Love that Pandora app? Well, we've got good news and bad news for you. The good news is that AT&T's wireless head honcho Ralph de la Vega says it's hard at work at improving
service in San Francisco and Manhattan, where it sees especially high smartphone penetration -- and coincidentally a higher concentration of whiny tech journalists. The bad news, though, is that it might end up hitting you in the pocketbook. Speaking to investors today, de la Vega mentioned that the company is well aware that downtown New Yorkers are suffering, specifically calling out the area for "performing at levels below [its] standards" expressing confidence that it's going to get the problem resolved. In the same breath, though, he assured attendees that independent testing conducted by Global Wireless Solutions shows that a test of over 415 markets (which probably means 416 markets) has AT&T coming out on top for network speed -- something that we found in
our testing as well -- and is "within two-tenths of 1 percent of the highest score among major providers" for dropped calls at 1.32 percent averaged nationally. Anyway, about that bad news -- the company has noticed that a huge chunk (some 40 percent) of its broadband is consumed by just 3 percent of smartphone users, and it's suggesting that it'll "address" that through a combination of usage meters (no complaints there) and likely a tiered pricing model that sticks it to the heaviest users "in a way that's consistent with net-neutrality and FCC regulations." At a glance, that sounds "fair" -- we'd rather they not increase data fees across the board to average out a very small number of users -- but the long-lost term "unlimited" still gives us a warm fuzzy that we're hoping to win back sooner or later. When LTE shows up, perhaps?
posted December 9th 2009 1:15PM
They're not going to increase prices, at least not this year, anyway. This is old news (to me at least) because local At&t stores have been advertising this since early summer. I haven't seen any increase in prices since then not to mention great quality in service and customer support. I have no complains and I've been faithful to At&t, and look now, it's getting even better. I KNEW they were taking their time to perfect LTE, not rushing into it (with unreasonable prices at that) like Verizon. Karma's a bitch.
This is absolutely ridiculous. The overage charges for AT&T are the reason that data is being used at the rate it is. a LONG time ago I paid like 189 dollars in overages for Data. I switched to an unlimited plan and stopped worrying about it. I'll bet money that hundreds of people have done the EXACT SAME THING. Why? because AT&T refuses to offer their product at a reasonable price. Where I am, I get 1.6mb/s down, solid, all the time. On both my HTC Hermes and my HTC Raphael. I go to school (near Newark) and I lose all data speeds, HSDPA and Edge alike. You can't tell people that they need to pay more for a product you barely offer.
I can't afford an ETF right now, but let me tell you, if they do do this and I can pay the ETF at the time, Droid does, and the Verizon store is right around the corner. At least Verizon has done a decent job at backing up their network's claims. They've done a shit job at backing up their claims about AT&T's network (Really, the 3g coverage ISN'T THAT BAD for about 80% of AT&T's subscribers. And except for the big cities, the speeds are great too) but their network is decently reliable.
In the words of Zombieland: AT&T, its time to Nut up or Shut up. Get your network back into reasonable shape in high density areas, or go back to selling EDGE devices. If I were you though, I would skip this UMTS bullshit all together and go to LTE. Just do it now. Network before devices means you'll actually be able to beat rush to the new service. the reason 3g failed on AT&T is because of the iPhone 3G. That device INSTANTLY crippled the entire network, and if AT&T had said to Apple "ya know what, we can't handle this device at this time. Lets wait a year" they might've been able to handle it.
One positive note, he was honest and forthcoming. But yes Verizon should run some local SF and NY ads.
Just a few months ago ATT required all smartphones and PDA's to have an data plan, now they want to curb network data traffic. You cant have your cake and eat it too.
If they make a change like that, there is no way we will be paying ETF, that is a material change and everyone will be able to exit their contracts without paying an early term fee.
Which means for the suckers who don't pay attention it will be a flood of iphones on ebay and verizon/t-mobile for the rest of us.
Personally I have an iphone for me and a curve on verizon for work. I use the iphone exclusively for data/apps/etc, and my blackberry for calls. Its nearly worthless to use my iphone for phone calls compared to the reliability and voice quality of my blackberry. Of course the flipside is that the internet and apps suck on my locked down blackberry, but i don't pay for it so....
I'll personally take a droid which is not perfect but getting close to what I need, but still will need something for international travel (I think the 88xx series current world phone sucks and I don't think work will up me to a tour yet)
I heard from a Sprint Rep today that their 4G network is going to cost $10 more a month than their previous 3G network... but there's no data cap. Unlimited is UNLIMITED. Imagine that.