Unfortunately, Apple knows the financial future of technology companies rests upon not only the United States of America and Europe but on BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) as well. Purchasing Sprint would actually do very little for Apple although I understand your sentiment.
I should add that we cut the cable (aka "cut the cord") mere days before Apple added Hulu Plus to AppleTV (3rd generation) and I haven't looked back. Netflix has a significant catalog of television and movies. We also have a Roku 2 XS for Amazon Prime and UFC. Although I could use AirPlay from our Macs, the quality isn't sufficient for a live streaming event as yet; I suspect 802.11ac will be required for seamwless live streaming from Mac to television via AirPlay. We have poor reception of over-the-air broadcast television as we are nested in a valley. We rent videos from Redbox.
I encourage everyone to at least attempt to cut the cable for a few days. If you can pass a psychological barrier of one month then you will likely never return. Imagine what you can do with an extra $100 per month!
Good point about Apple not buying Sprint...Apple should concentrate on China (BRIC's).
I too have cut the cord for the past 4 years and also live in a valley with no over-the-air reception. I rent from Redbox and have had Netflix in the past. Having said that, I do miss watching the golf, Formula One, and tennis.
Trying to watch things online is a bit fragmented, although I agree it can be done. I watched a CNN Rep. Primary Debate and halfway thru it stopped and told me to watch the rest on TV. Fareed Zakaria's GPS (one of the best programs on TV) was a video podcast for about a year then stopped. PBS News Hour is shown online a day after the broadcast.
But I take your point it is awfully hard to go back to paying a $100 mo. for TV. Especially with all the crap channels and the incessant commercials! Ugh!
Since AT&T hasn't seen fit to roll out, or even PLAN to roll out, LTE coverage where I live (Portland, OR), and now are putting all kinds of restrictions on my cell-phone plan (which I've had with them since the first iPhone), I'm interpreting all of this as they are BEGGING me to jump to Verizon when the iPhone 5 comes out! I already dumped them when I got the new iPad (which, btw..I can tether from without hassle). I guess moving my entire families phones to Verizon is the next move.
Fwiw - facetime over a 3g network would be seriously brutal. If you guys suffering with 3/4g complain about bandwidth now... Imagine your internet speeds getting worse than that when people add in their facetime calls.
Facetime over WiFi is barely decent even with a solid 10mbps connection. Doing facetime at 1-4mbps... ATT is doing us a favor.
Don't get me wrong, I think ATT should just say go ahead... But everyone else will pay dearly with really bad internet connectivity.
So does this mean if I bring my own iPhone not purchased or subsidized by ATT that FaceTime would work over cellular with an unlimited contract? Seems that the logic used in the AT&T post would require it.
I think ATT and Verizon's plans are diabolical. These shared plans are almost insultingly expensive. I know they have to get money to build an infrastructure that has insatiable demands but, wow. I wish there was some way to pool resources so that they weren't all building their own infrastructure. And to not allow FaceTime on it. The very occasional FaceTime user isn't what's using up the bandwidth.
But on that note, c'mon over to Sprint, folks. I love their rates and their customer service has gotten superb. Call quality is great and I've had maybe 2 dropped calls in a dozen years. Data speeds in the DC area were awesome for the pre-iPhone/Android era but *mostly* poor now. I can stream music and use maps fine in even the most rural places but browsing can be weak at times. You probably won't be able to use FaceTime at all right now but when LTE finally comes to your area you won't be charged extra for it.
[Disclaimer: I did work at Sprint 12 years ago but had nothing to do with wireless and am not a shill for them. I. I'm using this plan and got a bit of a discount through this referral which is an open secret. Mods - feel free to redact this portion if you find this seems too much like advertising.]
Actually, given the glacial pace of AT&T's LTE network deployment I must question their resolve to building their own infrastructure.
Atlanta, Dallas/Fort Worth, Houston, Kansas City, San Antonio and Waco already have Sprint LTE. Apparently, Sprint expects to cover nearly 200 million potential subscribers by the end of 2014.
According to the American Customer Satisfaction Index, Sprint is the most improved company in customer satisfaction, across all industries, over the last three years.
Verizon hasn't said anything specifically about Facetime over Cellular at this point. They are pushing customers to towards their everything plans as well, but the difference is that they are doing it at the time of upgrade. Example: If you are due for an upgrade and you want the phone you're upgrading to to be subsidized, then you have to give up your unlimited plan in favor of one of their everything plans. But, If you buy your phone at the full unsubsidized price, you can keep your unlimited plan. If you don't upgrade then you keep your same plan. While this sucks ass too, it makes more sense to me as at least they're doing it at a time when essentially you're starting a new contract. AT&T is also pushing it's clients towards their everything plans, and even though they're not forcing you, they're doing it by limiting the function of your phone over their network.....Pretty shitty...
I read somewhere else Verizon won't block FaceTime because of a Net Neutrality Agreement. Either way, when the new iPhone comes out, I'm switching to either Sprint or Verizon. I'm done with AT&T. Not only because of this FaceTime blocking crap, AT&T's LTE network is pretty limited compared to Verizon. I would imagine AT&T will be losing a ton of customers over this. I hope a lawsuit is filed soon or the FCC gets involved. I don't see how this can be legal.
FaceTime is not that big of a deal. Most people don't use it at all or if they do it is usually on WiFi. If you and the person you usually FaceTime with download Skype, you can use that to video chat when there is no WiFi available....or just pay the premium and don't worry about it. That is what AT&T wants you to do. Pay the premium and then rarely use FaaceTime. The perfect profit generation machine.
People don't use it because they don't know if they can.
It's bad enough that you need to know they have an iPhone 4 or better,
but then you specifically need to know that they've got wi-fi access... WTF?
It's not going to be widely used until it can be used anywhere by a majority.
Right now, it's not a real option, and that's the carriers' fault.
Well then Apple should just let people download the FaceTime app, like they would Skype or ooVoo, the AT&T+Apple exclusive contract is over, I think that Apple has a little more freedom to make AT&T mad now.
AT & T's argument is lame. Data is data... the call is Zeros and Ones, the apps use Zeros and Ones, FaceTime uses Zeros and Ones. C'mon... the cell companies (Cable companies too; Voice, Internet and Television are all Zeros and Ones) are ripping the consumer off. Moreover, if one purchases their own device.... AT & T still charges full freight. Any device, using any app, on any network at any time for a flat fee. Get it and be vocal!!!!
I pay $125 (with taxes) now for two iphones, 550min family talk, and 2GB/m x2. With this new plan I would have to pay $150 + taxes. AT&T wants to shove a useless texting plan down our throats because it "lost" revenue after Apple allowed Messages to bypass their SMS system. If their service was getting noticeably better, perhaps they could have an argument for this price hike, but their service remains bad, FAIL!
Here in Louisville the data speeds are completely pathetic. Speed test just gave me rates of 0.02Mbps down and 0.46 Mbps up with 1080ms ping on my iPhone 4S. Re-test gave me even worse upload speeds. Sure it's unlimited, but it's slow as crap. This download speed is the worst I have ever seen on it actually. It doesn't like being downtown. I'm on that same plan, which was nice as I got to pay what I was paying when we had our LG Lotus phones and not feel the extra $10/phone smartphone fee. Add $20 for the phones, subtract $20 from the plan cost. I have poor quality as far as dropped calls and calls getting garbled. We just got these phones in Feb, so I'll be eligible for new phones right around the time Apple releases the 2013 iPhone. We'll see where the carriers are by then as far as LTE goes and how the pre-paid market is doing. Love my phone, frustrated by the service, but I know I will pay even more if I go to Verizon or AT&T.
People don't use it because they don't know if they can.
It's bad enough that you need to know they have an iPhone 4 or better,
but then you specifically need to know that they've got wi-fi access... WTF?
It's not going to be widely used until it can be used anywhere by a majority.
Right now, it's not a real option, and that's the carriers' fault.
I don't think any of your concerns are really issues at all.
First off, in my experience most people don't want to video chat except possibly with relatives and only then on rare occasion.
If you want to video chat more than likely you know the other person and know what kind of phone they have as it is probably your spouse.
We have had video chat on Skype for years. The current version works really well for video, but it is tiresome to hold the smartphone in position for very long and a regular audio only call is much more relaxed especially for extended time.
Fine. I'll just use Tango and my grandfathered unlimited data plan. It works just as well as FaceTime, and over cellular data networks, and is compatible with Android users.
Actually, given the glacial pace of AT&T's LTE network deployment I must question their resolve to building their own infrastructure.
Atlanta, Dallas/Fort Worth, Houston, Kansas City, San Antonio and Waco already have Sprint LTE. Apparently, Sprint expects to cover nearly 200 million potential subscribers by the end of 2014.
According to the American Customer Satisfaction Index, Sprint is the most improved company in customer satisfaction, across all industries, over the last three years.
Well here's a thought, what about facetime over the so called 4G or LTE network? There's no mention of blocking that. It would suck if those that own the new iPhone were able to facetime over the network whilst blocking those still on 3G only.
As far as this goes, whoever this guy at AT&T is he is an idiot. How does the facetime feature being built into the phone have anythign to do with this.
Unfortunately no he is not an idiot. Legally he is correct.
The rules in question only say that carriers can't block 3rd party functions that copy carrier native ones. For example they can't block IMessages going over 3G/4G because it copies SMS/MMS. But if all the apps are 3rd party like Skype and FaceTime they can legally do what they want since the issue isn't cobbling said 3rd party apps to force folks to use the carriers offering and likely pay more for it.
The idiot in this case is the person that tried to use these rules which don't apply. The applicable argument is that data is data and the carriers shouldn't be allowed to nitpick what we paying customers can do with our data so long as we agree to paying the charges, deal with their legally allowed speed throttling etc.
Comments
Quote:
Originally Posted by MacBook Pro
Unfortunately, Apple knows the financial future of technology companies rests upon not only the United States of America and Europe but on BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) as well. Purchasing Sprint would actually do very little for Apple although I understand your sentiment.
I should add that we cut the cable (aka "cut the cord") mere days before Apple added Hulu Plus to AppleTV (3rd generation) and I haven't looked back. Netflix has a significant catalog of television and movies. We also have a Roku 2 XS for Amazon Prime and UFC. Although I could use AirPlay from our Macs, the quality isn't sufficient for a live streaming event as yet; I suspect 802.11ac will be required for seamwless live streaming from Mac to television via AirPlay. We have poor reception of over-the-air broadcast television as we are nested in a valley. We rent videos from Redbox.
I encourage everyone to at least attempt to cut the cable for a few days. If you can pass a psychological barrier of one month then you will likely never return. Imagine what you can do with an extra $100 per month!
#next_pages_container { width: 5px; hight: 5px; position: absolute; top: -100px; left: -100px; z-index: 2147483647 !important; }
Good point about Apple not buying Sprint...Apple should concentrate on China (BRIC's).
I too have cut the cord for the past 4 years and also live in a valley with no over-the-air reception. I rent from Redbox and have had Netflix in the past. Having said that, I do miss watching the golf, Formula One, and tennis.
Trying to watch things online is a bit fragmented, although I agree it can be done. I watched a CNN Rep. Primary Debate and halfway thru it stopped and told me to watch the rest on TV. Fareed Zakaria's GPS (one of the best programs on TV) was a video podcast for about a year then stopped. PBS News Hour is shown online a day after the broadcast.
But I take your point it is awfully hard to go back to paying a $100 mo. for TV. Especially with all the crap channels and the incessant commercials! Ugh!
Enjoyed your comments on the Cable industry.
Since AT&T hasn't seen fit to roll out, or even PLAN to roll out, LTE coverage where I live (Portland, OR), and now are putting all kinds of restrictions on my cell-phone plan (which I've had with them since the first iPhone), I'm interpreting all of this as they are BEGGING me to jump to Verizon when the iPhone 5 comes out! I already dumped them when I got the new iPad (which, btw..I can tether from without hassle). I guess moving my entire families phones to Verizon is the next move.
Facetime over WiFi is barely decent even with a solid 10mbps connection. Doing facetime at 1-4mbps... ATT is doing us a favor.
Don't get me wrong, I think ATT should just say go ahead... But everyone else will pay dearly with really bad internet connectivity.
Originally Posted by LuxoM3
But everyone else will pay dearly with really bad internet connectivity.
… Then that's AT&T's problem.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jason98
I doubt T-Mobile will give me 45mbs as I am I getting on my iPad 3.
With LTE-A that T-Mobile is rolling out next year (which by the way, LTE chips support LTE-A) can reach speeds of up to 1 Gbps [WHOOOOO]!
Quote:
Originally Posted by ddawson100
I think ATT and Verizon's plans are diabolical. These shared plans are almost insultingly expensive. I know they have to get money to build an infrastructure that has insatiable demands but, wow. I wish there was some way to pool resources so that they weren't all building their own infrastructure. And to not allow FaceTime on it. The very occasional FaceTime user isn't what's using up the bandwidth.
But on that note, c'mon over to Sprint, folks. I love their rates and their customer service has gotten superb. Call quality is great and I've had maybe 2 dropped calls in a dozen years. Data speeds in the DC area were awesome for the pre-iPhone/Android era but *mostly* poor now. I can stream music and use maps fine in even the most rural places but browsing can be weak at times. You probably won't be able to use FaceTime at all
[Disclaimer: I did work at Sprint 12 years ago but had nothing to do with wireless and am not a shill for them. I. I'm using this plan and got a bit of a discount through this referral which is an open secret. Mods - feel free to redact this portion if you find this seems too much like advertising.]
Actually, given the glacial pace of AT&T's LTE network deployment I must question their resolve to building their own infrastructure.
Atlanta, Dallas/Fort Worth, Houston, Kansas City, San Antonio and Waco already have Sprint LTE. Apparently, Sprint expects to cover nearly 200 million potential subscribers by the end of 2014.
#next_pages_container { width: 5px; hight: 5px; position: absolute; top: -100px; left: -100px; z-index: 2147483647 !important; }According to the American Customer Satisfaction Index, Sprint is the most improved company in customer satisfaction, across all industries, over the last three years.
#next_pages_container { width: 5px; hight: 5px; position: absolute; top: -100px; left: -100px; z-index: 2147483647 !important; }
Quote:
Originally Posted by TechManMike
Verizon hasn't said anything specifically about Facetime over Cellular at this point. They are pushing customers to towards their everything plans as well, but the difference is that they are doing it at the time of upgrade. Example: If you are due for an upgrade and you want the phone you're upgrading to to be subsidized, then you have to give up your unlimited plan in favor of one of their everything plans. But, If you buy your phone at the full unsubsidized price, you can keep your unlimited plan. If you don't upgrade then you keep your same plan. While this sucks ass too, it makes more sense to me as at least they're doing it at a time when essentially you're starting a new contract. AT&T is also pushing it's clients towards their everything plans, and even though they're not forcing you, they're doing it by limiting the function of your phone over their network.....Pretty shitty...
I read somewhere else Verizon won't block FaceTime because of a Net Neutrality Agreement. Either way, when the new iPhone comes out, I'm switching to either Sprint or Verizon. I'm done with AT&T. Not only because of this FaceTime blocking crap, AT&T's LTE network is pretty limited compared to Verizon. I would imagine AT&T will be losing a ton of customers over this. I hope a lawsuit is filed soon or the FCC gets involved. I don't see how this can be legal.
Virtually every internet-enabled app on the iPhone competes with AT&T services.
Q: So what makes FaceTime so special?
(A: nothing!)
AT&T is making a switch to Verizon look very easy, inexpensive and very worthwhile.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mstone
FaceTime is not that big of a deal. Most people don't use it at all or if they do it is usually on WiFi. If you and the person you usually FaceTime with download Skype, you can use that to video chat when there is no WiFi available....or just pay the premium and don't worry about it. That is what AT&T wants you to do. Pay the premium and then rarely use FaaceTime. The perfect profit generation machine.
People don't use it because they don't know if they can.
It's bad enough that you need to know they have an iPhone 4 or better,
but then you specifically need to know that they've got wi-fi access... WTF?
It's not going to be widely used until it can be used anywhere by a majority.
Right now, it's not a real option, and that's the carriers' fault.
http://www.fcc.gov/complaints
Well then Apple should just let people download the FaceTime app, like they would Skype or ooVoo, the AT&T+Apple exclusive contract is over, I think that Apple has a little more freedom to make AT&T mad now.
AT & T's argument is lame. Data is data... the call is Zeros and Ones, the apps use Zeros and Ones, FaceTime uses Zeros and Ones. C'mon... the cell companies (Cable companies too; Voice, Internet and Television are all Zeros and Ones) are ripping the consumer off. Moreover, if one purchases their own device.... AT & T still charges full freight. Any device, using any app, on any network at any time for a flat fee. Get it and be vocal!!!!
I pay $125 (with taxes) now for two iphones, 550min family talk, and 2GB/m x2. With this new plan I would have to pay $150 + taxes. AT&T wants to shove a useless texting plan down our throats because it "lost" revenue after Apple allowed Messages to bypass their SMS system. If their service was getting noticeably better, perhaps they could have an argument for this price hike, but their service remains bad, FAIL!
Quote:
Originally Posted by SSquirrel
Here in Louisville the data speeds are completely pathetic. Speed test just gave me rates of 0.02Mbps down and 0.46 Mbps up with 1080ms ping on my iPhone 4S. Re-test gave me even worse upload speeds. Sure it's unlimited, but it's slow as crap. This download speed is the worst I have ever seen on it actually. It doesn't like being downtown. I'm on that same plan, which was nice as I got to pay what I was paying when we had our LG Lotus phones and not feel the extra $10/phone smartphone fee. Add $20 for the phones, subtract $20 from the plan cost. I have poor quality as far as dropped calls and calls getting garbled. We just got these phones in Feb, so I'll be eligible for new phones right around the time Apple releases the 2013 iPhone. We'll see where the carriers are by then as far as LTE goes and how the pre-paid market is doing. Love my phone, frustrated by the service, but I know I will pay even more if I go to Verizon or AT&T.
#next_pages_container { width: 5px; hight: 5px; position: absolute; top: -100px; left: -100px; z-index: 2147483647 !important; }I have excellent news for you! Many core technologies for smartphones will reach an important milestone in 2013 including:
#next_pages_container { width: 5px; hight: 5px; position: absolute; top: -100px; left: -100px; z-index: 2147483647 !important; }Improved backhaul for carriers (not just the signals like Verizon has but expanded capacity),
Ubiquity of 28 nm CMOS processes as well (15%-30% improved battery life for some functions, e.g. Wi-Fi) (HTC One X aren't all 28nm for example)
4G LTE Advanced solutions
802.11ac Wi-Fi (up to 1300 Mbps on 5GHz and 450 Mbps on 2.4GHz)
PowerVR Series 6 (Rogue) GPU (20x better performance and 5x more efficient than current GPUs) and,
ARM Cortex A15 MPCore CPU (5x better performance than current CPUs)
I don't think any of your concerns are really issues at all.
First off, in my experience most people don't want to video chat except possibly with relatives and only then on rare occasion.
If you want to video chat more than likely you know the other person and know what kind of phone they have as it is probably your spouse.
We have had video chat on Skype for years. The current version works really well for video, but it is tiresome to hold the smartphone in position for very long and a regular audio only call is much more relaxed especially for extended time.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MacBook Pro
Actually, given the glacial pace of AT&T's LTE network deployment I must question their resolve to building their own infrastructure.
Atlanta, Dallas/Fort Worth, Houston, Kansas City, San Antonio and Waco already have Sprint LTE. Apparently, Sprint expects to cover nearly 200 million potential subscribers by the end of 2014.
According to the American Customer Satisfaction Index, Sprint is the most improved company in customer satisfaction, across all industries, over the last three years.
#next_pages_container { width: 5px; hight: 5px; position: absolute; top: -100px; left: -100px; z-index: 2147483647 !important; }
#next_pages_container { width: 5px; hight: 5px; position: absolute; top: -100px; left: -100px; z-index: 2147483647 !important; }
As posted elsewhere:
…Sprints network, right?
No true 4G, right.
Slow as hell, right?*
No simultaneous voice and cellular data, right?
* 3G and 4G Wireless Speed Showdown: Which Networks Are Fastest?
Unfortunately no he is not an idiot. Legally he is correct.
The rules in question only say that carriers can't block 3rd party functions that copy carrier native ones. For example they can't block IMessages going over 3G/4G because it copies SMS/MMS. But if all the apps are 3rd party like Skype and FaceTime they can legally do what they want since the issue isn't cobbling said 3rd party apps to force folks to use the carriers offering and likely pay more for it.
The idiot in this case is the person that tried to use these rules which don't apply. The applicable argument is that data is data and the carriers shouldn't be allowed to nitpick what we paying customers can do with our data so long as we agree to paying the charges, deal with their legally allowed speed throttling etc.