The Gruber does it again. In a point by point analysis of Randall Stross’ article about AT&T not really sucking and actually being great, he points out a few valuable concepts. First, if the iPhone sucks so much on AT&T’s network, why hasn’t AT&T made Apple fix it? Unless AT&T is so afraid of Steve Jobs’ hit squad that it refuses to point out that it needs better hardware, I think this is all AT&T.
Here are some money shots:
If it’s the iPhone’s fault, not AT&T’s, why aren’t iPhone users around the world having the same problems as those here in the U.S.? How come iPhone carriers in Europe turned on tethering support as soon as iPhone OS 3.0 was released, and AT&T still, seven months later, has not? I’ve brought this up before and readers have argued that the U.S. is a far bigger country than those in Europe, so of course U.S. carriers have a harder job than those in Europe. But that argument doesn’t make sense to me. It’s not there’s one single AT&T cell tower providing service for the whole country. When it comes to providing coverage for a large city like New York or London or Paris, what difference does it make how big the rest of the country is? What’s different about providing wireless service in the U.S. than Europe isn’t the densely-populated metro areas — it’s the sparsely-populated rural areas. But it’s the metro areas where the iPhone is having the severe problems. And, what about Canada? Larger landmass than the U.S., tethering is available, and service quality is good.
If it’s the iPhone’s fault, why have iPhone/AT&T reception problems gotten worse over time? Doesn’t the correlation between the number of iPhones in use and the increase in complaints about AT&T strongly suggest the problem is network capacity?
AT&T fell over itself to get behind the news that their chairman wanted to educate consumers about proper wireless data use instead of improving the network.
I have only ever had issues with AT&T in New York. I just started getting dropped calls like a MoFo and it’s abundantly clear it’s AT&T’s fault. In fact, I carried my iPhone all over the world, even to China, and it worked a treat. Feel free to blame the phone, but I blame the network.
As I said before: mobile data will be the default, not the exception. Maybe Wi-Max will help us on our quest but soon there will be no wires going into the house in the vast majority of cases. Instead, data will come over the air. If AT&T isn’t ready for this, then it’s their problem, not Apple’s, Nokia’s, or HTC’s.
Plenty of jobs in Health Care Admin, get your degree in Health Care Administration & get a job more info at http://bit.ly/8FBySg
Okay, so the whiteflag hasn’t been thrown yet.. and look what we have here? another luke wilson ‘loser’ ads? I must say the rate of it changes from worse to worst. http://bit.ly/att-is-calling-their-big-daddy-apple-for-help
URL shorteners: you’re doing it wrong!
It’s Apple’s fault for choosing AT&T.
This is what you get with a monopoly. I would love to see the AT&T/Apple iPhone behemoth die over this as everyone moves to the unlocked Google phone. But alas, most iPhone users are entrenched in spiral-eyed ideology; so AT&T/Apple will continue to vacuum money from their pockets and they will continue to get lousy service on inferior hardware. Sad.
The googlephone is still GSM, so what network do you think that’s going to use in the states? It’s not going to help anything.
Seems to me you’re the one with the fanatical jihad against Apple and AT&T. You obviously don’t understand what a monopoly is, and your error on that point is so blatant, I wonder if you are actualy parodying an anti-Apple nutcase.
If so, ignore this message.
AT$T can’t handle the iPhone. They did not put enough money into their network and now they are playing the blame game. There is no excuse on why a lot of the country is running on EDGE where Verizon has 3G. Wait, is that iPhone’s fault as well???
Brilliant response by Fake Steve Jobs: “when the stars align, and the hardware is great and the ecosystem is great and the apps are great and the whole experience is great, and everything you do just makes everything else better, and you’re totally on a roll and can do no wrong — when that happens, you do not go out and try to fuck it all up by discouraging people who love your product. What you do, instead, is you fix your fucking shitty ass network you fucking shit-eating-grin-wearing hillbilly ass clown[s]”
http://www.fakesteve.net/2009/12/a-not-so-brief-chat-with-randall-stephenson-of-att.html
Steve Jobs took the rejected iPhone to crappy AT&T after he made much demands on Verizon Wireless. He probably now wish he was more accommodating.
Yes, you are right. Sales have just been terrible.
so is the network
Verizon probably wanted their god damn logo all over the device and a bunch of Verizon apps nobody wants and can’t delete.
Can’t speak for NY but here in the UK I regularly get voicemails appear without the phone having ever rung and calls dropped so I am not convinced that there isn’t an iPhone problem too.
It’s funny how many of my friends were trying to get me on the iphone when it came out. I waited, stayed with Sprint and now have a Pre. I’m honestly pretty satisfied with my decision. I actually joke with my boss that apple needs an app to make phone calls. I am impressed with the at&t app store, but I also realize that many apps are creating a “consumerism disguised as productivity” scenario, but I wish my phone could fart. I’ll call all my friends with the iPhone when that happens but I’m not expecting a call back.
Wow aren’t you smug. I’d be a little worried about my choice to pick a platform that’s already dying and has so far been able to attract little developer support. Especially with Android in the game now.
I know several people with iPhones on AT&T that don’t have any issues, but they also don’t live in NY or So Cal.
BTW, WebOS has Gass Passer. Interesting fact: ALL the smartphones have fart apps, so get over this extremely tired cliche.
AT&T has a whole mess of problems. They are still hanging on a decision related to illegally monitoring the communications of it’s customers:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hepting_v._AT&T
Coupled with the recent blame game (blaming customer for using their networks as advertised), it seems to me that they just don’t have any respect for their users.
iPhone user in Japan since its launch, about 1.5 years ago. Although the network, Softbank, has horrid customer service, neither I nor any iPhone user here I know have once experienced an issue of the sort complained about by iPhone users in the US – i.e. dropped calls, no coverage, etc.
i’ve had an iPhone 2G and now 3G without any problems or dropped calls.
however, i am on Tmobile and only pay a mere $5.99 / mo for my data service. sure its not 3G but for me the price of $6 vs $40 for EDGE instead of 3G data is well worth it imo.
:P
Smart man — I, too, pay 5.99/month. And frankly it works great. I ran a business off of it for two years on EDGE. My bill is $1008/year LESS than a comparable ATT plan (60.99/mo vs. 144.99/mo).
You can take your 3g and shove it–I’ll take my edge and be happy. If I really need high speed I can go to a coffee shop, and promptly buy a round for everyone and STILL save money :-)
You know, it is great to say “well my iPhone works great on networks other places but America,” but that isn’t really a useful comparison. Let’s just take it as a given, the best American service provider doesn’t cover anywhere near as much of the US as the worst British or Japanese carrier. In case you haven’t noticed, America is a lot bigger.
What is a more useful comparison in a discussion like this, is multiple devices side by side on the same network, in the same location. Now, at my wife’s employer, they are pretty evenly split between iPhones and BlackBerries, all on AT&T. Now, I haven’t done a scientific study, but the people in the original article did, and you discount that in favor of anecdotal evidence, so clearly that is better than controlled testing, in your mind. Anyway, over the several people I’ve talked to, pretty much without exception the iPhone users talk about the horrible AT&T network, how many calls they drop, and how it is all AT&T’s fault, while the BlackBerry users all seem pretty happy with their service, and will have multiple-hour conference calls on their BlackBerry without ever dropping the call or worrying about losing signal.
Now, I’m no wireless network engineer, but the people at Root Wireless who ran the 4.7 million network tests are, and you don’t believe their findings in favor of what a bunch of iPhone-toting fanboys say on the net, so obviously it doesn’t matter what qualifications we hanve, right?
You should never let the facts get in the way of a good story.
Lee, I missed you post when I made mine (further down the thread). We’ve seen very similar findings as you present. It would be nice to see one of these tech blogs do some real investigative reporting on this. I can say that there’s an issue with the iPhone radio all I like, but unless you get someone like Engadget or MobileCrunch to say something, you’re talking into the wind.
It would be nice to see that, but it will never happen. I can think of all sorts of various tests sites like this could do to definitively answer and test all sorts of contentious issues and opinions in the tech world, but they live on telling people what they want to hear, and unqualified opinion, not informed fact.
Not that I will take this study to heart completely, but this is an interesting read – http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/13/business/13digi.html?_r=3
According to the study, its the iPhone hardware that sucks with AT&Ts network – all other smartphones actually perform better (even better than Verizon).
BTW – I’m on Sprint in NYC and it works great :)
AT&T appears to have fallen into a time warp, where they think they can say anything they want and ignorant consumers will have no choice but to believe them.
But there is this thingie called the Internet, and it lets us actually get out into the world and check what’s really going on. And we are not having any of their PR disinformation program.
There are plenty of your customers, AT&T, who are only here because we don’t have a better choice of carrier for our phones. You better hope you wake up and fix the network before we get another option. As much as I despise Verizon I would likely never switch to them, but it’s up to you, Ma Bell, to keep me thinking that way.
AT&T sucks so bad. Unfortunately I’ve had to stick to it for the last 7 years because of a company-policy, but man, they really stink in terms of coverage and quality.
The day that Verizon offers Iphone, I’m paying out of pocket to move away from AT&T.
The Apple googles are strong… stronger than many originally believed. I can’t believe that the argument against this being a problem with Apple’s hardware is that “Apple would fix it”. It’s like saying that Windows has no bugs, otherwise Microsoft would have fixed them, right?
Gruber then makes an argument that is completely ignorant of how cell phones and cell towers work. The core issue I’ve heard from iPhone users who have any knowledge of technology is that the issue seems to be most related to the 2G/3G handoff. And this almost certainly is a radio issue, not a network issue. Except to the extent that AT&T has done a poor job of blanketing dense areas. But even with that a phone should not drop calls.
This is probably why you see better performance in other countries. It is partially about the network — but the fact that the calls are actually dropping is probably the fault of the iPhone.
Here’s a real test that we’ve done, which is to find a spot that consistently drops call with the iPhone and use another phone at the same time. We did this with the iPhone, Bold, and Tilt2. The results were pretty remarkable. We could consitently get the iPhone to drop calls (about 15 dropped calls), but only two/four dropped calls with the Tilt2/Bold (over about a one hour span — avg call length of about 90 seconds).
I’d love to see MobileCrunch try something like this. Don’t let AT&T take the heat if it’s not all their fault (although they definitely deserve plenty of heat for a host of issues), and don’t give Apple a free pass. A nice UI and app store are great, but I remember there was a time when making phone calls were a top 10 feature of a phone.
I had a Nokia E71 on AT&T’s network for a year (metro DC area) and it worked very very well. My girl had/has an iPhone and she did experience connectivity issues when she was right next to me. Plus her call quality was low as well. I’m not claiming to have done any scientific analysis, but I can definitely state that when right next to each other, the phone didn’t perform equally well (and yes, we both had data plans). Also, iPhone owners I know in the UK and Japan both say they have some connection (particularly voice) issues as well. Those are just my anecdotes.. but I do think that AT&T has taken more than its fair share of blame (and I think way less of Apple for not stepping up and defending their business partner). Apple has made a ton of money selling a 500-700 dollar phone to AT&T, who then subsidizes the shit out of them and should bear some responsibility. Remember that stupid hokey puck mouse? They aren’t perfect.
I’ve been an ATT customer since 1998 and I live in the NYC metro area. I never had any problem with them until I got the iPhone 3GS. When I cannot make or receive calls at work I turn off 3G and hit up the 2G Edge network. Slower, but I can call my mom.
I also experienced the same troubles when I switched back to my Treo 750 3G for a week when my iPhone had water damage.
As a customer for over a decade (it was my first cell at 20), I’m jumping ship in 2010 when the exclusivity is done.
It’s the network. Period.
Los Angeles is the 2nd largest city in the USA — I can NEVER get signal. Sometimes I’ll even turn off 3G — JUST TO GET SOOOME SIGNAL
Welcome to the third world USA USA
I agree with all of the anti-AT&T comments on here. AT&T is the reason why I have a HTC Hero on Sprint. I have had one dropped call, and I’m never out of service. Conversely, with my iPhone, I didn’t have service at all in my apartment. Of course, this is nothing AT&T hasn’t heard before.
This is the same old argument, made again and again. Makes me laugh that there are so many idiots out there (who are I bet actually smart people, when not blinded by their Apple loyalty) making comparisons about the iPhone’s / AT&T’s current issues.
…and when some people in this thread actually try to present some “as close as normal people can get to” scientific investigation to get to the bottom of the issue, it goes either on deaf ears or gets “blasted” by the Apple lovers.
Bottom line is this… before you can blame the network, you need to take some modern, 3G phones and perform the “tests” all on the same AT&T network, in the same place and time, to see where the problem lies — FOR YOUR SPECIFIC GEOGRAPHIC LOCATION (i.e. your cell tower, not your country or even your large metro area).
And since people have already tried to do this to some degree, I would tend to believe their results — in that the problem does indeed lie with the device mostly, if not totally.
I’ve had one dropped call in SF on my Palm Pre/Sprint (3G) in seven months. Enough said.
If they want to charge extra for data that was unlimeted, are they going to give me a refund for data I didn’t use?This is what sucks in corperate america these days. They want all your money but we should not expect anything for it. Just hand it over and don’t complain that we didn’t give you anything for it. After all our CEO’s can’t survive without their mega million bonus and where would we be without our filthy rich? How else are we to give our hard earned cash away for nothing. If they were prviding the service they advertise I would not be typing this. What’s up with this…. Our net work is failing because we have to many iPhone users on our network. But if drop into one of our stores today we will gladly sell you another one just don’t expect to be able to use it. After all we just want your money. And since our network is strugling with the phones, you should buy a netbook while your here. Mo money mo money!!!
They ask for it, no sympathy from me, let them have it they deserve to suffer after blaming me for their greed and unwillingnes to provide what they advertise.