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What does the AT&T deal for T-Mobile USA mean for Apple?
AT&T confirmed on Sunday that it plans to acquire T-Mobile USA from Deutsche Telekom. T-Mobile USA will operate as a separate brand until the deal is approved. If approved, this deal would bump AT&T up to 130 million subscribers and make it the nation's largest wireless operator. Though it is not directly involved in this merger, GigaOm suggests that Apple stands to benefit from the union of these two wireless carriers. This new relationship will improve the performance of the current iPhone on AT&T's network. AT&T has been long maligned for its less-than-stellar network quality, a situation it has been trying to remedy by building out its network and increasing backhaul capacity. AT&T's network will get a big boost from T-Mobile's cell towers, which will be folded into AT&T's cellular grid. These extra towers will extend coverage and provide additional network capacity, especially in the data hungry metropolitan areas. Both San Francisco and Chicago will see a 25 to 45 percent increase in cell sites as a result of this merger. In the future, the Cupertino company is expected to continue to sell the iPhone and the iPad on AT&T. When this merger is approved within the next 12 months, AT&T will gradually move T-Mobile customers from the 3G 1700/2100 MHz AWS band to AT&T's 1900 MHz band. AT&T plans to use this vacated AWS spectrum for its LTE network. Once the migration is over, Apple will be able to tap T-Mobile's 35 million customers. This migration is at least a year away, so any boost in sales won't occur until the iPhone 6 or beyond.
Lawsuit claims AT&T "systematically" overcharges iPhone, iPad owners
A lawsuit filed in California federal court claims AT&T "systematically" overcharged iPhone and iPad owners by inflating the amount of data downloaded by each customer and tacking on "phantom traffic" to the month-long tally. The lawsuit was filed by Patrick Hendricks who asserts AT&T charged him a $15 overage fee that was the result of this artificially inflated data. Hendricks cites AT&T's alleged practice of overestimating data traffic by as much as 300 percent in what is described as "a rigged gas pump that charges for a full gallon when it pumps only nine-tenths of a gallon into your car's tank." The complaint also mentions phantom data charges that were added to his bill, but never started or experienced by Hendricks. The complainant hired a private firm to track his data usage on AT&T, and they reported usage of 2.2 MB during a week when the iPhone had all push notifications turned off, all location-based services turned off, no active applications running and no email account setup on the handset. Hendricks is seeking class action status on the complaint and is asking for restitution and class damages. AT&T responded by saying it would vigorously fight the lawsuit.
AT&T trains retail staff on non-iPhone smartphones
When the iPhone burst upon the world three and a half years ago, the smartphone landscape was very different from the one we see today. Palm Treos, Blackberries and Windows Mobile were the dominant players; they were mainly selected by geeks and people that needed them for business. In the intervening period, the staff at AT&T stores have focused on selling and supporting Apple's super-phone, but that's beginning to change as it appears ever more likely that iPhones will soon be available from other American cell carriers. Bloomberg reports that after dipping its toe into the Android pool in the past six months, AT&T is about to dive into the deep end with three more Motorola Android phones plus three Windows Phone 7 handsets -- all in anticipation of losing exclusivity on the iPhone. Consultant Craig Johnson warns that AT&T may risk turning off customers by offering too many new choices at once after focusing on a single device and user interface since 2007. Given the tight grip that Microsoft is maintaining on the Win7 interface and the consistent Motoblur skin that Motorola is applying to its phones, that might not be so much of a problem. The main choice that customers will have to make is the desired form factor and features on the individual phones. While AT&T plans to keep selling iPhones for the foreseeable future even if Verizon gets a version come 2011, it has already begun refreshing its stores and training its 25,000 retail employees to sell and support all of the new handsets. Staff in urban areas will get four hour in-store classes while those in rural stores will participate via live video streams. Sales staff will also be incentivized to move the new phones with an offer of a free handset for being among the first to sell four of the new phones.
iPhone OS 2.1 on 3G had signal problems too
Once upon a time, iPhones had an OS update known as version 2.1, and there was much rejoicing. Actually, there was a little bit of the rejoicing and a bit more of the griping. What was the griping about? Well, some of you kiddies might not remember this, since it was so two years ago, but the story may ring familiar: it was all about degrading signal indicator issues with the iPhone 3G. Part of what that article notes is the existence of the field service test mode that was, then, present in the iPhone OS. It used to be pretty trivial to access this mode, which would give us gadgety techno-nerds information like more detailed signal strength. A feature like that would be dandy for troubleshooting the iPhone 4's recent disappearing bars problems, but Apple decided to remove access to test mode in iOS 4. Seeing as this issue cropped up in the early days of the iPhone 3G, AT&T's response to it then seems to indicate that, quite simply, a software update will fix the signal strength indicator problem in the iPhone 4. Let's just hope it comes out sooner than later so that we can stop talking about this issue already. Thanks Ilkyone for the tip!
Is AT&T capping iPhone upload speeds? Inquiring minds want to know
The MacRumors forums are abuzz with users comparing their recent upload speeds. TUAW reader Becca Holmes tipped us that iPhone users are experiencing uploads that appear to be capped at 100 kbps rather than the 1.6mbps that was a previous norm. Users have been comparing rates captured with tools like Speedtest.net's Speed Test to put concrete numbers on perceived performance drops -- and it looks like that drop is huge, compared to the way things were just a week or two ago. According to the thread, affected cities include: NYC, Central Jersey, Boston, Orlando, Seattle, South Jersey/Philly, Columbus, Cleveland, West Houston, Phoenix, Northern Colorado, St. Paul/Minnesota, Suffolk County/Long Island, Quad Cities, South Jersey, Denver, Detroit Metro, and Cincinnati.
