According to a Gizmodo reader who took his iPhone to the Apple Store Genius Bar due to issues with dropped calls, he was told a 30% failure rate in New York City is normal.
Now, we all know AT&T’s network crumbles beneath the weight of the iPhone (and suspect any other single network might as well), but it’s not often we get numbers to go with it.
Boy Genius is reporting that AT&TMMS seems to be down for some users in some states, and what’s more:
a quick call to AT&T’s customer care line revealed that there is a known latency issue with MMS in all states with no estimated time of repair.
So how about it? Are you experiencing any delays in sending or receiving MMS? Any outages? Either way, let us know where you are, and how long you’ve been having the problem.
Has AT&T been delaying the US launch of iPhone 3.0’s MMS and tethering services due to concerns about their network being able to handle it? Um, yeah, that would have been our guess… The New York Times, however, states it as fact:
[AT&T] has also delayed bandwidth-heavy features like multimedia messaging, or text messages containing pictures, audio or video. It is also postponing “tethering,” which allows the iPhone to share its Internet connection with a computer, a standard feature on many rival smartphones. AT&T says it has no intention of capping how much data iPhone owners use.
How big is the concern? AT&T claims they’ve diverted $18 billion to upgrade and expand their 3G network to handle the load, but that getting local approval to build towers takes time, as does upgrading existing infrastructure.
Analysts quoted seem to agree with TiPb readers that AT&T may just have been hit first and hardest by the iPhone, but other networks will face the same problem if/when they start to see iPhone class devices hitting their towers in the same numbers.
So, is AT&T doing the right thing delaying MMS and tethering until, you know, they’ll actually work, or do you just want your features and want them now? Or do you just not buy this whole “data usage conspiracy” at all?
Techcrunch asks the impertinent question: can AT&T handle the iPhone. The pertinent answer thus far is: no. The iPhone is a consumer success the likes of which no smartphone has experienced before. There are more users using more features that consumer more bandwidth that likely even Apple or AT&T ever estimated, and it’s put an extreme hurt not only on existing infrastructure, but a hurt that’s growing faster than infrastructure expansion can handle.
The answer to many is simply to have the iPhone on Verizon, which is believed to offer a better network. While obviously splitting the iPhone between AT&T and Verizon would lesson the individual demand on both — load balancing the user pool, so to speak — we’re curious as to whether or not Verizon could have, or could still, handle the iPhone all by itself.
It’s largely reported that Verizon was the first US carrier offered the iPhone after all. If they’d said yes, and if the iPhone grew on Verizon as fast (or faster, given their reach) than AT&T, would Verizon have suffered the same problems — and bad reputation — AT&T is suffering now? CDMA towers, while serving more with less, still have their limits, after all. (TiPb’s heard that some feel BlackBerry hits CDMA networks hard — they ain’t seen anything like the freight-train of hurt the iPhone is bringing.)
What’s causing all the commotion down in Austin, Texas right now? Turns out it’s not only iPhone news at South by Southwest 2009 (SXSW), but it’s everyone using iPhone 3Gs as well! It’s SMASHING AT&T’s network.
We’ve joked before that AT&T had basically gone out and strapped rabbit ears on their EDGE antennas and called it 3G, well if that’s the case, they’re rapidly strapping even more ears on round Austin way right now, according to Business Insider:
AT&T (T) tells us it’s adding wireless capacity in downtown Austin to deal with “unprecedented” demand (that’s resulted in service that’s flaky at best). This, of course, a result of thousands (tens of thousands?) of South by Southwest attendees bringing 3G iPhones into this part of Austin for the first time. The telco expects service to improve tonight and throughout the rest of the show.
Good news to most techies, however: while AT&T was down, at least Twitter was mostly up…
Know how some people are complaining that they have trouble connecting to AT&T’s 3G network? How they drop calls? How they blame Apple? (Despite the phone working pretty dang well in other countries on other carriers). Remember the theory that there were so many iPhone 3Gs hitting the market that AT&T couldn’t handle the load? (That their network was basically rabbit ears tied to old antennas? — okay, we made that last one up!)
Now imagine that each and every one of those iPhones, especially in high-density areas like San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York — where each tower is already slicing bandwidth to razor thin margins — suddenly found itself barraged by laptops tethering themselves on for the ride.
That might just be what’s keeping AT&T from allowing iPhone tethering: fear it will crush their already strained 3G network. MacBlogz claims to have a source saying just that (via Gizmodo):
“Regardless of how many billions of dollars AT&T pours into their 3G network, it hasn’t been stable enough to handle all you iPhone users.”
Roughly Drafted is claiming a source close to AT&T has spilled the beans on what’s really going on with the iPhone and its 3G connection problems, and what 2.0.2 did to fix it.
In a nutshell? An iPhone 3G running 2.0 or 2.0.1 tries to pull too much power from the network, so when multiple iPhones connect, a tower can actually run out of juice and start dropping calls and losing data.
Why hasn’t upgrading to 2.0.2 already fixed the problem? Simple: some people haven’t yet upgraded, so their 2.0 and 2.0.1 iPhones keep pulling too much power, causing the same problem even for people who have upgraded but are stuck on the same tower (or same high-density city like San Fran or NY). Only when most users have patched to 2.0.2 will people stuck on high-demand towers see improvements.
Earlier reports and theories have lain blame on everything from the 3G radio and antenna, to the Infineon chipset and Apple firmware, to the carriers themselves. We here at TiPb have long been saying the problems were likely a combination of factors, and firmware that pulls too hard on networks that aren’t that hardy seems a far better explanation than any one previously offered. It also goes a long way to explaining why Bluetest didn’t find any hardware issues, and why both Apple (via their website) and AT&T (via SMS) have really stepped up the push for this update.
So, do we finally have our answer, or is this just the next “shot in the dark”? Are you still having 3G problems? Is your neighbor still on 2.0 or 2.0.1? Tell them to upgrade now and then let us know if it helps!
When the Swedish engineers over at Bluetest revealed that, when measured at their facilities, the iPhone 3G radio performed roughly the same as 3G handsets made by Sony Ericsson and Nokia, some (including a few of TiPb’s own, very astute, commenters!) cried foul. Not ones to be dissuaded by a little doubt, however, the Swedes brought in some of the people who complained about 3G reception problems, and put their iPhones to the test.
The results? According to Apple Insider, pretty much the same as before:
Wieselgren reported that the lab found that all these iPhones to “have no problems with the 3G communication in the test chamber. They send and receive signals in a fully normal manner. They do not disconnect earlier than the others we have tested when the signal becomes weaker.” The iPhone using updated 2.0.2 software reported slightly better numbers, but Bluetest indicated there was no statistical significance, as a difference of up to 1dB in the results “can occur due to measurement uncertainty and random fluctuations.”
Does this mean all the problems we keep having and hearing about are the exclusive fault of the carriers and their networks?
Well, no. We go back to our original theory that it’s a confluence of conditions at work (which is why Apple says they can address some of the problems via another firmware update). Even if the antenna is fine, combine some dodgy networks with software that may be a little too sensitive to fluctuation, or too conservative in its reporting, and there are all many of problems that can arise.
2.1 may fix things on Apple’s end, while public outcry (especially in France, where Orange has just been caught… er… red handed throttling down 3G traffic) could speed up the notoriously slow and stingy carriers to invest in their networks, and our future.
Make any sense? (Provided you can connect to the network long enough to read it…)
Last week Apple and Infineon were getting all the heat for shoddy 3G performance. Now AT&T is getting its share of the blame with a dizzying array of combinations. First it was Wired’s fairly damning survey and the Swedish antenna tests that pointed further fingers at the network, and now Gizmodo head-honcho Brian Lam has had the chance to chat with AT&T CTO John Donovan:
I asked Donovan if caution was the overriding strategy behind waiting to match Sprint’s initial 3G rollout, he replied, “I’d like to say we’re deliberate. ” He added that initially meeting the voice quality and data rates of Sprint’s 3G network would have been both technically and financially impossible, despite the customer benefit. (One only needs to look at Sprint’s financial weakness now to appreciate the wisdom of his point.) He also pointed out that by waiting, they got to leapfrog the limitations of Sprint’s EVDO networks, referring to the extended data rates their network will eventually run at, at a better value. “The most astute thing you can do is be as late as possible and as fast as possible. Because it’s going to cost you more if you do it too early, and if you do it too late, you don’t get the features you want.”
Well bully for AT&T, but where exactly does that leave frustrated customers with dodgy 3G reception? According to Donovan, they have a multipart plan to make sure AT&T really, truly, eventually delivers on the “more bars in more places” promise.
Lam likes having them on the record, so they can be held accountable. We think customers would prefer having them simply get the job done, so that dead zones, dropped calls, downgraded connections, and basically everything else that’s currently broken about AT&T’s 3G network is fixed and fast.
Remember the Wired.com Global iPhone 3G Study Casey posted about a week or so back? Well, the results are in, and Wired’s conclusion is interesting to say the least:
In our view, this data is a strong indicator that performance of the mobile carrier’s network is affecting the iPhone 3G more than the handset itself.
Wired further cites the recent Swedish engineering tests, run by Bluetest, which showed that the iPhone 3G’s eponymous radio and antenna performed roughly the same as those of the other handsets they tested.
So where does this leave the last, 2.0.2 firmware tweaks from Apple, and hopes that 2.1 would further fix 3G connection problems? Chipset and firmware finger-pointing may have been misplaced, or at least been only part of a larger overall 3G connectivity knot. Either way, it looks like the tennis ball has just been rocketed back into AT&T (and the other carriers’) court for now.
From an end-user’s perspective, however, especially if you’re one of the unfortunate 2%, other than providing some entertaining distraction, does the blame game really help us? Or do we just want it fixed, like, yesterday?
(Thanks Bad Ash and yc for the tips! Thanks to the TiPb faithful who went over there to help out with the study, and thanks to Wired for recognizing them!)
