Have you ever been strangled by your cell phone?
No, I haven’t either.
But the AT&T network has been strangled by the iPhone recently.
I’ve started a blog posting entitled “My junky phone – savings or a symbol?” that I really need to finish – but in light of all the press in recent days about iPhone’s service problems, I’m glad I waited… BUT I couldn’t wait to pass THIS on to you all out there, several of whom I know have iPhones.
Despite TechCrunch having reported on this issue months ago, the rest of the media is starting to catch on… the AT&T cellular network is being bogged down by the intense data demands of the typical iPhone user, leading to slowdowns for many users.
You’ll notice in the ZDNet article below the author blames Apple for the problem– but, I assure you that Apple is not happy about this, regardless of whether the blame is rightly theirs or not. I also think this bad press about the iPhone’s slowness, even if it is not systemwide, pretty much assures that other carries will have the iPhone available soon. Although, it’s a tightrope Apple and the cell companies must walk. Making the device available to other carries will help spread out the cellular network load to other carriers, and yet it is also going to increase the total absolute load on cell networks, as people will be rushing to get the iPhone with their existing provider, that they were leery of leaving for AT&T.
Coverage of this issue the last few days includes these articles:
NY Times: Customers Angered as iPhones Overload AT&T
Wall Street Journal: AT&T Gets a Fuzzy Signal on Apple’s iPhone
Also.. NY Times March ’09 article: 3G Phones Exposing Networks’ Last-Gen Technology
ZDNet: iPhone users strangling the AT&T network
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