Is the iPhone hurting AT&T's brand?

One could also say that AT&T is hurting Apple's/iPhone's image or brand.

 

I am quite happy with my Sprint smartphone!

 

I would definitely say the iphone has hurt AT&T's reputation. Up until very recently, AT&T has failed to knowledge that there was even a problem. Now, it is being reported that 30% dropped call rate is AVERAGE for AT&T and the iphone? That is a joke. I have not heard one happy person in the NYC area with the iphone anymore. That network is so clogged, it reminds me of the old AT&T TDMA network, before GSM was the network of choice. People never stopped _____ing that the network was overloaded. Deja vu, I guess.

Curious, though, how no other country is reporting mass network failures due to the iphone. Maybe AT&T just outright sucks. ;-)

 

Me too! And the price of my plan!



I do think AT&T is way more at fault with this issue. I have had first hand experiance with the clogged network here in SoCal, I have had to lend my uncle my phone as his iPhone couldn't complete a call on a couple of occasions.

 

If you think about it though, some states are larger than entire countries... When a carrier has a (relatively) small area to cover, its easier to do it.

 

Keep in mind that AT&T is cramming GSM and 3G into the 850/1900 bands, when most other countries have 2100Mhz dedicated for 3G, and GSM dedicated to 900/1800. So AT&T faces specturm issues that alot of other countries don't have...

 

I would have to disagree with it being limited to iPhone users. The network in SoCal is overloaded, and it is affecting everyone. That is why I put more blame on AT&T. Even if it is the iPhone causing the issue, AT&T needs to put their foot down and tell Apple what they need to do to fix it. You are right about the iPhone ww, but once it is released ww it will be interesting to see if it dose affect other networks.

I hope AT&T can fix this issue, as it would give me another solid choice for a provider in my area. I would love to have the all the choices in unbranded devices, and to switch between devices easier with the SIM.

 

So is the iPhone's data connection "always on"???

Sorry but that "smartphones limited to professionals" is BS IMHO, smartphones are spreading quickly through the regular population these days. It's got to be the way the iPhone handles data and the data connection.

EDIT: We the people learned a good lessen, "Never pick a phone over a provider".

 

I'd definitely say it's an AT&T problem. In my area of Michigan, AT&T has always had coverage issues and dropped call problems. In my family, my mom and brother have RAZRs and I have an iPhone. We all experience the exact same issues with AT&T in the exact same places. It's AT&T's network, not the iPhone. My county has a population of 50,000 people, so I very much doubt that the iPhone is clogging the network that much in such a rural place. Especially when AT&T has always had problems even before the iPhone, tells me it's AT&T.

I think a lot of the reason why some people would like to associate this problem with the iPhone is because many of the complaints are coming from iPhone customers who used to be Verizon or Sprint or T-Mobile customers who were very happy with the coverage they had (including myself). Because we wanted the iPhone, we were forced to switch to AT&T and deal with a subpar network that was already in place in many places. (Like I said, my mother, brother and many other family members already had AT&T before the iPhone was introduced to the world and they had many many problems).

 

I don't think the fact that AT&T has only two bands is necessarily a spectrum issue. I thought I recalled reading some time ago that AT&T was being criticized for having too much spectrum in many markets - 80 Mhz or more. I don't know any of the details, but my point is you could have access to 4 bands of spectrum (as T-Mo does with 850, 1700, 1900, 2100) and have less spectrum owned than a company that has fewer bands.

 

No, I think it depends upon the region. I know of 5 people who recently did and will be soon switching from Verizon to ATT to get the iPhone. And the numbers don't support any reverse migration at this time.

Regarding CA and NYC, last month ATT install about 1600 new towers (I think that is right) in the San Fran and NYC metro area at 850 Mhz. It will be interesting to see how those areas are improving.

Also, It appears that the recent MMS rollout was and still is mostly successful, after some small and expected hiccups. Somehow the smoothness of that went unnoticed. Mostly the complainers post I guess.

Regarding the lack of disaster with the MMS rollout, here is one point of view I found online:

" In 2008, MMS made up just 2.5 percent of all messages sent from phones worldwide, meaning about 97.5 percent were SMS text messages, according to ABI Research. ABI expects the MMS share to grow to just 4.5 percent by 2014.

Given the amount of data that iPhone fans are already using on AT&T's network for Web browsing, video, e-mail and social networking, it would take quite a popularity breakthrough for MMS to drag down the infrastructure through sheer traffic, analysts said."

I don't think ATT brand is degrading, nor Apple judging by the sales figures. And if they are showing a dip, it can recover just a quickly as the fall. It is a very fluid market.

 

There is a total of 25Mhz for the 850 band and 60Mhz for the 1900 band (that's TOTAL, to be split among ALL operators):

RadioRaiders GSM Frequency Bands
RadioRaiders UMTS Frequency

So that's a total of 25+60=85Mhz for all 850/1900 operators in the USA to share (GSM, CDMA and 3G).

In Europe theres 35Mhz in the 900 band and 75Mhz in the 1800 band for a total of 110Mhz for GSM. Then the 2100 band has 55Mhz of spectrum, dedicated only for 3G.

...do you see the spectrum crunch in the USA a little better now? :browani:

 

To me it's all the press about the iPhone's success contributing to the problems for AT&T that's the problem.

AT&T may be having capacity issues in the big 2 markets, but I've heard friends whine about Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon as well. NONE of them are perfect in the L.A. area.

Since I've had practically all of them (Nextel, as part of Sprint). I've had small issues with each of them, but nothing severe.

The iPhone's phenomenal success has made things interesting for AT&T (a double-edged sword), it's brought them millions of new customers at the same time pushing them to keep their network up to the task. Let's just say it's been a big challenge for them.

I'm not too keen slapping AT&T across the face for the issues they're having, as ALL the carriers have issues (they're just not making the news as much as AT&T is).

I don't see AT&T's brand suffering. Sprint's the one trying to rebuild their brand. I think it's improved considerably, but it still has a way to go. AT&T is nowhere near the level Sprint's at.

This is just my humble opinion, though...

 

It can go both ways, but I think this is more AT&T's fault than Apple's. Let's not forget that the iPhone is not the all-mighty when it comes to RF performance. The network has to essentially "overperform" the average so that the iPhone behaves satisfactorily. I know when I go in and out of the subway sometimes my iPhone takes literally MINUTES to regain service. Sometimes I am forced to cycle Airplane mode in order to force the iPhone to find the signal. So who's problem is that? the network or the phone? Many times I am in places where I know there is a strong 3G signal, but for some reason the iPhone insists on locking to a weak EDGE signal. That issue used to happen more frequently when the iPhone 3G first came out (firmware 2.0), then they fixed that issue with 2.1 but it seems to have come back after firmware 3.0 came out. I know I've been driving through places where Motorolas and Nokias don't drop calls, but the iPhone drops it without failing. Also, there are times when Pandora fails to play music saying that it can't connect to the network when I am looking at the signal indicating full bars, and then when I open my email it says it can't connect to the server. So I power cycle the iPhone and the problem goes away, Pandora starts playing just fine and email starts to work great . So was that a network problem or an iPhone problem? But you see, nobody wants to talk about these issues anymore since all the focus is now on AT&T's "poor" network. I'd like to see Sprint, T-Mobile or Verizon handle all the traffic iPhones are generating to see if they are going to perform as good as they are without the iPhone. The iPhone is the best mobile device ever created, but let's not forget it is not trouble free either!

I agree with that. NJ performs very well compared to NYC. And then if we go to CT and Boston it's even better. I have some dropped calls but nothing major. But like I stated earlier, other phones don't drop calls where the iPhone will. I think it is safe to say that perhaps the iPhone is less tolerant to slight network problems where the other phones are able to deal with those small issues without dropping calls.

That being said, I've started to notice improvement. I haven't dropped calls in a couple of weeks now in the same places where my iPhone used to drop them.

That's 100% true. If they had not underestimated demand, they would've been more prepared and ahead of time. Let's not forget that Apple also had its share of problems when MobileMe came out, the constant downtimes, and let's not forget the nightmares of online iTunes activation. Those were failures of Apple as well.

Oh yes, definitely! My iPhone would download data out of the blue for no apparent reason. So it's a scary device to take if you're going to be roaming overseas. Turning off data roaming is a great feature because even if you're not using it, the iPhone begins to transfer data inexplicably. I've seen in my bill that sometimes my iPhone would make large data transfers at 2am or 3am when I am sleeping.

 

Don't pay any attention to that, it's all perfectly normal.

 

WOW! That is just insane, their is no reason to have a "always on" connection. What a simple fix for AT&T.

 

I thought there was about 120 Mhz available in the PCS band (30 Mhz each in blocks A,B,C, and 10 Mhz each in blocks D,E,F).

 

The 'always on' is not just a feature for iphones; most phones do this, but some give the option out to be off until needed. However this does slow down the connect times however, since every time you wish to check the weather, it needs to reconnect. In general, people would not like that. So BB do it, and so did my Nokia.

For example my Nokia 6230 or 6131, dumb phone, had an option to be off, or off until needed, or always on. The difference was that you would see the E for edge without a 'square' around it. This would indicate that Edge was available, but you were not connected. Normally, I turned it on always since it made a faster connection.

Same would be desired it you are pushing email etc. You would want the connection on. In the case of the iPhone, the 3G symbol is really telling you that the connection is made. When I am in Japan, which uses 3G for voice, I normally have data roaming off. So the 3G would be gone, but clearly I was on 3G voice.

Not so insane, being always on is not clogging the network really. Active use of data would be however.

 

True, good observation. But when referring to FDD (ie: "paired bands") the same amount of spectrum is allocated for up and down links, but you only refer to the spectrum in terms of downlink. Eg: 3G is always referred to as a 5Mhz carrier, but it's actually 5Mhz downlink and 5Mhz uplink.

In the PCS block, from 1850-1910 is the transmission of the phone to the tower. Then there's a 20Mhz gaurd band, and then from 1930-1990 is the transmission of the tower to the phone. So even tho it is 120Mhz total being used (up and down links), it's only referred to as 60Mhz

wireless.fcc.gov/auctions/data/bandplans/pcsband.pdf

 

OK, but couldn't any carrier bid on 1700/2100? Did AT&T choose not to? I'm sure they could have afforded to. T-Mobile had to, since they don't own any at 850 (at the time, maybe they now have a little via Suncom), and were all 1900, and were short there anyway for basic 2G services in some areas.

 

AT&T is rolling out LTE on 700Mhz. That will help solve alot of their spectrum issues.

They also have some 1700 licenses, but I'm not sure what they are doing with them. The 700Mhz is the more preferred band tho, since less sites are needed compared to 1700.

 

Quite an interesting thread. Here in the UK there is a similar situation. O2 won the exclusive contract for the iPhone in the UK and it has certainly brought them great benefits e.g. many more customers, However, as someone said above, it has been a double edged sword.

When the 2G iPhone launched O2 had to build an EDGE network from scratch. That diverted resources from their 3G network and the result was a rather shabby second rate EDGE network. Because of the diversion of resources O2 now lags behind the other British networks in terms of 3G coverage, indeed at one point there was talk of an investigation because O2 might not have met the government's mandate of 80% 3G coverage in time.

The volume of data being used on O2's network appears to be another problem. There have been a number of outages and downtime.

O2 have also come in for a lot of criticism over their pricing.

All in all many customers are looking forward to Orange and Vodafone getting the iPhone and that will probably be at the expense of O2.

 

It's interesting to see the issues are not just with AT&T & the iPhone and makes you have to look at the iPhone being the main issue here vs just the network. It seems the carriers would have been better off where the iPhone was released to more then one carrier for less strains on the networks, but guess it all comes down to money & now the carriers have to spend more to try to get back a better reputation over 1 phone.

 

Yes I think that's a fair summation. Whatever one's opinion of the iPhone it created a lot of interest and has sold remarkably well. It has also seen a huge increase in data usage from customers and to be honest I don't think there are many networks around the world (maybe the likes of DoCoMo) that can really handle the huge traffic loads pretty much seamlessly.

It's like the Golden Apple of Discord (I've been dying to make that pun/analogy!). The prize had the networks competing, but ultimately it seems to be something of a poisoned apple for them.