Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Time to Cut AT&T Some Slack, iPhone Users?
Since 2008, AT&T’s network in and around San Francisco has experienced an increase in 3G data traffic of 2,000 percent. If you find this metric as astonishing as I do, consider this: The increase in Bay Area data traffic is actually below the national average–significantly below. According to AT&T CTO John Donovan, 3G data traffic on the company’s wireless network has risen nearly 5,000 percent nationally in the past 12 quarters.
Bay Area iPhone users, relief is on the way. AT&T has almost completed a $65 million upgrade to its network in the region. The carrier has upgraded close to 850 cell sites in an effort to better handle the massive surge in data traffic it has seen in and around San Francisco since the debut of iPhone. And make no mistake: The surge has been massive. 
If AT&T took offense at Verizon’s “There’s a Map for That” ad campaign, wait until it gets a load of its rival’s newest ad spots. Unfazed by AT&T’s litigious reply to its first effort, Verizon rolled out a trio of new anti-AT&T ads over the weekend and they are brutal in their criticism of the carrier’s network coverage.
Apple’s internationally coveted iPhone finally arrived at market in China last week and by most accounts its debut was uncharacteristically muted. There is “no sign of the sort of sellout reception that greeted the smart phone at its introduction in other countries,” The Wall Street Journal reported. Clearly, the device’s Chinese launch wasn’t the rousing success to which we’ve become accustomed. That said, it probably wasn’t quite the bust it’s been made out to be, either.
Demand exceeding supply for the Apple iPhone 3GS is one of the big takeaways from Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster’s earnings preview for Apple’s September quarter and it obviously bodes well for the company’s investors. Munster sees Apple beating the Street’s estimates thanks to increased Mac and iPhone sales.
It has taken far too long, but AT&T has finally warmed to the the idea of voice-over-Internet services on its wireless network. On Tuesday afternoon, the carrier opened its 3G network to telephony apps, ending a restriction that had limited them to Wi-Fi.
AT&T’s iPhone exclusivity deal with Apple is set to expire as early as next year, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it won’t be renewed–despite complaints about the carrier’s network. That’s the word from iSuppli, which predicts Apple will extend its agreement with AT&T because it has no reason not to.
Among the 1,000-plus new features included in Apple’s iPhone 3.0 is a new open standard for live video streaming over HTTP, and soon, Netflix will make use of it. Well, that’s the rumor anyway. An industry executive said to be familiar with the company’s plans tells Multichannel News that Netflix plans to extend its Watch Instantly video-streaming service to the Nintendo Wii and to the iPhone and iPod touch as well.
Looks like Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster’s second estimate of Apple’s weekend iPhone sales underestimated demand just as badly as his first. Apple didn’t sell 500,000 units of the iPhone 3GS over the weekend, as Munster first predicted. Nor did the company sell 750,000 as he said in a research note this morning. It sold over one million. Moreover, downloads of Apple’s new iPhone 3.0 software, launched last Wednesday, have already reached six million.
“iPhone 3G S Available at AT&T Tomorrow.” That’s the title of the press release that just landed in my inbox–even as the lines form in New York City and Tokyo. Never hurts to state the obvious, I suppose.
10 am PDT, 1 pm EDT.
Forstall returns to the stage for some final words about iPhone 3.0. Free for iPhone owners. $9.95 for iPod Touch owners. Available worldwide June 17. GM seed available to developers today. And with that he hands the keynote back over to Schiller. Schiller talks up the iPhone 3G, noting that two thirds of all mobile browsing is now done from iPhones and iPod Touches. He pulls up a graph of various app stores and the number of apps available at each. Apple’s App Store far exceeds them all. 
