Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, iPhone
New York Times calls iPhone the 'Hummer of cellphones'
Why? Because the iPhone sucks up network bandwidth on a rather massive scale. The article, available online, tells a story most iPhone users already know.
AT&T was unprepared for the massive assault on the 3G network from phones that stream audio and video, and surf the web at a rate far higher than other smartphones.
The piece quotes AT&T Wireless exec John Donovan saying "It's been a challenging year for us. Overnight we're seeing a radical shift in how people are using their phones... There's just no parallel for the demand."
That won't make AT&T customers any happier. A recent survey by Pricegrabber found that 34% of those that responded say they aren't buying an iPhone because it is on AT&T. Many current customers say they'd like to be anywhere but AT&T with their iPhone, but it's likely that a mass migration to Verizon or some other carrier might cause the same problems there.
One issue is that AT&T just isn't communicating very well with customers who are paying a boatload of money for data and text messaging. AT&T could easily (but not happily) drop rates a bit, or eliminate or reduce the high charges for texting. They could apologize to customers for the flood of dropped calls and lack of 3G service in big cities like New York or San Francisco.
Instead, there is stoic silence. No guidance on tethering or MMS release dates, nor communication of any kind really. AT&T already has a pretty big PR problem, and they seem determined to make it worse.
I contacted AT&T today about tethering and MMS, especially since the New York Times article says AT&T is 'postponing tethering.'
The response, from Michael Coe at AT&T, says they have never specified a date for tethering, and when I asked again about MMS there was simply no reply. Update: AT&T has just responded with an MMS date. Quoting Brad Mays of AT&T Wireless:
The date is September 25th, which does indeed fall a few days past the official end of summer. It was important to give our customers a positive experience from day one. We support more iPhone customers than any other carrier in the world so we took the time necessary to make sure our network is ready to handle what we expect will be a record volume of MMS traffic. We truly appreciate our customers' patience and hope they'll understand our desire to get it right from the start.
The service will be enabled with a software update on the launch date. Customers can obtain the update from iTunes, just like all other iPhone updates.
As for tethering, by its nature, this function could exponentially increase traffic on the network, and we need to ensure that some of our current upgrades are in place before we can deliver the expanded functionality with the excellent performance that customers expect. We expect to offer tethering in the future.
AT&T was unprepared for the massive assault on the 3G network from phones that stream audio and video, and surf the web at a rate far higher than other smartphones.
The piece quotes AT&T Wireless exec John Donovan saying "It's been a challenging year for us. Overnight we're seeing a radical shift in how people are using their phones... There's just no parallel for the demand."
That won't make AT&T customers any happier. A recent survey by Pricegrabber found that 34% of those that responded say they aren't buying an iPhone because it is on AT&T. Many current customers say they'd like to be anywhere but AT&T with their iPhone, but it's likely that a mass migration to Verizon or some other carrier might cause the same problems there.
One issue is that AT&T just isn't communicating very well with customers who are paying a boatload of money for data and text messaging. AT&T could easily (but not happily) drop rates a bit, or eliminate or reduce the high charges for texting. They could apologize to customers for the flood of dropped calls and lack of 3G service in big cities like New York or San Francisco.
Instead, there is stoic silence. No guidance on tethering or MMS release dates, nor communication of any kind really. AT&T already has a pretty big PR problem, and they seem determined to make it worse.
I contacted AT&T today about tethering and MMS, especially since the New York Times article says AT&T is 'postponing tethering.'
The response, from Michael Coe at AT&T, says they have never specified a date for tethering, and when I asked again about MMS there was simply no reply. Update: AT&T has just responded with an MMS date. Quoting Brad Mays of AT&T Wireless:
The date is September 25th, which does indeed fall a few days past the official end of summer. It was important to give our customers a positive experience from day one. We support more iPhone customers than any other carrier in the world so we took the time necessary to make sure our network is ready to handle what we expect will be a record volume of MMS traffic. We truly appreciate our customers' patience and hope they'll understand our desire to get it right from the start.
The service will be enabled with a software update on the launch date. Customers can obtain the update from iTunes, just like all other iPhone updates.
As for tethering, by its nature, this function could exponentially increase traffic on the network, and we need to ensure that some of our current upgrades are in place before we can deliver the expanded functionality with the excellent performance that customers expect. We expect to offer tethering in the future.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
Michael said 1:09PM on 9-03-2009
So I guess "late summer" was BS for MMS then? Freaking wonderful. Thanks ATT for more of that "quality" service.
Reply
Aztec said 1:14PM on 9-03-2009
I love my iPhone, hate AT&T.
Curtis said 1:33PM on 9-03-2009
I guess technically they have until September 21 to make that 'late summer' date... September 22 is the first day of Autumn this year.
thezonie said 2:19PM on 9-03-2009
Engagdet says September 25 - http://www.engadget.com/2009/09/03/atandt-rolling-out-mms-to-iphone-on-september-25/
bhavesh patel said 1:13PM on 9-03-2009
Meanwhile, AT&T continues it's false advertising of being the best network...stop the false advertising and address the problems!
Reply
Ryan Trevisol said 1:17PM on 9-03-2009
I wonder how much money goes into those ads.
Really, how many people see that "more bars in more places" garbage and actually go down and buy AT&T wireless service?
Seriously. If I consider switching wireless companies I actually talk to my friends that have the service and see their impressions. For example, I know from driving all over south florida with a client and friend of mine who has Sprint, that their network is easily better than AT&T's.
Apple already does all the advertising AT&T wireless needs.
Eddie said 1:54PM on 9-03-2009
And I often wonder if the AT&T folks use their own product so they can see first-hand what's going on. Wouldn't it be ironic if many of them use other vendors' products!!
Connie said 2:02PM on 9-03-2009
Oh, Eddie! That would be terrible! I think it's called "eating your own dogfood" which is what they should be doing!
Orion said 1:14PM on 9-03-2009
AT&T is really going down hill fast. We have two iPhones that we've had since February of this year. I received an email from them today stating that we don't have a data plan on one of them, yet both send/receive fine off of wifi - wtf AT&T?!
Reply
Orion said 1:15PM on 9-03-2009
To clarify the wifi comment - when it is NOT available we are fine for data. I have not yet had a chance to call AT&T to find out why 7 months after getting two iPhones and plans they think we don't have a data plan on one of them.
Scott said 1:14PM on 9-03-2009
Does AT&T think that they can just sit on their laurels and provide mediocre service and support simply because they are the only game in town to support the iPhone?
AT&T better be working hard to make their customers happy, or continue to lock in their exclusive deal with Apple. Otherwise, if the iPhone becomes available on another carrier, US customers will jump ship fast.
Reply
bhos said 3:26PM on 9-03-2009
...and you will se the same exact problems with the 'other' carrier.
Andy S. said 1:21PM on 9-03-2009
The Hummer of cellphones? No.
The iPhone isn't the physical manifestation of everything that is wrong with America.
The iPhone isn't the very worst features of other cellphones combined into one supremely horrible cellphone.
Owning an iPhone doesn't automatically qualify you as a giant douchebag (granted, some giant douchebags do own iPhones. That's unavoidable).
I get what the article is saying, calling the iPhone a "data guzzler", but there's one major difference: gasoline is a finite natural resource. Bandwidth is really only limited by how you build your network. AT&T could spend more money on their network and make more bandwidth available. No matter what we spend, we cannot change the amount of available crude oil.
Or, here's a thought: AT&T could give up their iPhone exclusivity agreement and allow other carriers to take some of the load.
Sure, the iPhone is the Hummer of cellphones... if gasoline was an infinitely renewable resource, and if Hummer had a contract with the oil industry which prevented Hummer from making vehicles that would run on other fuel sources.
Reply
stuck said 2:45PM on 9-03-2009
I actually agree that the SUV is an abomination, in general, and probably a bad comparision. And that it can easily be viewed as apples to oranges but:
Being generous, I suppose the iPhone compared to the crackberry is a poor mileage car - the crackberry is compressing data and/or using modified protocols to reduce network traffic.
But, patents aside, if Apple had taken the time to implement compressed protocols they never would have made it to market at the time they did and an iPhone wouldn't nearly be as versatile (read:useful) as it is now.
(Aside: RIM probably had to take an explicit step to make crackberry work over the internet.)
That's another point about the SUV comparison - there isn't a huge advantage for an SUV over a minivan, except there is a HUGE advantage of MobileSafari over every other phone-based browser precedent to it.
Apple is burning "fossil fuel" at an alarming rate, but that fuel is essentially user experience (which could be substituted for a loss in profit). And there's the rub, especially in America these days.
AT&T's problem is actually more akin to a what would happen with a huge uptake of adoption in cars before highways were built. Or like here in Montreal where the civil engineers designed for 1970's-level traffic, which means decades of jams. So the iPhone is just another car someone built a huge suburb called ThreeGee Acres without building a highway there and then the uptake was enormous.
Perhaps a better comparison is that every other smartphone was a horse-drawn cart but now we're driving cars.
Too much rambling, later.
Todd Sieling said 3:12PM on 9-03-2009
Agreed on many points, Andy, except about fuel. It takes a lot of electricity to power what comes down to an end user experience on an iphone. Every request to every server, every sync, every call and every touch of the screen uses electricity, and a lot of electricity generation causes pollution and fossil fuel consumption. A minor qualm because I really do agree with so much of what you said.
The big takeaway for me is the ruthless lesson that AT&T and the cellphone industry has been taught by the iPhone: user experience counts more than anything. More than a good network (though that's part of the ux), more than the feature spec list, more branding phones with model numbers that fall into an undifferentiated mess. The iphone put user experience first and foremost, and taught a boring but essential market that almost everything it knew was wrong. And that's not marketing hype, that's the market speaking.
The NYTimes can stuff its hummer analogy. The iPhone is the anti-hummer of cellphones, if anything.
KomputarGuy said 1:20PM on 9-03-2009
If iPhone goes to Verizon I will definitely switch, whether Verizon really is any better or not. I am just so sick of AT&T's BS. Still a lot of dropped calls where I have great signal, no MMS on iPhone...etc etc.
Only reason I am with them is for the iPhone right now.
Reply
Kristin said 5:59PM on 9-03-2009
I switched from Verizon to ATT because of dropped calls. I live in New York City and there were 6 verizon towers less than a mile away from my apartment and I constantly had dropped calls. Verizon only claims 3 percent a month, which I think it wrong. There were times that I would have to recall 3 or 4 times in a converstation. Verizon will only do something if you have 5 percent dropped calls a month. I don't see how that is acceptable. That is a lot of calls to be dropped. I admit that ATT's prices are high, but really after being on Verizon and ATT I think that ATT's network and service are definetly better, not saying that they are great, just that they are marginably better in my opinion
emil said 1:21PM on 9-03-2009
Call up and complain; I did, and got a $150 credit. You can too!
I won't be one of the ones running to another network if they open up the choice of networks; service with AT&T will instantly improve for those who stick around should that happen.
Reply
SpaceGoatPriest said 2:27PM on 9-03-2009
At what cost?
Did you have to agree to keep their service for another two years? A lot of times wireless companies will offer you money if you have not used your subsidy (discount on a phone, which original iPhones users did not), but in return for this "gesture of good faith" that $150 is merely you promising to stay another 2 years.
Not questioning you got $150, but I highly doubt AT&T just gave you $150 with nothing in return from you.
emil said 9:45AM on 9-10-2009
No strings attached, just a $150 credit.