New York Times calls iPhone the 'Hummer of cellphones'

Oh BOO FREAKING HOO!

So the iPhone is a bandwidth guzzling hog just like a gas guzzling Hummer! It's using the network which is what it's supposed to do. Beef up the network! When you buy a cell phone you are just buying a terminal that connects to a network. It's the network that matters. The iPhone is just a much "Better" computer then all the other phones out there. Therefore it's more useful and is getting used more often.

AT&T has made insane profit on the iPhone and Verizon is kicking themselves for turning Apple down! i.e. Apple approached Verizon first before they went to AT&T!

AT&T has had tremendous profit each quarter as they now have 2+ million iPhone customers. They were hurt a bit by the subsidies (reduced cost of iPhones) but it's still a boatload of money! Not to mention that texting costs the telco's virtually NOTHING! Yet they charge a heck of a lot for something that is using network resources they didn't even have to pay extra for. SMS texting reclaims an unused portion of the network for it's bandwidth. It's inventor discovered this unused portion of the network and designed SMS to use it. It cost the telco virtually nothing to implement SMS.

Their profit would be better if AT&T's internal spending wasn't such a mess, I am sure they could be saving a lot of money if they tried to make things more efficient. In this economy my company has saved $50 million just doing every day things to reduce spending and improve efficiency. But I suspect the red tape, internal bureaucracy, government regulation, and unions makes it very hard to reduce costs.

AT&T had better wake up and smell the revolution before it's too late. Apple will switch providers as soon as they can. And any provider would be extremely happy to take on the iPhone!

All that people can do is complain about att they have given me the best customer service out of anyone else that there is and I have had them all seriously! I have never had one problem with them and just think if its opened to other carriers like verizon which I highly doubt Its going to be like going back to 2007 when the first Iphone came out! People just need to be patient and I hope that AT&T keeps the exclusive agreement for another ten years cause Im not jumping ship for another I phone that isnt caught up for speed meaning a first generation Iphone! Apple is so much better with there technology that if it would have been brought to verizon or any other carrier that the same problems would have persisted with them! Think about it ATT has MMS just not for the IPHONE but if you have a blackberry then your fine so people that want a piece of junk like a blackberry or hummer then stop complaining and go back other wise STFU and be glad you have the best piece of a tech gadget that there is and keep in mind that everything on the Iphone is 100 times better than it would be on any other device like cut copy and paste and the Keyboard for texting and will be the best mms experience for any phone on the market! Keep in mind people that technology evolves its only been two years the iphone is still considered a toddler and will grow into a genuis!!!!!!!!!

at&t sucks, i been waiting for my contract to expire so i can go back to sprint or maybe i should try out verizon ...

The iPhone, though lacking many functions of established phones, was so revolutionary, most networks probably would not have coped with the uptake and usage.

Surfing the net on my Nokia was hell, with the iPhone it's an unbelievable experience. Makes me want to keep topping-up my O2 PAYG SIM just for the data access (when it doesn't fall over!).

Just be glad you're not on O2.

This is the same bull Ninetdo tried with the Wii shortages. Sure, I understand you were unprepared for your own success, but come on, it's been over a year, and these guys built the frickin' iPod. Time to stop bitching and fix it.

i hope verizon gets rights to iPhone even though I am stuck with AT&T for another 20 months, competition is probably the only thing that will help fix things

at&t is making a fortune as the sole provider for iPhone service in the USA, they got a contract with Apple for exclusive rights to it.... from what i can tell, they got in for more they bargained for.. how about using some of that fortune to upgrade their network? its almost like they dont care since the customer has invested in an iPhone and stuck with the lousy service.

It's not as if we AT&T users don't pay for the privilege of using the data network! The data plan I have almost costs more than the minutes I use!

I remember an article last year in Fortune or BusinessWeek (can't remember which) that was bragging at how AT&T was getting all these new iPhone customers and that all the extra fees were pure gravy.

You would think that a company that has been given this great opportunity to be the U.S. exclusive wireless provider would have ensured that the service was top-notch.

Here in LA, the service is generally good except in high-traffic areas like the 405. But when I have traveled, the service has been horribly slow. I will admit that no wireless provider has it perfected yet; braggadocios advertising ('the fastest', 'the most reliable', 'the most dependable' 3G service) notwithstanding.

I think that AT&T has milked customers for too long. Time for Apple to truly serve its customers and give us multiple options. The only way for these monopolies to step up their game is to introduce some serious competition.

>> 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."

This is funny as hell.

He's basically saying: "People are actually using the iPhone for data, phone, and messaging. We've never experienced people finding their phones so entertaining and useful on this scale."

A crystal clear admission that most of the phones and services offered by AT&T pre-iPhone were kludgy junk that failed to deliver on their blue sky promises of always available and easy-to-use.

This is like a restaurant lamenting the popularity of their all-you-can-eat buffet because previously the food was underheated, underflavored, overpriced crap.