Ooh wee! Verizon and AT&T are getting all hot and bothered over the forthcoming
LTE battle -- a battle which much like the current
map wars, you can expect to grow weary of in about two minutes. According to a report in the
Wall Street Journal today, both carriers have put reps in the limelight for a volley of tough talk. For starters, AT&T's CTO John Donovan claimed that Verizon was jumping the gun with its first-on-the-scene LTE rollout, suggesting initial devices are "going to drain the battery like crazy, and [they're] going to be a fat brick," noting that "2012 will be the time when you'll have decent handsets." Donovan lumped on the hits by also saying that "Anyone who says their network is ready for the iPhone -- or the broader mobile data explosion that AT&T has experienced -- is being naive." Of course, Big Red didn't just sit there and take it -- spokesman Jim Gerace fired back that "No matter how much our competitors talk, it's not going to slow us down," though he offered no further comment on the insults' stride-breaking potential. Both parties were mum on just how fleeced the consumer would be getting once the LTE pricing plans are announced, of course.
posted March 23rd 2010 3:08PM
Old Skool Phones are back
I find it pretty amazing that for once Sprint is so far ahead of the big guys... While they will have "fat bricks" released in two years for their so far nonexistent 4g networks, Sprint will have one that's even thinner than an iphone announced at 4:30 Eastern today, with their 4g coverage expanding rapidly. Amazing.
@supersonicfanboi Just one point of information: Sprint's 4G network is only for data, not voice. If the Sprint phone's 4G capabilities are used for voice, it would be through VoIP. Sprint plans to continue using their Qualcomm CDMA EVDO Rev A network for the voice capabilities of the new phones. This is what I have heard and I am very satisfied with Sprint's 3G voice network, but the 4G network is really Clearwire's Clear 4G WiMax which Sprint owns 59% of and that is primarily a data network. Hope this clarifies things.
@Common Sense
All the 4G networks are primarily data networks; that's the point of 4G. Both LTE and WiMAX are completely IP-driven and not circuit-switched. So even on LTE, voice would be transmitted over IP. That's why they tried to get the air interface latencies for packet data down to < 50ms or lower.
@grydlok
@AT&T, well your wife never complained about it being too thick -Verizon
@supersonicfanboi
On the contrary Sprint has been ahead of them at every turn, they just suck at advertising and attacking their competitors.
@elijahblake AT&T, if customers want a fat brick, let them get a fat brick. Stop crippling devices and telling consumers what they want!
@supersonicfanboi When your network is the size of a cheese-it its easier to upgrade it to 4g. I'll wait for a decent network to implement it on a larger scale. And who wants a phone "Thinner" than an iPhone?
Haha, running scared are we? So AT&T admits that iphone has bogged down their network, nice!
@gmac AT&T: "Yes our network sucks and can't handle the data requirements of our customers."
Good going, ya bunch of tools.
@gmac this is definitely not the first time they have said that. i still find cell phone service providers the stupidest thing to be a fanboy over. no matter who you support they screw you over.
@gmac "Our network may suck, but you don't need a lot of bandwidth to download fart apps!"
@gmac it was either that or drown. But they only admit it because they are fixing it.
@gmac
i think this comment actually is directed toward T-Mobile...
tmobile cto had said tmo could 'definitely' handle a load like att without any probs...haha no one caught on
@lamerz Yes, so maybe they shouldn't have been such piggies, hogging the iPhone all these years, especially if they couldn't handle the load. Even with all that ill-begotten cash, they still couldn't beef up their network enough to handle it, after all these years.
Asshôles!
@kojo87
I can't even comprehend being a 'fanboy' of a wireless service provider. It'd be like being all ra-ra-ra for Comcast or Cablevision. Brrrrr.....makes you want to take a shower.
Newsflash: all the carriers are out to rape your wallet and come back for seconds, too.
Dear AT&T:
Please stop make painfully unfunny commercials with Owen Wilson's brother.
That is all.
@ECH Owen Wilson has a brother?
@Pookiewood HAHAHAHAHAHA, that made my day.
@Pookiewood
its the fat twin on tv
@ECH Ahhhh couldn't have said it better myself!! Verizons commercials are at least for the most part sonewhat funny annnd prove many valid points. AT&T's commercials however......... Ehh u already said it. Hahahahaha great.
@Pookiewood He did until those commercials. Now, Luke's [career is] dead.
@darex
Nah, I'm pretty sure his presence on (so many of) these commercials is evidence that it was already dead.
From the article
"Anyone who says their network is ready for the iPhone -- or the broader mobile data explosion that AT&T has experienced -- is being naive."
Apparently neither was AT&T
@Darkseider Tim Bray's blog post said "As of now, they’re selling around 90K iPhones per day compared to around 60K Android handsets." From all the data we've seen to date Android users have the same profile as iPhone users, meaning they use a lot more data than users of other handsets with crappy browsers etc. If these numbers are right, then we're about to see how Verizon handles the load that AT&T has been dealing with for a couple of years, since Verizon is clearly selling the vast majority of Android phones in the US right now with the Droid and Eris launches. Unless Verizon data goes all to hell like AT&T's did, I think AT&T is going to start looking pretty stupid.
@Fanfoot unless i am missing something, those numbers and your logic don't really work together. there are 50% more iPhones sold every day than Android phones every day (60k/90k = 2/3, 3 is 50% more than 2. not trying to be condescending, just making sure we are on the same page). so for the sake of argument lets say ALL of those Android phones are on Verizon and the all the iPhones and all the Android phones are, on average, are using the same amount of data per phone. so based on those numbers, AT&T would still be seeing 50% more data usage the Verizon. i find it hard to believe that Verizon would be prepared for their network to see a sudden 50% increase in data usage. sure AT&T wasn't prepared either but hindsight is 20/20. its real easy to make fun of someone for not being able to do something without ever trying it yourself.
But, won't this mean that Verizon will have more time to figure out all the issues they will have with LTE and the accompanying phones?
How? Lte is backwards compatible with gsm...
@Sled
Um, no it's not. LTE has a completely different air interface and backend network structure. Yes, you can use the same backend network to run both a 2G/3G network and a 4G network, but LTE is in no way backwards compatible with 2G/3G. It's a completely separate network. You'll need new chips for the phones, and I'd suspect that most phones that support LTE will initially have a 2G/3G baseband and a 4G/LTE baseband as separate silicon. They can share power amplifiers and filters, but the actual stuff that encodes/decodes the radio signals will be separate for a while.
2G and 2.5G GSM/GPRS/EDGE use simple TD links; 3G UMTS/HSPA use Wideband CDMA (yes, CDMA though incompatible with Sprint/Verizon networks of course); 4G (both LTE and WiMAX) use OFDMA similar to what 802.11 a/g/n wifi networks do.
@dcbw
Best post I've seen in days! Thank God for people who don't just type nonsense and claim they know what they're talking about.
@junktrunk How am I talking non-sense? In canada on an lte network you can run a CDMA phone or GSM phone.
@junktrunk Yeah, but he started the whole thing with, "Um." Screw that.
To bad these 2 companies won't be falling off a cliff.
Lol that's hilarious and absolutely true.
JERRY! JERRY! JERRY! JERRY! JERRY! JERRY! JERRY! JERRY!
FIGHT!
AT&T iPhone 3Gs vs Verizon iBrick LTE
...well at least they're actually going to have *ANY* form of an LTE network this year if all things go according to plan and they start doing testing. What does AT&T have? An HSPA network that's still having serious problems with data and voice connections. Way to aim high guys.... >_>
"2012 will be the time when you'll have decent handsets."
In the mean time, here comes Wimax and Supersonic :]
@brokensticks On a network that has a noticeable customer loss, and WiMax, which could go the way for HD-DVD.
@Patlex I don't see why your comment is downranked into oblivion because both points u made were extremly true especially the secound. If it takes off it takes off, if it doesn't it doesn't, not really much one can do about it.
@Patlex
unlike hd-dvd vs blu ray, hd-dvd didnt come out years ahead of blu-ray. and if wimax is the same price as for a 3g plan on verizon/att what would you choose???
@brokensticks
2012? But that's the end of the world. So basically AT&T is promising decent handsets when hell freezes over? Dicks
@Kibbe17
Perhaps because ClearWire doesn't have "noticeable" customer loss (Sprint is a customer of their 4G network) and Wimax is deployed around the world and LTE is just getting out of the gates.
...Or a bunch of people just don't like him.
@jebus27 Whichever company will offer me better coverage(3G or not) where I live and place I would go to.
@jebus27 Don't forget, Wimax is supposed to bring capless data.
http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/23/sprint-announces-seven-new-wimax-markets-says-let-atandt-and-ver/
Compare that to the tune AT&T is using (Tiered data plans)...
You stay classy AT&T.
@InspectorEngadget
+1, because of your user name and avatar , very cool
@torch29 Thank you muchly.
@InspectorEngadget go go gadget phone
The Red vs. Blue thing is just screaming for a photoshop of a couple of HALO Spartan soldiers duking it out for your next article, like : http://www.bodine.phila.k12.pa.us/studentweb07/Matt/RvB_iD_by_Red_Vs_Blue_Fanclub.jpg .
However, I'm in Big Red's corner with this one, so feel free to use: http://www.blogcdn.com/xbox.joystiq.com/media/2006/06/red_vs_blue_uppercut.jpg
AT&T covers 97% of all americans... interestingly, New York City, which is home to about 2.7% of all Americans, has horrible AT&T service. I guess they make up most of that remaining 3% of Americans!