There are two kinds of iPhone users – Those who think they have the best handset on the worst network and the others who think that a good carrier like AT&T has had to suffer simply because the users of the best smartphone have all been using up its bandwidth.
The consensus is basically that AT&T is bad and the iPhone is too good.
However, today's New York Times carries an interesting article from a different perspective where the author Randall Stross writes that the reason AT&T is suffering is not just because iPhone users have been disproportionately consuming its bandwidth, but also because the iPhone has some inherent defects that is adding to the carrier's woes.
According to Roger Entner, the Senior Vice President for telecommunications research at Nielsen, a flawed design of iPhone's 'air interface' which connects the phone to the cell towers is responsible for the poor voice and data transmission from the iPhone. This naturally comes across to the customer as a carrier-related problem.
So why is AT&T silent on the issue? Entner says that AT&T defending itself on this would also mean criticizing Apple which it might not do under the current circumstances. While Entner did not elaborate if this was because AT&T's revenues of late have been dependent on Apple to a massive extent, we certainly think that could be a reason.
This is not Entner's conclusion alone. Independent studies conducted by third party services like Global Wireless Solutions and Root Wireless have also confirmed the superiority of AT&T over Verizon despite the increasing network congestion. These studies put AT&T's data throughput at 40%-50% above Verizon and the other competitors. Besides, AT&T's average download speed in the seven biggest metropolitan areas was faster than what the competitors offered. Also, their signal strength was better than Verizon's at least 75% of the time in these areas. Interestingly, these tests were not conducted using an iPhone since they required running applications that Apple does not approve of.
While Apple has not commented on these findings, we wonder if the company will take care of these shortcomings in the next generation iPhone, which is expected to be launched around June 2010. However, with other speculations about AT&T losing their exclusivity deal with Apple during the same time, any improvement in the iPhone's performance will still fail to revive the poor image that AT&T has among its subscribers. And that, we think, is most unfortunate.
[via The New York Times]
