass legislation invalidating the FCC's ruling (assuming the FCC doesn't comply in the first place).
There is only the illusion of choice, since the cellular net
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No, it should be buy a phone, then buy service, like the Europeans have. One phone works on all their providers, and thus the providers have to actually be competitive on rates and service, since they can't use unique phones to attract business.
Also, Verizon iPhones are not eating AT&T's lunch yet. From the Q1 quarterly reports:
Verizon: 2.2 million iPhones activated
AT&T: 3.2 million iPhones activated
Verizon activations are all new iPhones. AT&Ts numbers do include used iPhones being activated
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Maybe it is. Maybe they decided that with a bit more development, the Ipod could be turned into a PDA. And later they may have decided, that for a PDA it would be a good idea to have data connectivity wherever you go. At the time it could very well be that the cellphone network was the best way to get data connectivity wherever you go. So, it may have made sense to put a sim card in a PDA at the time. Then they may have thought that customers didn't want to b
Stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
So it's the fault of the devices and not the retarded telcom that refuses to build out it's network, besides the fact that there is an obvious demand. Fuck them.
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Building out the network is easier said than done due to NIMBY syndrome:
http://www.mercurynews.com/peninsula/ci_17878746?nclick_check=1 [mercurynews.com]
http://blogs.sfweekly.com/thesnitch/2010/03/exposing_brugmanns_cell_phone.php [sfweekly.com]
Re:Stupid (Score:4, Insightful)
That's why they bought T-Mobile. Much cheaper and faster to buy existing infrastructure.
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No. The problem with AT&T's network isn't the number of towers (though that's a limiting factor when it comes to customer growth and advertiseable coverage area) but rather the shoddy backhaul. And it's *extremely* unlikely that T-Mobile's backhual is any better. In fact, upgrading their wireless signaling to LTE "4G" is almost insulting considering they haven't reached anything close to 50% of the capacity of 3G. It's strictly a marketing move so they can advertise the "4G" status of their network.
Re:Stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
Too many people forget this (Score:5, Informative)
With wired networks "Just build more," is basically always an option. Connection too slow? Upgrade the equipment to faster signaling. At the max signaling? Upgrade to fiber, or to better fiber. Have the most out of one connection you can? Lay more fiber and run it in parallel.
That isn't the case with wireless. Providers have a defined set of frequencies they can use. They can't just use more because it is licensed. Transmission power is also regulated and of course noise is out of their control. So that means bandwidth and SNR are fixed, which means the throughput you'll get is fixed (as per Shanon's Law).
Also, since it is wireless, everyone on a given cell shares what you have. If the technology and conditions allow for, say, 5mbps you get 5mbps to split among everyone. If there's 1 guy, he gets 5mbps to himself. If there's 100 people they split it and get much less each.
Only solution is to build out the cell towers, make them more frequent so each cell is smaller. Well and good but cost aside, people whine, they don't want to see them, they don't want them near their houses. That makes for a problem.
There is no magic solution for this. Better technology and new frequency licenses (LTE and WiMax and all that) will help a lot (of course it costs a lot to roll out since all radios have to be augmented with new ones) but you run in to physical limits.
Re:Too many people forget this (Score:4, Informative)
Instead it CUT it's deployment spending over the past few years
[citation needed]
That would explain a lot but I looked it up and there appears to be no indication that's the culprit (not sure what is). Here's a link [trefis.com] or two [seekingalpha.com] or three [barrons.com] that says AT&T has increased its wireless capital spending. I found one article [multichannel.com] claiming what you say in the headline but if you read the article the jist is that the reduction in capital spending was due to a slowdown in their U-verse home fiber buildout.
Not just AT&T (Score:2)
Now that there is no regulation that requires it, *all* the carriers were shorting the expansion of the networks to accommodate future need and pocketing the cash.
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Even moreso, saying you cannot handle the traffic should clearly be the definitive factor to tell them that they should, in fact, upgrade their capacity. Yet they aren't?
ATT sure has some blinders on.
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Amen to that, brother.
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I have a voice plan for $39.99, unlimited data for $30.00, and 1500 text messages for $15.00. My bill is $90-95 a month. However, I am grandfathered into these plans. New customers aren't so lucky.
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You do realize that US$70 is approximately equal to UK£35. (I know the exchange rate fluctuates, but...)
Also, which provider did you try in Orlando (assuming you mean Orlando, Florida, and not one of the other Orlando cities/towns in America)? Because most locales in the States currently have at least 2 competing ISPs. Generally, that's local cable (typically slow upstream and bursty downstream) and the local telco (providing some form of ADSL or, in my case, VDSL). Depending on which one of those
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Really? Because I just priced out service on O2 with 300 minutes, 1GB data, 250 text messages, and 50 MMS messages, and I'm at £44.11. At today's exchange rates, that's roughly $73. However, what we don't have is a 20% VAT (TOTAL taxes and fees charged by the US are about 10-12%); also, we do not pay MTRs here. In monthly service alone, I'd be paying about 12% more with O2 than I am with AT&T, and I would end up with fewer minutes, half the data, and be charged money on top of that for calling pho
One redeeming feature (Score:5, Funny)
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Which is not at all, since those CSRs can't improve the network in your area. You might as well just complain to a wall, would save everyone time and money since you would not have to wait on hold and they would not need to provide a CSR.
If anything being told politely they aren't going to fix it just pisses me off more.
Is AT&T really that bad? (Score:2)
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Qwest is horrible. They had some problem, and it left myself and a fair amount of people around me without service for almost half a month. They always replied to inquiries with shrugs when asked how much longer it'd be. And all but laughed when I tried to see if I could get out of paying for the duration of service that they weren't actually providing me service.
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How do they keep the tetanus alive on the flaming scrap? This sounds like a real biotech breakthrough. maybe they should switch fields or open up a subsidiary or something. Granted I'm not sure why you'd want too, but it's impressive.
Yesterday they announced profits were up 39% in Q1 (Score:5, Insightful)
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$3.4 billion in profit last quarter. And yet their network is garbage. I have an idea, but it's an engineer idea, not a suit idea, so... never mind.
Watch $3.4 billion turn into $1.4 billion, and AT&T Engineers will play the Verizon card in front of AT&T suits as their bonuses evaporate. Hey suit, can you hear me NOW?
Re:Yesterday they announced profits were up 39% in (Score:5, Funny)
Man comments on story that has no impact on him, wants attention, news @ 11
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It really is an odd combination of funny and sad seeing a tech site as old as slashdot is getting. It's a rare type that actually lets you see geeks getting older, and it's depressing how little being one seems to change the general terror of new technologies.
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Smartphones are like cars. If you don't own one, you can certainly get along just fine, but you don't really know what you're missing. Once you have one, you wonder how you lived without it.
As for the carriers, if you have a phone they're raking you over the coals anyway. My wife and I have smartphones, and they cost about $80/mo combined (effectively $40 each). There are places where the network is slow (there are rural areas around me) to non-existent, but for the most part I get 3G speeds in most of my
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Hell, AT&T foots $400-$500 on the cost of a new top-of-the-line phone for me every 18 months, and in return I pay them for $700 for service during that time.
Which means AT&T comes out $600 or more ahead, since their actual cost for the phone is almost certainly less than $100 more than you paid for it.
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For instance, I don't own any pants. I don't intend to either. I save hundreds of dollars a year. Images the TSA saves from me on their backscatter x-ray devices are hardly a concern anymore. I never suffer the humiliation of realizing that my lost car keys are, in fact, in my pocket. It's great!
As a bonus, i don't have anything to undo when nature calls. I can afford to push off rushing t
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"I don't own a smartphone. don't have any plans to, either. saves me $100/mo, give or take; and no privacy to be taken away. no searches by cops/tsa/anyoneElse. no history to grab from me. no location data, either."
Sure there is if you have a regular "dumb" phone.. call logs, text logs, GPS information (either on the phone or from the cell provider's records) even if the phone doesn't have an actual GPS receiver.. they can figure out based on triangulation from the towers in the area.
This is why I got a wireless iPad2 (Score:2)
If you did what I did and traded back your alpha iPad3 (great idea, 3D, but it sucks juice and the eyestrain gets to these old eyes) for a wireless iPad2, then you're ahead of the game, since you don't need to rely on the AT&T network or even Verizon.
Wireless-N service works perfectly fine, and everywhere I go there's free wireless N including my home (you can buy a wireless N router for around $50).
And you can even run Skype on it, so you don't need a cell either.
Crazy idea here (Score:5, Insightful)
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There is a fundamental problem with "upgrading the network" - there is a limit to the density of cell towers. There is the pure physics of it that you can have just so many competing radios per square mile and there is also the problem of locating these cell sites.
Just putting up towers is somewhat of a problem because most businesses do not want the hassle. Having a cell tower attached to your building means that you will get at least one complaint a day from someone that believes all they read on the In
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Give them ideas? Admittedly without having read it, I suspect that is the ultimate goal of the filing. "Oh, woe is us, our network is bursting at the seams due to our demanding customers." Later, lobbyists will refer to the filing when petitioning for a government funded build out of network to enable their customers to reach resources on the Internet which the depend on for their work and daily living. They love the fluff pieces put out by Apple about how Company X is doing new and wonderful things that "a
Great Example (Score:5, Insightful)
For why we need larger quantities and higher quality carriers and ISPs. It's not like this is the first time hardware advances have put pressure on specific sectors to improve their services. Most providers are already giving the US some of the worst bandwidth you can get in the modern world. And now non-tech users (read: smartphone and tablet users) are becoming complacent with data plans and shabby speeds that it's becoming this pathetic norm. The one recent ray of hope is Google's Kansas City project where they're getting some of the best stuff in the country while someone in LA is sitting there twittling their thumbs with 3mpbs Internet speed. Oh boy...
Good you can just switch providers (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Good you can just switch providers (Score:5, Funny)
Good you can switch... if your device is unlocked (Score:2)
But fortunately for the service providers, most of the devices are locked in to their service, even if the devices themselves are technically capable.
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This isn't really true. In the USA there are lots and lots of regional carriers that are compatible with the phones of other carriers because they use their networks. Sprint in particular is a big reseller so you can take their phones to Boost, Cellular South, Cricket, Liberty Wireless, Movida, U.S. Cellular, Virgin Wireless, and others, Verizon has MetroPCS, AT&T has Cellular One, and T-Mobile has Simple Mobile.
You sell it, you support it... (Score:3, Insightful)
If AT&T is selling these phones, then they are the ones who should be responsible for supporting them, which IMO includes providing adequate bandwidth and network capacity to deal with the demands of the devices that they sell. I purchase a phone and data package. I should be able to get the capacity that I have paid for. If that is an unlimited data package (mine is), then this is NOT my problem. It is AT&T's problem in promising more than they can deliver, which in any terms is fraud.
And the real reason they're admitting this (Score:5, Insightful)
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Well, in their eyes, the T-Mobile purchase IS ACTUALLY improving their network. They are spending close to 40 billion to improve their network. F AT&T.
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Profit in telecom comes in 2 forms:
1. The Government
2. Overselling networ
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Simple solution! (Score:5, Funny)
Of course, the solution here is obvious:
Charge everyone more for data plans in order to encourage less use of limited resources!
With all their profits, maybe they should build (Score:5, Insightful)
They made $3.5B last quarter (net profit). If they only invested half of that, maybe their network wouldn't be under so much strain and the economy would prosper. How much people can YOU employ for $2B? I would say at least 40,000 people that would then be able to reinvest their money in you know, $500 cell phones and $120/mo data services.
Duh (Score:3)
Maybe their capital expenditures on their network should have gone up the last few years instead of down. They have been squeezing their customers for profits at the cost of their network. Now they want the FCC and the T-Mob acquisition to bail them out of mba bonus engineering.
Small wonder... (Score:4, Insightful)
Small wonder they dropped the "unlimited flat rate 3G" plan a month after the iPad 3G was introduced.
Makes me wonder how far the gap between the wonder and the reality of "cloud computing" is. Sounds great to keep all your data/music/video in the "cloud", but throwing around that much data grinds any capped data plan into the ground.
(Advantage to the early adopters: some of us still have that glorious "unlimited 3G" plan. Yay! FYI: they're transferrable.)
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Advantage to the early adopters: some of us still have that glorious "unlimited 3G" plan. Yay! FYI: they're transferrable.
I have one of them too, but i do expect that to go away at some point in the near future. They CAN change the TOS on a whim or just say "that contract is no longer availble, so you have to renew to a capped plan"
Behold The Cloud! (Score:2)
So Upgrade (Score:3)
Here's a thought: AT&T should upgrade their network.
That may be a costly endeavour but the mobile market is very lucrative and it can only give them a greater edge in the future.
This whole maximizing-profits by reducing costs thing is making tech companies underperform. It's short-term thinking and exactly how our public corporation system isn't working as well as it should. Can't they start thinking beyond the next financial quarter or two?
In other words, they're being cheap and short-sighted.
Sorry dude, your suggestion won't work... (Score:2)
Your suggestion won't work (as in will-never-happen) because it's a technical solution to a psychological problem; namely that top officers of large company are sociopaths that not only are indifferent to the sufferings they inflict on others, but in fact thrive on it (and yes, they're getting rich off it too.) They're not going to ask for a new hand when they're holding all the cards.
Doesn't stop the sales, though. (Score:2)
Sell beyond capacity. I've seen that movie. It's called "The Producers." Those guys went to prison for fraud, though.
If only they had some cash. (Score:3)
Devil's Advocate (Score:2)
I know I'm posting against the prevailing opinion here, but I think AT&T might be doing the right thing. Consider that communication technology gets better and cheaper every year. Upgrading now not only cuts into profits, but it also means buying capacity for more money than the competition who doesn't upgrade for a few years.
The sign of a well-managed telecom is that its network is just at the point of being so crappy that folks are leaving. Any more capacity and they're wasting their dough. Erring
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"The sign of a well-managed telecom is that its network is just at the point of being so crappy that folks are leaving."
Stupidity like that is why we have some of the worst broadband in the world. You sir should run for president.
It has gotten worse lately. (Score:2)
I have 5 bars of signal and get connection errors on both my samsung phone AND my iphone. Things that used to work flawlessly 5 months ago now complain about "slow network" and "server not responding".
If only... (Score:2)
If only AT&T had had the foresight to charge money for their data plans. Then they'd have had additional revenue streams from all the new subscribers these devices brought to them. Hindsight is 20/20, I guess.
A good reason to reject the T-Mobile buy (Score:4, Insightful)
This will unquestionably be bad for all consumers. Not only from the obvious potential for ever-increasing prices, but an almost certainty that service quality will decline. AT&T has a long running history of not building out their infrastructure as they should. Demonstrably, T-Mobile has been able to despite their lower ranking in the market place and their presence has been a a limit on customer abuses by all wireless carriers.
Letting T-mobile get absorbed will not bring this "great quality" to AT&T. AT&T is an extremely powerful and capable company. If they wanted to improve their infrastructure, they would. They would rather provide less service and abuse customers for cash. This sort of operation should be discouraged and even inhibited given that they are given the "right of way" to use the government (by the people?) licensed air waves in exchange not only for money, but with the promise that they will provide a benefit to the people and the nation. They are consistently failing in much of that and clearly where it comes to keeping their infrastructure in an improving and developing state as they should.
This supposedly argues in favor of T-Mobile buy?!? (Score:2)
OK, I read the article and the related filings...
This supposedly argues in favor of T-Mobile buy?!?
Their argument is that it would take them 5 years to build out their infrastructure compared to the purchase of T-Mobile, and how they suddenly have a 30% larger network.
That works, as long as you assume that that network doesn't come with existing T-Mobile subscribers, and that assumption is wrong. According to the latest figures I could find: http://www.textmessageblog.mobi/2008/06/26/market-share-by-cellul [textmessageblog.mobi]
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So... They get a 30% larger network, but a 43% larger number of subscribers.
Gosh, far be it from me to defend AT&T, but they're having a government problem, so I guess I have to.
It'll take AT&T 5 years to site new towers because the FCC bureaucracy makes it take that long. That's the only reason they need to buy T-Mobile. If it took 2 months to permit a new tower, this wouldn't be an issue. The FCC is directly causing a reduction in the competitiveness of the market which will increase everybody'
In Summary ... (Score:2)
We have abused our customers by failing to provide them with the services they paid for. We have sold products that we cannot support and continued to misrepresent our data services as superior to those of our competitors. We have demonstrated contempt for the concept of building out our network. We have generated record profits as a result. Therefore we humbly ask the FCC to allow us to buy T-Mobile so we can be the biggest mobile provider and do more of the same.
Thank you,
AT&T
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They knew this on iPhone launch day in 2007. They are very aware of the happenings on their network. It took them this long to publicly admit what is painfully obvious to everyone (it's a running joke). That says more about the company ethos and management's opinion of it's customers than if they didn't realize that their service was being pounded.
Sheldon
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I gave up counting dropped calls. Now I just count conversations I manage to complete before the drop happens. I have one for April so far: "I'll be home in 5 minutes, see you then, Bye"
A better question (Score:3)
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Quality of mobile coverage is dependent on a myriad of factors, including your geographic area and the handset you are using. Some carriers suck in some areas and are great in others.
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Yeah, but AT&T rocks at it's other main service: telegraphs
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If the cell nearest you is saturated with other subscribers, your phone will find a cell with the next-best reception; that cell may be further away and you might have a worse connection. If a particular network of cells is oversubscribed, in a high-density at busy times there's a good chance you're connecting over an un-ideal cell because the closest one is busy.
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As I recall the towers are the decision makers when it comes to what cell tower your phone connects to, not the phone.
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Have you heard about the Verizon iPhone? It's just like the AT&T one, except this one makes phone calls.
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Why does AT&T constantly drop calls?
Apparently so that people like me have better service. I couldn't tell you the last time I had a dropped call. Maybe it's your phone, not AT&T?
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No, it took them 4+ years to admit it.
Terrible service? Depends on what area you are in. AT&T service is just fine where i live.
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Re:Geee, wiz. (Score:5, Insightful)
Two different problems.
In areas of low population density, their towers don't reach far enough, so there are huge areas with no signal at all.
In areas of high population density, their towers don't have enough frequency slots or time slots to handle the number of simultaneous users (and the added multipath problems caused by mostly-concrete high-rise structures make things worse).
Both problems are real problems. The problem with the U.S. is not that the density is too high or too low, but that the density has too large a standard deviation.
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and the added multipath problems caused by mostly-concrete high-rise structures make things worse
I thought W-CDMA handled multipath effectively?
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They put most of their resources where their customers are concentrated.
Still, they have to cover the hinterlands where there are not enough customers to pay for the towers.
There is no place in Germany or France that has a population density similar to Nevada or Utah or Montana or Alaska. Yet people expect to drive down the interstate and never lose signal in all of these places.
So the density argument is valid, if not slightly overstated.
In North America, prices for cell service are still much higher than
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No, it took them 4+ years to admit it.
Terrible service? Depends on what area you are in. AT&T service is just fine where i live.
Same here in Houston actually, except for downtown during the work week but it's not confined to AT&T. My co-workers that refused to switch to AT&T to get an iPhone because the shitty network had a very hard landing when they got to work with there new Verizon iPhones and encountered the reality of oversaturated cell towers on their network as well. Even just walking a mile outside of downtown drastically improves services here. At home, about 10 miles out of downtown, AT&T data and voice servic
Calculated Admission (Score:3)
Now they can justify raising rates to... recapitalize for infrastructure upgrade, and includes several hundred million to... retain... talent in the... company managerial class. Frankly I would be surprised if nobody saw that one coming.
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Now they can justify raising rates to... recapitalize for infrastructure upgrade, and includes several hundred million to... retain... talent in the... company managerial class. Frankly I would be surprised if nobody saw that one coming.
Yeah and also by T-Mobile, excuse why the need more frequencies.
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It only took them 4+ years to figure it out. I could tell what effect it was having on my bandwidth back in 2008, if not before that.
Oh, and thanks for apologizing to your customers, AT&T, for that terrible service you knew you had been providing for years.
It's disgusting how incapable corporations are of being honest with their customers.
Let me explain this event to you. ATT wants to buy T-Mobile to solve this problem. They still have to go through the regulatory and review process and get the acquisition approved. The only reason they admitted to this (to the FCC no less) is because they are hoping it will help push them through the approval process. "Oooh.... without TMo, we wont be able to remain a viable carrier because of how pathetic our network is!!! Please let us buy them!!!" <-- THAT is what their recent announcements/admissions
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who says their not both?
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who says their not both?
Nobody who knows how to spell "they're".
Re:Geee, wiz. (Score:5, Insightful)
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The technical issue really isn't one of competence either. It's a matter of the math... the number of people being served by a site, and the finite bandwidth. Reusing the same frequency spectrum with more and more sites covering less and less area each, is about the only way for THEM to handle a greater load.
Part of a practical solution should be done at the user end. Forcing lower use by things like charging extra or tethering doesn't go over very well. Lowering bandwidth with ad blockers would help so
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Google rakes in the profit.
So Google is an incompetent douche?
Does this work for people as well?
The richest people in the world are incompetent?
Success = Automatic fucktard status?
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Actually Apple raked in the profit, mostly at AT&T's expense.
Apple is the the largest handset maker when measured by Revenue. [appleinsider.com]
While slipping to a dismal third [independent.co.uk] in terms of actual smartphones sold Apple rakes in more money than anyone. [cnn.com]
The odd thing is just how proud of this Apple fans are [ipadlatest.com]. Imagine being told you are being overcharged (gouged) for your device and saying "thank you sir, may I have another".
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Yet Apple blows them out of the water on a revenue basis.
Uh no. Perhaps you need to go back to elementary school math. Apple blows them out of the water with *profits*. Revenue is something entirely different. They beat Apple on product shipped and revenue. Apple beats them on profits.
When you don't understand basic principles like the difference between "revenue" and "profit" it's hard to take anything you say seriously.
And, to address the reason why, look to what the makers were saying before the iPhone. The other makers were all fighting for the price
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Can you imagine what the cost of an internet connection would be if they had to actually HAVE and PAY FOR enough bandwidth such that IF every subscriber decided to jump on at once none of them would see any slowdown at all? You couldn't afford it.
Capacity planning targets the Average Peak utilization. Not the theoretical maximum possible peak.
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While you're correct, overprovisioning is a science both in storage and in bandwidth worlds. We in the storage world do it on purpose but know that once we start getting close to our limits that we need to expand. When we see trends of increased storage utilization we start planning on additional storage and then hopefully when we're at or near capacity we bring more online. AT&T failed to act and upgrade the feeds from their towers. This is not as surprise as I've recently been up close and personal wi
Well think about the costs (Score:2)
They built a network of a certain size based on some rate structure that a lot of people can afford. Then they see and 8000% increase in traffic. It might not take 80x the cost to increase capacity by 80%. And a lot of this is peak load. But it's reasonable to assume that the cost of expanding require to handle the capacity at the same margins would be at least as expensive as the network they alreayd built. If they doubled the price, people would leave. if the just increced the price for the ipad own
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No problems here in the Baltimore area on Verizon, perhaps it is true that they can handle the iPhone, as it isn't any different from any other smartphone...
Oh, and love the Verizon unlimited data plans.
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seriously? when you think smart phone, you think iPhone, its like asking for a Kleenex, making a Xerox copy or "googling" it. Quit being so hypersensitive
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Find a bored lawyer to write a letter to your carrier stating that they are failing to deliver on the services you have been required to buy and that you demand they let you out of the requirement immediately. Or you could write up your own letter to that effect, but lawyer letter-head gets more attention.