My News Today » AT&T

AT&T Launches iPhone MMS September 25

Kyle — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 20:56:10 +0000

Gizmodo – AT&T admits they’re late, saying “it was important to give our customers a positive experience from day one” so they needed the extra to “to make sure our network is ready to handle what we expect will be a record volume of MMS traffic.” Which I think means if MMS doesn’t work, everybody can ream the shit out of them for it.

The wait for tethering continues though, with “no set date.” They simply “expect to offer it in the future.” Again, ’cause the network isn’t ready: “This function could exponentially increase traffic on the network, and we need to ensure that some of our current upgrades are in place before we can deliver the expanded functionality with the excellent performance that customers expect.”

The AT&T dark overlords decide to force it’s ‘data plan’ for smartphone domination

Kyle — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 17:41:34 +0000

Boy Genius Report – AT&T subscribers, we have good news and bad news. The bad news is that as of September 6th, AT&T will begin requiring that all smartphones sign up for a smartphone data plan. The good news is that customers with smartphones purchased prior to September 6th with non-smartphone data plans will be grandfathered in and will not have to upgrade their current plans. Note that if you currently use a feature phone with a data plan and you upgrade to a smartphone on or after September 6th, you will not be able to keep your current MediaNet plan.

We’ve been hearing rumblings to this effect for a few weeks now but as of this morning it’s 100% confirmed thanks to an internal email from one of our ninjas. AT&T’s claimed reasoning behind the move: to ensure customers receive a predictable bill each month. Mmm hmm. Note that this only applies to smartphones purchased from AT&T or a dealer of course, so those of you who opt for unlocked handsets should be unaffected. Hit the jump for the internal email circulated today at AT&T.

AT&T ♥ iPhone and can’t live without

Kyle — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 20:51:30 +0000

Gizmodo – AT&T’s quarterly earnings came out yesterday and touted that, as always, AT&T picked up over a million new customers—1.4 million, to be exact. It also revealed how badly they need the iPhone.

Of AT&T’s 1.4 million new customers, around 800,000 came aboard with the iPhone (given that of the 2.4 million iPhones they moved, “more than a third” were customers new to AT&T), continuing a long-running trend . That is, growth heavily fueled by the iPhone.

Also, AT&T moved a total of 3.5 million integrated 3G devices (that is phones with 3G + QWERTY keyboards), including the iPhone. That means the iPhone accounted for roughly 68 percent of those sales. Okay, but that includes smarter dumbphones like the LG Neon or Samsung Magnet. Meaning it forms an even higher percentage of legit smartphones sales—like vs. BlackBerry or Nokia’s E71 or Windows Mobile.

Which translates directly into money: Wireless revenues were up 37.2 percent, driven by “messaging, internet access, access to applications and services,” or precisely those phones. That has to frighten them at some level—they’re deeply dependent on the iPhone.

Overall, AT&T stands at 79.6 million subscribers, up 6.7 million from last year. Verizon’s not releasing their full earnings breakdown until next week, but they did report that they stand at 87 million customers, adding 1.1 million this past quarter. Verizon’s an interesting contrast, since they’ve maintained a similar (but slightly slower) growth clip as AT&T even since the latter became the exclusive iPhone carrier in the US.

Personally, I’m most curious to see Sprint’s earnings for a glimpse at what effect (if any) the Palm Pre has on the continuous slide they’ve been on for what feels like forever now.

AT&T is testing bumped-up 3G speeds

Kyle — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 22:52:13 +0000

TUAW.com – Some people may not be happy with the iPhone running on the AT&T 3G network, but at least it appears that network will be running faster. AT&T is already in advanced testing of its new faster 3G network, which was first revealed by Scott McElroy, AT&T VP of Technology Realization, in an interview with Telephony Online.

AT&T says it is going to increase the downlink capacity on its high speed packet access (HSPA) from 3.6 megabits per second to 7.2 megabits per second by upgrading the software at the base stations. Currently, AT&T has the enhanced network running in two test markets, but plans to extend the faster spec to its entire network. Then, AT&T plans to start migrating its networks to ‘Evolved HSPA’ which would triple peak speeds.

Of course the big question for many of us is will the iPhone work with these enhanced speeds? AT&T says most of the data cards, smartphones, and the iPhone will support the new tweaked specs, at least up to 14.4 Mb/s. It’s probably a good idea for AT&T to drastically improve its network, especially as it is begging Apple to renew its partnership for another year.