Take a look at this map from gsmworld.com showing a map of the global g and 3g coverage and compare The USA with Europ and you'll know why. And then dare to make a silly add with some nerd saying AT&T is listening to their customers!
I have found 3.0 and 3.01 to be a hinderance. Safari crashes more than a drunken congressman, and if anything, battery life has dropped.
The answer given by Apple is to just shut off location services, shut off 3G... hey gang? I bought a 3G phone to have... (students? yes, yes, you in the back?) 3G service!!!
As for service: I found T-mobile far more satisfactory. If they didn't serve an area, the phone would latch on to what was available, and I never, EVER, got hit with a roaming charge. I've been so far into rural areas that the phone towers were steam-powered and made of wood, and the annunciator would give names like "Jowls 'n' Grits Wireless". Still worked, and worked solidly.
Contrast this with my very own office where it goes from five bars to "No Service" within minutes.
Nuts. My iPhone goes into the sock drawer the day my contract is up. Or I'll jailbreak it and go back to T-Mobile, or whomever else is on SIM-card phones by then.
Take a look at this map from gsmworld.com showing a map of the global g and 3g coverage and compare The USA with Europ and you'll know why. And then dare to make a silly add with some nerd saying AT&T is listening to their customers!
PS. Don't try this on your iPhone as the file is just to big to be downloaded over a g network!
It’s a 21.8 MB PDF. My iPhone is handling it just fine at 1.7Mbps. Your use of a ‘g’ network is hyperbolic and thus weakens any reasonable argument you may have have.
As for listening to customers, I don’t know of any company that doesn’t listen to customers, but you fail to consider that listening and then doing what customers want isn’t always the best move for a business. There are shareholders for starters that need to be listened to, and then there are things like technical issues that need to be tackled. Saying, AT&T needs more towers with more bandwidth is not a resolution.
That PDF does show that the US has more geographical coverage of 3G than any single European country. Of course, the US is much bigger in scale so it’s much more costly to provide that much 3G at the same cost as smaller nations. On top of that, all those GSM towers in brownish-orange are towers. How many towers does that mean the US has over a single European country? When you compare populated areas of the US compared to the populated areas of a ingle European country what average density per capita?
Now, none of excuses the issues AT&T is having with dropped calls or the continuing selling of the iPhone when their network can’t handle the current load, but that doesn’t mean you should be comparing countries as if they are one and same when there are very real and quantifiable differences. I don’t care that they’ve spend $28B in the last 2 years or $60B in the last 4 years on upping their 3G network or more than any other US carrier or whatever metric they want to throw at us. I only care about the service I am getting. I never had problems until the 3GS release. If it’s too many Phones on their network in an area they need to stop selling iPhones in that area until they get straightened out. I don’t care how fast, new or big a highway is, too much traffic will result in a gridlock.
Australia is the only countries that seem to have made a decent move to WCDMA 3G for such a large area, but there are definitely differences in that can’t be compared to N. America, Europe or other areas. No place has a perfect network and I find that Europe is often very expensive while also being inconvenient in that a relatively short trip means switching pre-paid SIMs or incur excessive roaming charges.
I have to agree with the general tone of this thread, not much to get excited about. If AT&T really wanted to spruce up it's image it would stop charging for services that cost them virtually nothing (txt). Dave
.<Lilly Tomlin> But but... you don't understand. WE'RE AT&T! We still have a monopoly mentality; we don't have to care! .</Lilly Tomlin>
I have an app on my iPhone that I put there for two reasons. One was to tease my Luddite brother, and the other is to remind me of AT&T's attitude: it is the rotary dial. An outmoded idea to commemorate an outmoded company.
I like my iPhone a lot, but will be able to live without it if I get a better deal elsewhere.
They're going to translate the voice mail to text! This is what Google Voice does.... Think about it. Visual Voicemail is only "visual" insofar as the name of the person calling. The voice mail itself is not visible - until they convert it to text... which would be awesome. Why else would it be at&t only? That means it's not MMS. Possibly also, call screening. Since the voice mail is being down loaded to the handset, why can't we listen to it and answer the call if we want? These features would be why GV was turned down. It would also explain Apple's "duplicates features".
I'm on Vodafone in Australia, and getting frequent dropped calls in good coverage areas. It also seems to just hang - the apps & internet work fine (via wifi) but no incoming or outgoing calls until I restart (or switch off 3G).
I presume the 3.0/3.01 OS has some issues. !!!!
This drop call THING been happen since beginning of time with at&t and iphone. And now since upgrading to the 3.0 every time coming out of the subway i got a voice mail and try to play it but it never plays I have to restart the iphone for it to let me hear the message( I presume this is a software issue) but than again NYT ran a article about my issue and said its at&t network issue....
Have your boss pitch in on your cell phone bill or give you a different phone before he starts blabbing about how you use your money.
Aside from that, agreed, too many drops. I never got on the "just turn off 3G" side of the fence. It's ridiculous that when the phone goes from 2g to 3g or vice-versa the calls get dropped. Hated that since inception.
Yeah I am going to have to take one of those so not iphones my company gives out to us.. I just cant believe how many of us has this drop calls issue and some how we still pay the bill when do... Hell at&t should pay me back a quarter for every drop call I get. That way the phone pays for its self
Screw the new features...JUST MAKE THE DAMN THING WORK PROPERLY NOW!!!
3Gs = Dropped calls, spotty/no mail retrieval, slow internet connection, crappy WiFi, and so many other total failures...and I'm in L.A., one of their "best, biggest" markets.
It is a little too late AT&T. The coverage issues alone have driven me over the edge. I work in Palo Alto (next to Gunn High School) and there is NO AT&T coverage. My buddies have Verizon and they have signal.
So next summer, when my AT&T contract expires, I will be looking to move to Verizon where they will have the new 4G iPhone waiting for me.
AT&T better be AFRAID!! VERY AFRAID... Verizon is licking their chops cause they know when they launch the 4G iPhone they will have a huge uptick in new subscriptions.
BYE BYE BYE AT&T!
Verizon is in the midst of jacking up their rates. Think again.
Google Voicemail transcription = a joke. One of every 6 words completely wrong, when the voice is clear. One of every 20 words correct when the voice is even slightly muffled.
@reztek: I had T-Mobile/Blackberry for 2 years and it dropped way more calls than iPhone. Your boss sounds patronizing; tell him to pay for your service if he's going to call you on your cell.
Buy a cheap verizon pre paid mobile and divert your AT&T number to it and get your boss to pay for it.
Get one of those $30 ones that send MMS that are often mentioned here.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Reztek
Yeah I am going to have to take one of those so not iphones my company gives out to us.. I just cant believe how many of us has this drop calls issue and some how we still pay the bill when do... Hell at&t should pay me back a quarter for every drop call I get. That way the phone pays for its self
This is getting to be sad and idiotic. All Att is doing is enacting aheavily researched pr plan to distract people from their main grievances with the effects of whAt happens when there is no competition in the marketplace.
Att- giveus the service we pay for, free incoming txts, both monthly and 24 plans fir tethering with no data cap, sling player streaming over 3g, and stop selectively co trolling whY goes over your data network, and we have a start. Or people will leave you, and you will have nothing bit lower books from the iPhone deal you made.
You are nothing- NOTHING but a data pipe. Start acting like one.
I'm not happy over the idea that Apple is further tethering the iPhone experience to the carrier. At the moment... I'm with Telstra in Australia. But Visual Voicemail is not an offered feature. I don't want more features that require carrier support - it just means that OTHER users of the iPhone miss out on features that they pay for, just because their carrier decides to be cheap and not implement Apple's features.
The phone and the carrier should remain separate. Either that, or Apple should force all carriers that sell the iPhone to implement all features.
This america-centric thinking is NOT good for the iPhone in general.
I'm not happy over the idea that Apple is further tethering the iPhone experience to the carrier. At the moment... I'm with Telstra in Australia. But Visual Voicemail is not an offered feature. I don't want more features that require carrier support - it just means that OTHER users of the iPhone miss out on features that they pay for, just because their carrier decides to be cheap and not implement Apple's features.
The phone and the carrier should remain separate. Either that, or Apple should force all carriers that sell the iPhone to implement all features.
This america-centric thinking is NOT good for the iPhone in general.
I think that Apple should be forced to invite their carrier partners on stage to every iphone launch.
So whenever Steve Jobs mentions a new function --- the carriers would jump on stage and throw cold water on the face of apple fanbois by saying that it would cost extra on your monthly phone bill.
I think that it is a Steve Jobs centric thinking that whatever he said in a keynote speech must be true. It's a keynote speech --- by definition, it's a sales pitch.
That would come from Apple I would guess, not AT&T. It's weird that the software doesn't have that as a choice; for example beep or vibrate every two minutes on a missed call. Maybe I just cannot find the appropriate function in settings?
Something would be nice..... it would allow me to respond to missed calls quicker.....
i don't need to know when im about to go over my minutes, and the new voicemail option seems kind of pointless to me. this is ridiculous, how about giving us MMS that we are already supposed to have?
Comments
Take a look at this map from gsmworld.com showing a map of the global g and 3g coverage and compare The USA with Europ and you'll know why. And then dare to make a silly add with some nerd saying AT&T is listening to their customers!
http://www.gsmworld.com/roaming/GSM_...oster2009A.pdf
PS. Don't try this on your iPhone as the file is just to big to be downloaded over a g network!
I presume the 3.0/3.01 OS has some issues. !!!!
I have found 3.0 and 3.01 to be a hinderance. Safari crashes more than a drunken congressman, and if anything, battery life has dropped.
The answer given by Apple is to just shut off location services, shut off 3G... hey gang? I bought a 3G phone to have... (students? yes, yes, you in the back?) 3G service!!!
As for service: I found T-mobile far more satisfactory. If they didn't serve an area, the phone would latch on to what was available, and I never, EVER, got hit with a roaming charge. I've been so far into rural areas that the phone towers were steam-powered and made of wood, and the annunciator would give names like "Jowls 'n' Grits Wireless". Still worked, and worked solidly.
Contrast this with my very own office where it goes from five bars to "No Service" within minutes.
Nuts. My iPhone goes into the sock drawer the day my contract is up. Or I'll jailbreak it and go back to T-Mobile, or whomever else is on SIM-card phones by then.
I feel sorry for all of you living in the US!
Take a look at this map from gsmworld.com showing a map of the global g and 3g coverage and compare The USA with Europ and you'll know why. And then dare to make a silly add with some nerd saying AT&T is listening to their customers!
http://www.gsmworld.com/roaming/GSM_...oster2009A.pdf
PS. Don't try this on your iPhone as the file is just to big to be downloaded over a g network!
It’s a 21.8 MB PDF. My iPhone is handling it just fine at 1.7Mbps. Your use of a ‘g’ network is hyperbolic and thus weakens any reasonable argument you may have have.
As for listening to customers, I don’t know of any company that doesn’t listen to customers, but you fail to consider that listening and then doing what customers want isn’t always the best move for a business. There are shareholders for starters that need to be listened to, and then there are things like technical issues that need to be tackled. Saying, AT&T needs more towers with more bandwidth is not a resolution.
That PDF does show that the US has more geographical coverage of 3G than any single European country. Of course, the US is much bigger in scale so it’s much more costly to provide that much 3G at the same cost as smaller nations. On top of that, all those GSM towers in brownish-orange are towers. How many towers does that mean the US has over a single European country? When you compare populated areas of the US compared to the populated areas of a ingle European country what average density per capita?
Now, none of excuses the issues AT&T is having with dropped calls or the continuing selling of the iPhone when their network can’t handle the current load, but that doesn’t mean you should be comparing countries as if they are one and same when there are very real and quantifiable differences. I don’t care that they’ve spend $28B in the last 2 years or $60B in the last 4 years on upping their 3G network or more than any other US carrier or whatever metric they want to throw at us. I only care about the service I am getting. I never had problems until the 3GS release. If it’s too many Phones on their network in an area they need to stop selling iPhones in that area until they get straightened out. I don’t care how fast, new or big a highway is, too much traffic will result in a gridlock.
Australia is the only countries that seem to have made a decent move to WCDMA 3G for such a large area, but there are definitely differences in that can’t be compared to N. America, Europe or other areas. No place has a perfect network and I find that Europe is often very expensive while also being inconvenient in that a relatively short trip means switching pre-paid SIMs or incur excessive roaming charges.
I have to agree with the general tone of this thread, not much to get excited about. If AT&T really wanted to spruce up it's image it would stop charging for services that cost them virtually nothing (txt). Dave
.<Lilly Tomlin> But but... you don't understand. WE'RE AT&T! We still have a monopoly mentality; we don't have to care! .</Lilly Tomlin>
I have an app on my iPhone that I put there for two reasons. One was to tease my Luddite brother, and the other is to remind me of AT&T's attitude: it is the rotary dial. An outmoded idea to commemorate an outmoded company.
I like my iPhone a lot, but will be able to live without it if I get a better deal elsewhere.
They're going to translate the voice mail to text! This is what Google Voice does.... Think about it. Visual Voicemail is only "visual" insofar as the name of the person calling. The voice mail itself is not visible - until they convert it to text... which would be awesome. Why else would it be at&t only? That means it's not MMS. Possibly also, call screening. Since the voice mail is being down loaded to the handset, why can't we listen to it and answer the call if we want? These features would be why GV was turned down. It would also explain Apple's "duplicates features".
From your lips to God's ear!!
I'm on Vodafone in Australia, and getting frequent dropped calls in good coverage areas. It also seems to just hang - the apps & internet work fine (via wifi) but no incoming or outgoing calls until I restart (or switch off 3G).
I presume the 3.0/3.01 OS has some issues. !!!!
This drop call THING been happen since beginning of time with at&t and iphone. And now since upgrading to the 3.0 every time coming out of the subway i got a voice mail and try to play it but it never plays I have to restart the iphone for it to let me hear the message( I presume this is a software issue) but than again NYT ran a article about my issue and said its at&t network issue....
Have your boss pitch in on your cell phone bill or give you a different phone before he starts blabbing about how you use your money.
Aside from that, agreed, too many drops. I never got on the "just turn off 3G" side of the fence. It's ridiculous that when the phone goes from 2g to 3g or vice-versa the calls get dropped. Hated that since inception.
Yeah I am going to have to take one of those so not iphones my company gives out to us.. I just cant believe how many of us has this drop calls issue and some how we still pay the bill when do... Hell at&t should pay me back a quarter for every drop call I get. That way the phone pays for its self
3Gs = Dropped calls, spotty/no mail retrieval, slow internet connection, crappy WiFi, and so many other total failures...and I'm in L.A., one of their "best, biggest" markets.
This thing sucks. My 2G worked better....
Any AT&T features should be a separate application.
Most iPhones are not on AT&T.
It is a little too late AT&T. The coverage issues alone have driven me over the edge. I work in Palo Alto (next to Gunn High School) and there is NO AT&T coverage. My buddies have Verizon and they have signal.
So next summer, when my AT&T contract expires, I will be looking to move to Verizon where they will have the new 4G iPhone waiting for me.
AT&T better be AFRAID!! VERY AFRAID... Verizon is licking their chops cause they know when they launch the 4G iPhone they will have a huge uptick in new subscriptions.
BYE BYE BYE AT&T!
Verizon is in the midst of jacking up their rates. Think again.
From your lips to God's ear!!
Google Voicemail transcription = a joke. One of every 6 words completely wrong, when the voice is clear. One of every 20 words correct when the voice is even slightly muffled.
@reztek: I had T-Mobile/Blackberry for 2 years and it dropped way more calls than iPhone. Your boss sounds patronizing; tell him to pay for your service if he's going to call you on your cell.
Get one of those $30 ones that send MMS that are often mentioned here.
Yeah I am going to have to take one of those so not iphones my company gives out to us.. I just cant believe how many of us has this drop calls issue and some how we still pay the bill when do... Hell at&t should pay me back a quarter for every drop call I get. That way the phone pays for its self
Att- giveus the service we pay for, free incoming txts, both monthly and 24 plans fir tethering with no data cap, sling player streaming over 3g, and stop selectively co trolling whY goes over your data network, and we have a start. Or people will leave you, and you will have nothing bit lower books from the iPhone deal you made.
You are nothing- NOTHING but a data pipe. Start acting like one.
The phone and the carrier should remain separate. Either that, or Apple should force all carriers that sell the iPhone to implement all features.
This america-centric thinking is NOT good for the iPhone in general.
I'm not happy over the idea that Apple is further tethering the iPhone experience to the carrier. At the moment... I'm with Telstra in Australia. But Visual Voicemail is not an offered feature. I don't want more features that require carrier support - it just means that OTHER users of the iPhone miss out on features that they pay for, just because their carrier decides to be cheap and not implement Apple's features.
The phone and the carrier should remain separate. Either that, or Apple should force all carriers that sell the iPhone to implement all features.
This america-centric thinking is NOT good for the iPhone in general.
I think that Apple should be forced to invite their carrier partners on stage to every iphone launch.
So whenever Steve Jobs mentions a new function --- the carriers would jump on stage and throw cold water on the face of apple fanbois by saying that it would cost extra on your monthly phone bill.
I think that it is a Steve Jobs centric thinking that whatever he said in a keynote speech must be true. It's a keynote speech --- by definition, it's a sales pitch.
I'm slipping into a coma...
Great! Do you need me to wake you up when September ends?
ATT Will never catch up because the IPHONE army grows by the day .
9
That would come from Apple I would guess, not AT&T. It's weird that the software doesn't have that as a choice; for example beep or vibrate every two minutes on a missed call. Maybe I just cannot find the appropriate function in settings?
Something would be nice..... it would allow me to respond to missed calls quicker.....