AT&T gives go ahead to Sling Media to stream content over 3G network
Something is afoot over at AT&T with its 3G network. While it has guarded it in the past from data intensive applications, it has suddenly flung the doors open, and now even Sling Media is being allowed into the party.
Sling Media, makers of the placeshifting Sling Box products, released an application for the iPhone some time ago, and while you could watch your home TV via this application when you were on Wi-Fi, doing it over the 3G network was forbidden. Well, all of that has changed now with no real explanation given of why AT&T suddenly changed its mind, but it has.
According to The New York Times, testing has been underway since December 2009, and just this week AT&T informed Sling Media and Apple that the application could now access the 3G network. This means that once the app update goes live, you will be able to watch a live stream from your home television anytime you want. This also means that the new iPad tablet from Apple has just been turned into a mobile 9.7-inch television essentially if you have the 3G version of the device.
This news comes a week after the announcement that Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) calls would now be allowed on AT&T’s 3G network. We aren’t exactly certain what is going on, but AT&T seems to have gone a bit slap happy all of a sudden with allowing more and more data to be streamed over the network. Does this mean that AT&T has finally improved its network to handle all of this extra data, or is it just feeling pressure from consumers and the Verizon ads to make its network sound more powerful?
Whatever the case is, the consumers are coming out the winners in all of this with more things they can now do with their iPhones.
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