Smartphone a two-edged bandwidth hog
As could be expected, the wireless carriers that provide service for smartphones are experiencing problems as the data-hungry super-phones grow quickly in popularity.
The users of smartphones are targeted by wireless carriers as attractive users. After all, they are willing to spend the most for a cell phone and they also acquire lucrative contracts for telephone, data, and texting services. But there is a downside: smartphone users also soak up all three of those services like a very dry sponge, which causes network problems for the very wireless service providers which courted them in the first place.
The carrier with the most obvious problems is AT&T. They have had problems in normal operations, things like dropped calls and inadequate geographical coverage, according to a story in Fortune. Of course, they have been roundly criticized for the lack of MMS services and tethering. The LA Times even blamed them, after a semi-formal reception study, of prematurely draining cell phone batteries because their cell coverage is so spotty that the phones constantly search for a decent signal.
Their problems have showed up most obviously at special events, according to a Fortune story. Perhaps the worst of those was at South By Southwest in Austin. There were so many iPhone users at the event that the entire AT&T network in Austin folded, at a time when the city and the event were filled with high-tech aficionados, who later reported the iPhone reception disaster to their friends and their blog readers, laying the blame strictly at the feet of AT&T, rapidly spreading the word of poor AT&T service.
Similar, but not as intense, problems happen with other carriers such as Sprint and T-Mobile, and to a much lesser extent to Verizon. As the smartphone market segment continues to grow, more and more strain gets placed on the 3G networks of all the providers. All of the networks are working to upgrade their 3G networks to 4G, and to keep their 3G networks at peak performance. There is some chance that the marketing departments are more efficient that the engineering departments, something that will keep the complaints rolling in until the situation is repaired.
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September 1st, 2009
Glad I don’t live in the US tbh, your networks sound shit from a lot of the stories you have on this site regarding the subject.
Somethin’ I’ve always wondered is why do you American’s get phones after the rest of the world though :/