James Delahunty
6 Sep 2009 20:09
A report in the New York Times focused on the effects that bandwidth usage with Apple's iPhone have had on the AT&T network over the past couple of years. The report dug up details on the history of the AT&T-iPhone tie-up and has discovered that the wireless carrier has continuously struggled to keep up with demand as more and more iPhones are added to the network.
The AT&T network's problems had led to MMS and tethering features made possible in iPhone 3.0 being delayed. "The result is dropped calls, spotty service, delayed text and voice messages and glacial download speeds as AT&T’s cellular network strains to meet the demand," the report states, and goes on to compare the iPhone's usage of bandwidth on the network to a gas-guzzling Hummer.
To back up the comparison, it claims that the average iPhone user consumes ten times the bandwidth of an average Smarthphone user. This is a problem expected to grow to all networks as the other players keep bringing out new devices to take on Apple's iPhone - soon the problem won't be limited to AT&T.
This year, AT&T plans to spend $18 billion to upgrade and expand its 3G coverage. The company said it has no plans to cap data use to help with the problem.