Earlier this week, we had written about New York Times journalist Randall Stross' article that blamed iPhone's 'air interface' as the reason behind the network woes AT&T subscribers have been facing.
Randall's article concluded that though AT&T is getting congested, things are worse than what it should be because of the iPhone's defect.
Randall's article has generated lots of controversy for two reasons – It has vilified a company everyone loves and has glorified the network of a company everyone loves to hate. But how true are the arguments presented? John Gruber from Daring Fireball makes a very good argument against the points put forth in the original New York Times article.
Here is a gist of his counter
- One of the network solutions company that has put the blame on Apple has AT&T among its clientele, and so could not have been unbiased.
- Root Wireless' testing of network was not done with an iPhone handset which meant that its conclusions were incomplete.
- The iPhone users in other parts of the world have not been facing issues on the same magnitude as faced in the US.
- Other phones in the AT&T network face similar problems as the iPhone in any given area.
- Apple has released three models so far and it is impossible for them to have not rectified the issue till date.
- The network problems have increased over time which corresponds to an increase in the volumes of iPhones in use.
Gruber's arguments indeed hold water, but one of the vital points he has missed is Randall's acknowledgement of the increasing burden on AT&T's network. As Randall points out, the data traffic handled by AT&T has increased 4000% in just over the past one year or so and it is a given that under such circumstances, the network has deteriorated over time. But that's not the point.
Randall's article questions if the already congested networks of AT&T appear worse than it actually is to the iPhone user. This could also possibly mean that the iPhones on other networks are operating at less than 100% of their potential due to the defect.
Since the issue is with the 'air interface' which connects the phone to the cell towers, this could mean that the data transmission is happening at a rate slower than it actually should. For any other network, this should not possibly matter much. But on AT&T, which already has to shoulder lots of data traffic, slower data transmission from each of the several iPhones could cumulatively pull down the performance of the network.
This is not to side with Randall's point of view. Gruber's points make a lot of sense and questions the credibility of this entire assessment. And as Gruber has mentioned, knowing Apple, we find it difficult to believe that Apple hasn't fixed the issue in newer iPhone models (i.e. iPhone 3G or iPhone 3GS). We wonder if Apple and/or AT&T would come out to clarify their position on this issue.
Meanwhile, we would like to leave the conclusion in the hands of our readers. Do you think the points made by New York Times is flawed? What makes you think so? Please tell us your views in the comments.
[via Daring Fireball]
