Sprint President Takes a Shot (Or Two) at AT&T 3G

If ever theres a time to stand up and shout "You Lie!" I think that would be it

That statement is wrong on too many levels. I beleive ATT's problem is one of capacity, ie: spectrum and or backhaul, and lack of spectrum and backhaul will hurt any network regardless of technology (ie: 2G, 3G, EVDO, HSPA, WIMAX, etc). To take a swipe at "3G" which is successfully deployed all over the world, where I today regularly get speeds of 3-6Mbps with and speeds of 150Mbps will be possible with in the coming years, is just wrong.

...however it's nice (in a roundabout way) that by blaming ATT's "3G" network, they admit that EVDO isn't really 3G and can't handle future data traffic demands

 

PS- ATT is your competitor, you have no friends there

PPS- ...and even if hypothetically they were your friends... is it really nice to stand in front of the world and say in your keynote speech "your network sucks" to a friend?

 

A true friend would reveal your shortfalls in a caring way

But this 3G/iPhone drama has given AT&T competitors ammo to attack the company... I read a release that stated that 3G improvements are not coming to San Francisco anf New York soon :loony: Hopefully they will get the networks fixed and/or upgraded sooner than later.

 

Independent studies have been done on all the major carriers networks and whoever got the iphone from the get go would have had the same problems. The iphone is a whole new breed of Smart/feature phone that constantly hogs bandwidth on the network.

Imagine if Apple would have made a 1XRTT Iphone like Apple made the 2G EDGE Iphone. CDMA networks would have struggled as well.

The articles takes a worst case scenario and puts a spin on it to make it even worse sounding that it is.

EVDO is based off of TDMA which is a timeslot base system. Once you fill up those slots you automatically revert back to 144k 1X.

Like Marry Poppins said "a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down" otherwise take it with a grain of salt.

 

I'd like to see the Sprint network handle 80+ million customers plus 9 million iPhones at the same time to see which network has more problems. Of course, when you've been bleeding millions of customers constantly for the past two years, it's easy to have a network that has no capacity problems. AT&T has the most data demanding device available and for me it is working beautifully. Although we can't deny that AT&T is having issues with capacity in some areas, but they are doing everything they can to catch up, plus, there are many other areas where the iPhone performs great, like Boston, CT and NJ. Those claims that the device is virtually useless sound like they come from an angry teenager.

 

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I don't know. I don't see how the iphone takes up any more bandwidth then other smartphones? It doesn't do much different from say the HTC 6800? Or blackberries. I think AT&T has just been slow getting the 3g rolled out. And in turn they are slow to build it's capacity. Add a popular phone and you've got issues. Sprint and verizon and even Alltel had evdo rolled out on a much larger and more robust scale then AT&T did when the iphones launched. I think that those two main competitors would have faired better when it comes to network issues. They had a larger and more mature network and I would venture to say they had more data hogs then AT&T did.



Oh and don't take this as a shot at att it's just you can't say AT&T was ready for this and their network is suffering a little because of it. However the useless comment is a little exaggerated by sprints guy.

 

You're right. AT&T has been slow to deploy 3G. But the Sprint & Verizon 3G coverage advantage is due to the fact that they had a 2-year lead in deploying EVDO, not to mention that EVDO over CDMA networks is a much easier upgrade path than going from GSM to UMTS.

As for the iPhone being a data hog, its because of the massive amount of usage a typical iPhone user creates. The typical iPhone app that uses data usually pulls more data than other smartphones because they are more multimedia oriented. Other smartphones typically strip down the webpages whereas the iPhone tries to display full pages. Audio and video streaming is used more on the iPhone than any other smartphone. Plus the cool UI of the iPhone makes it easier to get involved with it more and use it more.

 

You cant compare EVDO vs 3G UMTS in this sense due to the fact that EVDO is a software and hardware upgrade to an existing system. 3G UMTS is a whole new network. There are new cabinets, backhaul, antennas, switches, routers etc.

CDMA carriers were able to mimic 3G speeds on an existing system with hardware and software upgrades which makes it easier to deploy on a wider scale and at a faster rate. EVDO is based off of TDMA and does have capacity limitations.

Cool Fact "GSM has the capabilites to have 3G speeds similar to EVDO its called Evolved EDGE but most carriers went with upgrades to UMTS'

I have an Iphone 3G and a couple of HTC Smartphones and I can tell you from experience the Iphone uses 4X the data bandwidth the HTC does. I think alot of the high usage is from itunes, app store, geocoding, push email you name it.

strunke your right to a point about AT&T being slower than they should be but I believe it gets made out to be worse than it is in most cases.

I have worked the engineering side of GSM, CDMA and UMTS and they all have their short commings. Trying to increase capacity on any of these networks is not a flip on the switch so to speak and can take months just trying to coordinate the backhaul.

 

Here is a new related article through Cnet off cnn....

AT&T takes the phone out of iPhone - CNN.com

 

Looks like the reporter has a very simplistic "just make it work" attitude:

Unfortuntely, things aren't that simple, especially in a network as large as AT&T's that spans thousands of miles. The paperwork to add new towers, or even just new antennas on existing towers can take months/years, to deliver and install the equipment also takes time, to plan the network and decide if a new site would even help or not also takes time. It's not just like "I got my iPhone a year ago, haven't you fixed your network yet?"

The opertor has the true drop rate. If 1 in 3 calls on their network dropped, they'd be out of buisness. I've never seen a network that had a 30% drop rate.

Nice to know it's sane and reasonable people who are the ones complaining

 

Typical smartphone use is business oriented, primarily e-mail and PIM stuff. Are there available data intsensive apps? Yes, but the iPhone is really the first consumer oriented smartphone. We're talking audio and video download, games, etc on top of basic e-mail and web browsing. It isn't the device, it's whose using the device and what they're using it for.

Also, prior to the iPhone, smartphone adoption was fairly slow. You've now added millions of smartphone users who'd probably be using a regular phone otherwise. That's going to stress any network that wasn't scaled for such an enormous increase.

 

I'll second that. Also, let's not forget the flood of those other "iPhone killers" that came out. They only came out after the iPhone came out and while their combined market share is insignificant, they have helped fuel smartphone adoption in the mainstream.