In a filing with the FCC, AT&T admitted that the rise of tablet and smartphones like the iPad and iPhone has taken a major toll.
In its public filing to the Federal Communications Commission on Thursday, AT&T clearly admitted that it can't handle the growing number of iPhones, iPads and other high-bandwidth devices (tablets, smartphones, etc) leeching off its network. In fact, the company said tablets are putting an even greater strain on the network than smartphones in many cases.
Unfortunately, the future isn't looking quite so bright for the wireless carrier. "Over the next five years, data usage on AT&T's network is projected to skyrocket as customers 'mobilize' all of their communications activities, from streaming HD video and cloud computing to a range of M2M applications like energy management, fleet tracking, and remote health monitoring," AT&T wrote in the filing.
AT&T began to see troubles around four years ago, and now reports a frightening 8,000-percent increase in data consumption between 2007 and 2010. It's struggles to maintain service for the growing number of iPhone consumers is already widely known and the subject of many jokes-- its struggles have even been used in Verizon's own iPhone campaign. Eventually complaints of slow traffic and dropped calls provoked AT&T to drop its unlimited plans and offer tiered pricing to regain control over data consumption.
Although AT&T doesn't actually specify the iPhone by name in the filing, the 8,000-percent jump in data usage is rather obvious-- it coincides with the release of Apple's first iPhone back in 2008. The company even claimed in the public filing that smartphones use 24 times more data for each user-- and that doesn't even include tablets.
That said, AT&T feels justified in acquiring T-Mobile so that some of that load can be dumped off onto the other network. Not only will customers benefit from faster data and a reduced frequency in dropped calls, T-Mobile's extensive reach will increase broadband penetration in rural areas for parent company AT&T.
Still, despite its current rivalry with Verizon, AT&T must have felt some kind of relief once the iPhone 4 landed on the competing network. Thursday Verizon announced that it activated 2.2 million CDMA iPhone 4 units in the seven weeks between the February 10 launch and March 31. That's 2.2 million units less for AT&T who apparently is still having trouble maintaining its current iPhone and iPad user base.
Thursday Verizon said that the iPhone 4 produced the most successful first-day sales in the wireless carrier's history.
"AT&T began to see troubles around four years ago"...so what did AT&T do in that four years?
You can't trust Apple folks.
Yeah, then you become Cell Phone Company of NY. The rest of the country hates you, because your tiny network in B.F.E. can only handle 3 calls at once, and you lose your foothold everywhere except NY.
AT&T admitted (by a huge TV/Marketing campaign) that it's week point is in the rural areas. That's why they did the huge TV commercial campaign claiming to have service in Bozeman, Montana (they specifically mentioned this city). Frankly, I live there and can tell you they did NOT have service in Bozeman, Montana until they bought out Alltell. Very few people here have AT&T phones (except all the former Alltell customers).
Man it's the end of the day. That should read "weak point". TGIF!
cell phone call quality is about 250kb a minute, probably less.
and back before the real internet was on phones, you had a 6-40kb per web page mostly just text.
that 8000% increase is 80x what they had before, so 80x6&40 comes out to 480kb and 3200kb a web page.
that sounds low, so i'm guessing most people are smart enough not to go to youtube for hours on 3g, and do it over wifi.
i seriously wish i had the money to get into telecommunication, i would SO be the best network, even if slightly limited (at first only cities with over 1 million people, than branching out to rural communities)
You really believe that they are going to upgrade their infrastructure? They will simply introduce data plans of 20 MB, 50MB and so on to keep data usage in check.
Exactly, what happens to T-Mobiles millions of customers? Oh, that's right, our phones will stop connecting at 3g/4g speeds the second AT&T switches T-Mobile's 3G/HSPA+ spectrum over to their own 4G network. Presto-chango, better service to AT&T customers. Then, a couple months later, when T-Mobile customers have been forced to re-sign new AT&T contracts for the free phone upgrade that actually lets them browse the internet at reasonable speeds, the network will be bogged down again, AT&T will claim they need a bailout from the government to upgrade their infrastructure, or that brand new 4G network might collapse, and the government surely doesn't want that, do they?