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AT&T CEO voices regret over iPhone unlimited data model

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Re: AT&T CEO voices regret over iPhone unlimited data model

#4

Post by untog »

The iMessage thing is, IMO, the more interesting comment. Apple has effectively ripped a revenue stream away from the providers, and they can't do much about it apart from raise prices for other stuff.

They're not alone, of course- BBM does the same thing. But they're all disjointed networks, which plays into the provider's hands right now. People still need text plans to contact people on other devices. I wonder if we'll see an app like WhatsApp finally get big enough to challenge that.

Re: AT&T CEO voices regret over iPhone unlimited data model

#5

Post by rexf »

How about AT&T Customer regrets choosing AT&T iPhone model?

As an AT&T iPhone user (grandfathered with the unlimited data plan), I've had nothing but poor service in both Silicon Valley, CA & NYC.

AT&T's CEO regrets offering unlimited data because AT&T has to "invest capital"? As an iPhone user experiencing the lack of capital investment every day, I have no sympathy and only hatred for AT&T.

Re: AT&T CEO voices regret over iPhone unlimited data model

#6

Post by lusr »

"Apple iMessage is a classic example. If you're using iMessage, you're not using one of our messaging services, right?"

It's hard to believe this is a real quote by such a senior executive. If the profitability of your business is so significantly based on a hack (SMS) that you stay awake at night worrying about it, and you didn't bother innovating by developing a real solution to the problem (pervasive real-time communication) in the past 20 years while the hack became popular, then you absolutely deserve to lose this profitable part of your business - especially when you're in the friggin telecommunications business!

Re: AT&T CEO voices regret over iPhone unlimited data model

#7

Post by dspickes »

I disagree with his assessment. He only has to "invest capital" for each megabyte you download insofar as he merely has to maintain his current network. An individual user has a hardware limit on the amount of bandwidth they can consume, be it imposed by the network or the consuming device. "Each additional megabyte" consumes no more or less bandwidth than the megabyte before it nor the megabyte after it. He has the same maintenance cost whether this individual user is paying per megabyte or per day of access.

What causes him to have to invest capital is each additional simultaneous connection which uses his network. These analogize to subscribers to his service, not bits of data sent over his network.

I mean, does he really believe that he can change people's collective usage patterns during peak hours merely by limiting their consumed bandwidth for the whole month? Surely not. If anything, it will persuade people to eliminate their extraneous data usage and only use it when the data connection is "most important". I'm not one for blind guessing, but I have hunch that these "most important" times of data access probably correlate to his current peak hours.

The power companies face this same problem with throughput, and what do they do? Do they cap the amount of power you can receive per month in order to alleviate load? No! They invest in throughput, and when things get sketchy during peak times, they enforce throughput caps like rolling brownouts.

I have a hunch AT&T also does this with their forced data throttling on those who are consuming the most bandwidth, as if they were the problem! But they are also convincing people to pay more for less with monthly data caps. How they can get away with this is very surprising to me, personally.

Re: AT&T CEO voices regret over iPhone unlimited data model

#8

Post by jamesaguilar »

untog wrote: post #4

The iMessage thing is, IMO, the more interesting comment. Apple has effectively ripped a revenue stream away from the providers, and they can't do much about it apart from raise prices for other stuff. They're not alone, of course- BBM does the same thing. But they're all disjointed networks, which plays into the provider's hands right now. People still need text plans to contact people on other devices. I wonder if…

Probably not. There have been dozens of challengers (Kik, Beluga, WhatsApp), no one has gathered the ubiquity or reliability of SMS. The one one I can conceive of hitting that goal is Facebook, and at the moment they don't seem to be trying too hard.
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