I purchased my iphone 4 on launch day in the US i did experience many drop calls in weak sigal areas, since then i´ve been in Mexico, Germany, England and France in NONE of those places did i drop ONE phone call i could not even replicate de issue by droping bars so i really believe 100% thi is an AT&T issue.
Like Consumer Reports, French "Consumer Reports", Que Choisir, can't recommend the iPhone 4 due to antenna issue
Yes, and it's all the result of allowing the carriers to run wild and implement whatever wireless technology they wanted, resulting in an utterly and hopelessly fragmented bag of incompatible networks here.
What difference does it make? That is the free enterprise system. Would you rather have the federal government provide your cell service? It would all be compatible probably mediocre with no incentive to improve. Sort of like our public education system.
Then why does it drop out in the US and noone in the Australia reports seems to be able to get a call to drop? Speed and call retention are inextricably linked.
It can be Australia is like my country (Canada) --- large country with concentrated population density in top 5 cities. Regardless of that, we don't hear complaints about Verizon dropping calls like mad --- so it is about specific carrier network's performance, NOT a country's regulatory issue.
If doesn't make sense to conclude that US is xxx years behind this or that country --- when Verizon has a bunch of Droid users (that uses even more data per month than the iphone) and no complaints about network performance.
Quote:
Originally Posted by benice
What it's taught Apple is that launching the iphone in a country with a second-rate network is a pretty bad place to introduce your new product.
As to it being financially viable to swap carriers in Europe, that's just not true. Most consumers consider it straightforward and worthwhile to change carriers from time to time because there's something called real competition unlike the uncompetitive iPhone market in the US. The outcomes speak for themselves.
Europe actually has fewer competition than the US --- Norway has 2 carriers, France has 3 carriers, Sweden has 3 carriers. It doesn't matter whether you can use the iphone in all 3 French carriers if all 3 carriers face minimal competition (they were all charged with price fixing a few years ago) are going to screw you.
Verizon being the top carrier in the US with only 32% market share --- that's the lowest in the industrialized world, period.
Quote:
Originally Posted by sennen
I don't care for pissing contests one iota - I simply do not care if the US, South Korea, Finland or wherever have the "best" or "fastest" network. However, the recognised speed/strength of Telstra's network, combined with the anecdotal reports of iPhone 4 usage here today (believe me when i say i've spent way too much time trawling discussion boards today!) have to make one wonder about what our American friends are putting up with on AT&T. Strangely even users of Optus' much derided network are reporting little effect of the antenna issues, and virtually no dropped calls.
Telstra also give you very few data allowance per month.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Prof. Peabody
I know what you are saying about perception and undoubtedly it plays some part, but overall I think you are assuming a lot here and for that reason could easily be dead wrong on this. You have no actual data other than a hunch that it's perception driven.
I think the antenna issue is a good example of (somewhat) hard data. It's an observable physical flaw that seems to occur with much higher regularity on American networks vs. International ones. The data that exists is mostly anecdotal of course, but I have yet to find or hear of anyone in my country having any problem at all on any of the five main carriers of iPhone. Anecdotally, I'm hearing the same from friends and acquaintances in Australia, Europe, and New Zealand. I don't know anyone personally in Japan, but I hear it's the same over there.
So yeah, most of the evidence is anecdotal and some of it is questionable, but it's interesting that there seems to be a clear difference between the experience of users in the USA and users in other countries. It does correlate to the superior coverage and the newer systems in those countries. These are all very suggestive facts even if nothing can be categorically proven from them.
I think the case for the networks being a real physical difference between cases of fail and non-fail is better than the case for it all being perception based at this point.
No doubt there is going to be a performance difference --- but is that attributable to say population density? Much easier to cover Australia or Canada when you cover the top 5 cities, you cover 40-50% of the population.
Quote:
Originally Posted by bones
Kind of browsing through this thread a bit. Has anyone bothered to point out to Samab that the Wired ?article? he linked to was posted/printed almost two years ago, well before Telstra?s two major system upgrades?
AT&T also spent --- quite publicly --- massive amount of money on their network upgrades.
Quote:
Originally Posted by min_t
NO freakin way VZ is able to do that. They just started and they are behind Sprint in the rollout. VZ also stopped rolling out FIOS, the fiber to the home that is rated slower than comcast cable by speedtest.net.
Please don't praise our backward maintaining cell companies, both ATT and VZ. They are being forced to upgrade and not doing it pro-actively, but re-actively.
I am not praising any "backward" carrier. Do you know that US is 4 years ahead of Europe in FTTH fiber deployment? It's a matter of perspective.
samab is never bothered by facts that contradict his goal of promoting CDMA.
I am not promoting CDMA in this thread at all. I am saying that Telstra gives you 250-500 MB per month for an iphone data plan, Australia having population density that is easy to cover people in big cities,...
Now compare that to AT&T with just discontinued unlimited data allowance on your iphone and much harder to cover people because of population density...
By whom? I don't know, but both Apple and Vodafone got bad press on the issue. But it was far from a nationwide release, like the iPad release it was only sold in a couple of stores, in a couple of cities.
... No doubt there is going to be a performance difference --- but is that attributable to say population density? Much easier to cover Australia or Canada when you cover the top 5 cities, you cover 40-50% of the population. ...
What you're saying about coverage is true, but my comparison was (at least in my mind), between cities in Canada and Australia versus cities in the USA. It's clear that performance is going to be bad in rural areas for the reasons you mention and it seems to me it will be the same in all countries.
What I mean is that if you are walking around in Vancouver or Toronto or Adelaide or Sydney, the quality of the connection seems better (anecdotally of course), and the incidence of dead zones or dropped calls much lower. So the scarcity of coverage in rural or remote areas doesn't really feed into that at all.
As I've said a bunch of times over the course of this whole "antennagate" thing, before the software adjustment of the bar reading, I always got five bars or sometimes four bars everywhere I went. I've also never *ever* experienced a dropped call in over five years of cell phone use in my area (Canada). That's probably anomalous, but I would argue that the (apparently) huge number of dropped calls in New York and San Francisco in the US is probably equally anomalous and likely due to the quality of AT&T's network IMO.
What you're saying about coverage is true, but my comparison was (at least in my mind), between cities in Canada and Australia versus cities in the USA. It's clear that performance is going to be bad in rural areas for the reasons you mention and it seems to me it will be the same in all countries.
What I mean is that if you are walking around in Vancouver or Toronto or Adelaide or Sydney, the quality of the connection seems better (anecdotally of course), and the incidence of dead zones or dropped calls much lower. So the scarcity of coverage in rural or remote areas doesn't really feed into that at all.
As I've said a bunch of times over the course of this whole "antennagate" thing, before the software adjustment of the bar reading, I always got five bars or sometimes four bars everywhere I went. I've also never *ever* experienced a dropped call in over five years of cell phone use in my area (Canada). That's probably anomalous, but I would argue that the (apparently) huge number of dropped calls in New York and San Francisco in the US is probably equally anomalous and likely due to the quality of AT&T's network IMO.
Yeah I'm on a 3GS in Wellington , NZ. I had a spate of dropped calls a while back. But, to give Vodafone their dues they fixed the problem with a bit of feedback. Turns out that it was a repeater problem. If no one rings them about it, nothing gets fixed. The techs were very good.
Now the Off Shore based call centre on the other hand are a completely different story. What a disaster!
Europe actually has fewer competition than the US --- Norway has 2 carriers, France has 3 carriers, Sweden has 3 carriers. It doesn't matter whether you can use the iphone in all 3 French carriers if all 3 carriers face minimal competition (they were all charged with price fixing a few years ago) are going to screw you.
In Norway there are 2 physical carriers, but there are several virtual carriers too. There are (I believe) 2 carriers that are physical in the major cities, and virtual in the rest of the country.
A virtual carrier buys capacity from the physical carriers, in case you are unfamiliar There is also a government sanctioned price calculator to help consumers in selecting among all the carriers and programs. Some are better for heavy overall use, others are targeted for texting, data... and so on.
So there is absolutely a healthy competition here. Most phones are sold with a binding period of 12 months. If you want to leave before the binding period is over, you'll of course have to pay some money to cover the initial subsidy (at least with my carrier this fee goes down with the months remaining of the contract).
But you can buy the phone without any binding - or subsidy - too. If you buy from the Apple Store, you'll get the iPhone with no strings attached. Up to you to find the best carrier/program, and you can switch whenever you want. Sounds good?
People only complained about AT&T's "weak" network --- because they compare it with Verizon's "THE network".
But when you actually do a international comparison, AT&T ended up with the 3rd fastest 3G iphone speed in the world.
So now instead of what he claims that Australia is 4 years ahead of US in mobile technology --- it is actually the other way around. Australian carriers are a couple of years behind AT&T --- which in turn AT&T is a couple of years behind Verizon.
AT&T's network ain't that bad when you compare it with the rest of the world.
You people are absurd.
AT&T doesn't even have 7.2mbit rolled out yet. Verizon 3G barely deserves the title with the pathetic EVDO rev A specs. Australia has 3 complete networks with 7.2mbit as a baseline, Telstra's network for example exceeded the iPhone4's specs before the 3GS release last year. Most of it now offers 4 times the bandwidth than the iPhone4 baseband even offers!
In Australia we haven't had ANY of the issues hyped up by the network poor USA since the iPhone3G. Nor the battery life issues because we all already had 3G phones for years and were used to it.
Just get over it America. Apple since the iPhone 3G have been releasing phones that exceed your cell network. It has been comic watching how insular the American view point is as it's news media still blames Apple.
With a bumper Telstra gives the iPhone4 approval for regional and remote use. I've personally taken a 3G and 3GS across half the country from city to desolate.
Go take a look at the raw data, the Australian observations consist mainly of a group of Optus results at the lower end of the scale and group of Telstra results at the top end of the scale.
Besides the observations were carried out using the iPhone 3G which tops out at 3.6Mbps.
Useless out of date information.
Quote:
Originally Posted by nudist
He was talking about reception but speed my friend
What you're saying about coverage is true, but my comparison was (at least in my mind), between cities in Canada and Australia versus cities in the USA. It's clear that performance is going to be bad in rural areas for the reasons you mention and it seems to me it will be the same in all countries.
What I mean is that if you are walking around in Vancouver or Toronto or Adelaide or Sydney, the quality of the connection seems better (anecdotally of course), and the incidence of dead zones or dropped calls much lower. So the scarcity of coverage in rural or remote areas doesn't really feed into that at all.
As I've said a bunch of times over the course of this whole "antennagate" thing, before the software adjustment of the bar reading, I always got five bars or sometimes four bars everywhere I went. I've also never *ever* experienced a dropped call in over five years of cell phone use in my area (Canada). That's probably anomalous, but I would argue that the (apparently) huge number of dropped calls in New York and San Francisco in the US is probably equally anomalous and likely due to the quality of AT&T's network IMO.
But that's population density and lack of competition as well. I am a Canadian --- 3 national carriers (until very very recently), each sharing massive amount of spectrum, and each carrier serving "smallish" cities.
NYC has something like 20 million people and San Francisco has a very hilly geography --- not that hard to understand carriers facing difficulties.
Quote:
Originally Posted by injected
In Norway there are 2 physical carriers, but there are several virtual carriers too. There are (I believe) 2 carriers that are physical in the major cities, and virtual in the rest of the country.
A virtual carrier buys capacity from the physical carriers, in case you are unfamiliar There is also a government sanctioned price calculator to help consumers in selecting among all the carriers and programs. Some are better for heavy overall use, others are targeted for texting, data... and so on.
So there is absolutely a healthy competition here. Most phones are sold with a binding period of 12 months. If you want to leave before the binding period is over, you'll of course have to pay some money to cover the initial subsidy (at least with my carrier this fee goes down with the months remaining of the contract).
But you can buy the phone without any binding - or subsidy - too. If you buy from the Apple Store, you'll get the iPhone with no strings attached. Up to you to find the best carrier/program, and you can switch whenever you want. Sounds good?
I am very familiar with MVNO's. There are a bunch of MVNO's in the US as well, but they don't really count in terms of anti-trust issues.
Out of all the outrageous iphone plans, the original Norway iphone plan ranks pretty much the worst in the world. (I am a Canadian, and I thought that the original Canadian iphone plans were bad --- the Norway one was just insane.)
The best iphone plans have been Hong Kong (6 carriers), UK (5 physical carriers until last year, now they have 4 carriers) and US (4 carriers). The worst iphone plans were Norway (2 carriers), France/Canada (3 carriers). It's just that simple.
Quote:
Originally Posted by cy_starkman
You people are absurd.
AT&T doesn't even have 7.2mbit rolled out yet. Verizon 3G barely deserves the title with the pathetic EVDO rev A specs. Australia has 3 complete networks with 7.2mbit as a baseline, Telstra's network for example exceeded the iPhone4's specs before the 3GS release last year. Most of it now offers 4 times the bandwidth than the iPhone4 baseband even offers!
In Australia we haven't had ANY of the issues hyped up by the network poor USA since the iPhone3G. Nor the battery life issues because we all already had 3G phones for years and were used to it.
Just get over it America. Apple since the iPhone 3G have been releasing phones that exceed your cell network. It has been comic watching how insular the American view point is as it's news media still blames Apple.
With a bumper Telstra gives the iPhone4 approval for regional and remote use. I've personally taken a 3G and 3GS across half the country from city to desolate.
They have no issues.
Wake TFU America
AT&T has 7.2 mbps HSDPA network national wide. Verizon is going to have 4G years before the Aussies.
No point of talking about how well Telstra's network is --- without talking about that peanut data allowance. Of course your networks are functioning well --- because they are hardly used at all. Americans talk maybe 3-4x more than Aussies and American carriers (AT&T until recenty) offer unlimited smartphone data. You people are so giddy about Telstra raising the data allowance to 1 GB per month.
Quote:
Originally Posted by hill60
Go take a look at the raw data, the Australian observations consist mainly of a group of Optus results at the lower end of the scale and group of Telstra results at the top end of the scale.
Besides the observations were carried out using the iPhone 3G which tops out at 3.6Mbps.
Useless out of date information.
So what? Every country has weak and strong carriers --- and that's my point. AT&T is only considered to be weak because they are compared with Verizon. Your weaker carrier is worse than my weaker carrier --- and my weaker carrier is AT&T. But somehow there is a conclusion by many that the US is years behind the other countries.
But that's population density and lack of competition as well. I am a Canadian --- 3 national carriers (until very very recently), each sharing massive amount of spectrum, and each carrier serving "smallish" cities. ...
I'm going to stop arguing about this with you as you just don't seem to be listening to what I'm saying. Your just finding possible reasons to support your original assertion which was only really based on what you thought might be the case. I'm interested in getting as close to the facts as possible, not just random supposing or arguing for the sake of arguing.
So you can win this little "debate" that you've got going here, but nothing you have said has actually convinced me that you are right and I don't see how you've actually presented any evidence, (even anecdotal evidence), to prove your case. I mean sure, New York is dense and San Francisco is hilly, that *could* be why the reception on the iPhone is "bad in the US and apparently not elsewhere," but I don't see it as very likely. When we are talking about the whole rest of the world versus a large country like the USA, surely matters of geography should all even out in the end and thus not affect the results at all.
In any case, since neither you nor I can conclusively prove anything at all, since your argument (IMO of course) really just amounts to a lot of supposing, and since you seem very set on believing what it is that you believe about this, I don't see that it's worth continuing.
Pardon me if this link has already been posted, but Toronto Star affirms the same thing, that there is no "issue" with the iPhone 4, that it's the best phone ever seen on this planet:
I'm going to stop arguing about this with you as you just don't seem to be listening to what I'm saying. Your just finding possible reasons to support your original assertion which was only really based on what you thought might be the case. I'm interested in getting as close to the facts as possible, not just random supposing or arguing for the sake of arguing.
So you can win this little "debate" that you've got going here, but nothing you have said has actually convinced me that you are right and I don't see how you've actually presented any evidence, (even anecdotal evidence), to prove your case. I mean sure, New York is dense and San Francisco is hilly, that *could* be why the reception on the iPhone is "bad in the US and apparently not elsewhere," but I don't see it as very likely. When we are talking about the whole rest of the world versus a large country like the USA, surely matters of geography should all even out in the end and thus not affect the results at all.
In any case, since neither you nor I can conclusively prove anything at all, since your argument (IMO of course) really just amounts to a lot of supposing, and since you seem very set on believing what it is that you believe about this, I don't see that it's worth continuing.
Canadian carriers historically have always have faster networks than American carriers. Rogers had EDGE speed that was close to 180 kbps.
Each Canadian carriers have massive spectrum licenses, highly concentrated population in 5 large cities, highly regulated with insane government regulations that don't allow foreign carriers to own a Canadian wireless carrier, insane $720 ETF...
Canadian carriers basically mint money --- of course they can give us (I am a Canadian too) higher speed.
American military takes a big chunk of spectrum, then the spectrum available has to be divided by 4 national carriers, then that tiny spectrum has to be used by 300 million people with vastly inferior population density... Then they give you unlimited smartphone data.
Quite a few iphone carriers around the world have given out 100MB, 250MB and 500MB data allowance --- of course their networks look good. Americans also talk 3-4x more than the rest of the world --- of course American notice drop calls frequently.
Launch was delayed around 3 hours, assuming a 9am start was intended. Some claim the original intention was, like Aussie centres, for a midnight kick-off, but that plan died some days before launch. No, I don't know why.
Initially none of the partner retailers believed they would have iP4s to sell but reports are coming in that some partners had some phones, albeit fewer than 40 per outlet.
The numbers of iP4s available at launch seem to be lower than for pervious iPhone launches, in that supplies ran out within a couple of hours in most VF outlets.
Yes, the signal drop issue is evident here. See the iPhone forum at GeekZone for ongoing info. Local signal strength seems to have a bearing on its occurrence.
Online shipping via the Apple Store "estimated 3 weeks".
Prices unlocked are NZ$1100 and NZ$1300. 3Gs still available at NZ$900.
Ultimately the botched launch has perhaps dented Apple's reputation for immaculate stage-managed events, but obviously not as much as the WiFi issues at the WWDC. And we antipodeans are more forgiving of such things than some other cultures so I predict no lasting damage.
I'll probably add a post with my personal experience with the GOD™ issue once I've have an hour or two on a colleague's phone. Meantime, GeekZone is a very even handed tech site so check out the iPhone comments in the "So now you have an iPhone 4..." thread.
AT&T has 7.2 mbps HSDPA network national wide. Verizon is going to have 4G years before the Aussies.
Useless information for purposes of this discussion.
Quote:
No point of talking about how well Telstra's network is --- without talking about that peanut data allowance. Of course your networks are functioning well --- because they are hardly used at all. Americans talk maybe 3-4x more than Aussies and American carriers (AT&T until recenty) offer unlimited smartphone data. You people are so giddy about Telstra raising the data allowance to 1 GB per month.
You are being disingenuous. Data allowances aren't limited to 1gb, never have been.
If you go by AT&T's stats, the usage patterns of this "unlimited" data showed that people were far from utilising "unlimited" 3G data per month. A very, very small percentage of users were using more than 2-3gb per month, the average was well under 1gb iirc. Hence they changed their plans this year, didn't they?
The "giddiness", as you refer to it, towards Telstra dropping it's prices is a very new thing. I myself am surprised by it (and Telstra). They have a long history of gouging users for their services of any description, particularly their "premium" services such as 3G and wireless broadband. Probably not too dissimilar to AT&T in this regard.
I don't believe the network loading is as much of an issue as you would like to think - Sydney and Melbourne would have similar traffic to any medium to large sized cities in the US. Heck, topographically Sydney could be quite equatable with SF. Telstra also sells wholesale bandwidth to other smaller telcos, so it's network has this traffic to deal with as well as it's own.
And whilst I haven't spent hours searching, I am yet to find any information that says AT&T matches Telstra's current network speeds. If they do, that's cool, as I said it's not a pissing contest. The main point of interest is the absence of antenna issues over here (so far), as far as I am concerned.
Useless information for purposes of this discussion.
You are being disingenuous. Data allowances aren't limited to 1gb, never have been.
If you go by AT&T's stats, the usage patterns of this "unlimited" data showed that people were far from utilising "unlimited" 3G data per month. A very, very small percentage of users were using more than 2-3gb per month, the average was well under 1gb iirc. Hence they changed their plans this year, didn't they?
The "giddiness", as you refer to it, towards Telstra is a very new thing. I myself am surprised by it. They have a long history of gouging users for their services of any description, particularly their "premium" services such as 3G and wireless broadband. Probably not too dissimilar to AT&T in this regard.
And whilst I haven't spent hours searching, I am yet to find any information that says AT&T matches Telstra's current network speeds. If they do, that's cool, as I said it's not a pissing contest. The main point of interest is the absence of antenna issues over here (so far), as far as I am concerned.
Useless to quote theoretical max peak download speed and conclude that you are ahead.
A very small number of Americans do use a lot of data --- and these small minority disrupts the network for the vast majority of the people who use data at reasonable amount.
People only have their iphones for a few hours --- too early to say that there is no problem down under.
Comments
Come on people. We know you are out there.
I purchased my iphone 4 on launch day in the US i did experience many drop calls in weak sigal areas, since then i´ve been in Mexico, Germany, England and France in NONE of those places did i drop ONE phone call i could not even replicate de issue by droping bars so i really believe 100% thi is an AT&T issue.
Like Consumer Reports, French "Consumer Reports", Que Choisir, can't recommend the iPhone 4 due to antenna issue
http://www.quechoisir.org/pages/brev...6D0038AD89.htm
Yes, and it's all the result of allowing the carriers to run wild and implement whatever wireless technology they wanted, resulting in an utterly and hopelessly fragmented bag of incompatible networks here.
What difference does it make? That is the free enterprise system. Would you rather have the federal government provide your cell service? It would all be compatible probably mediocre with no incentive to improve. Sort of like our public education system.
Then why does it drop out in the US and noone in the Australia reports seems to be able to get a call to drop? Speed and call retention are inextricably linked.
It can be Australia is like my country (Canada) --- large country with concentrated population density in top 5 cities. Regardless of that, we don't hear complaints about Verizon dropping calls like mad --- so it is about specific carrier network's performance, NOT a country's regulatory issue.
If doesn't make sense to conclude that US is xxx years behind this or that country --- when Verizon has a bunch of Droid users (that uses even more data per month than the iphone) and no complaints about network performance.
What it's taught Apple is that launching the iphone in a country with a second-rate network is a pretty bad place to introduce your new product.
As to it being financially viable to swap carriers in Europe, that's just not true. Most consumers consider it straightforward and worthwhile to change carriers from time to time because there's something called real competition unlike the uncompetitive iPhone market in the US. The outcomes speak for themselves.
Europe actually has fewer competition than the US --- Norway has 2 carriers, France has 3 carriers, Sweden has 3 carriers. It doesn't matter whether you can use the iphone in all 3 French carriers if all 3 carriers face minimal competition (they were all charged with price fixing a few years ago) are going to screw you.
Verizon being the top carrier in the US with only 32% market share --- that's the lowest in the industrialized world, period.
I don't care for pissing contests one iota - I simply do not care if the US, South Korea, Finland or wherever have the "best" or "fastest" network. However, the recognised speed/strength of Telstra's network, combined with the anecdotal reports of iPhone 4 usage here today (believe me when i say i've spent way too much time trawling discussion boards today!) have to make one wonder about what our American friends are putting up with on AT&T. Strangely even users of Optus' much derided network are reporting little effect of the antenna issues, and virtually no dropped calls.
Telstra also give you very few data allowance per month.
I know what you are saying about perception and undoubtedly it plays some part, but overall I think you are assuming a lot here and for that reason could easily be dead wrong on this. You have no actual data other than a hunch that it's perception driven.
I think the antenna issue is a good example of (somewhat) hard data. It's an observable physical flaw that seems to occur with much higher regularity on American networks vs. International ones. The data that exists is mostly anecdotal of course, but I have yet to find or hear of anyone in my country having any problem at all on any of the five main carriers of iPhone. Anecdotally, I'm hearing the same from friends and acquaintances in Australia, Europe, and New Zealand. I don't know anyone personally in Japan, but I hear it's the same over there.
So yeah, most of the evidence is anecdotal and some of it is questionable, but it's interesting that there seems to be a clear difference between the experience of users in the USA and users in other countries. It does correlate to the superior coverage and the newer systems in those countries. These are all very suggestive facts even if nothing can be categorically proven from them.
I think the case for the networks being a real physical difference between cases of fail and non-fail is better than the case for it all being perception based at this point.
No doubt there is going to be a performance difference --- but is that attributable to say population density? Much easier to cover Australia or Canada when you cover the top 5 cities, you cover 40-50% of the population.
Kind of browsing through this thread a bit. Has anyone bothered to point out to Samab that the Wired ?article? he linked to was posted/printed almost two years ago, well before Telstra?s two major system upgrades?
AT&T also spent --- quite publicly --- massive amount of money on their network upgrades.
NO freakin way VZ is able to do that. They just started and they are behind Sprint in the rollout. VZ also stopped rolling out FIOS, the fiber to the home that is rated slower than comcast cable by speedtest.net.
Please don't praise our backward maintaining cell companies, both ATT and VZ. They are being forced to upgrade and not doing it pro-actively, but re-actively.
I am not praising any "backward" carrier. Do you know that US is 4 years ahead of Europe in FTTH fiber deployment? It's a matter of perspective.
http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=172028
samab is never bothered by facts that contradict his goal of promoting CDMA.
I am not promoting CDMA in this thread at all. I am saying that Telstra gives you 250-500 MB per month for an iphone data plan, Australia having population density that is easy to cover people in big cities,...
Now compare that to AT&T with just discontinued unlimited data allowance on your iphone and much harder to cover people because of population density...
AT&T ain't that bad.
Snags? Yes.
Epic fail? That sounds like an overstatement. (If you read the comment of the person quoted).
Reading the article it did seem to be an epic fail.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/technology/ga...-on-sale-in-NZ
By whom? I don't know, but both Apple and Vodafone got bad press on the issue. But it was far from a nationwide release, like the iPad release it was only sold in a couple of stores, in a couple of cities.
... No doubt there is going to be a performance difference --- but is that attributable to say population density? Much easier to cover Australia or Canada when you cover the top 5 cities, you cover 40-50% of the population. ...
What you're saying about coverage is true, but my comparison was (at least in my mind), between cities in Canada and Australia versus cities in the USA. It's clear that performance is going to be bad in rural areas for the reasons you mention and it seems to me it will be the same in all countries.
What I mean is that if you are walking around in Vancouver or Toronto or Adelaide or Sydney, the quality of the connection seems better (anecdotally of course), and the incidence of dead zones or dropped calls much lower. So the scarcity of coverage in rural or remote areas doesn't really feed into that at all.
As I've said a bunch of times over the course of this whole "antennagate" thing, before the software adjustment of the bar reading, I always got five bars or sometimes four bars everywhere I went. I've also never *ever* experienced a dropped call in over five years of cell phone use in my area (Canada). That's probably anomalous, but I would argue that the (apparently) huge number of dropped calls in New York and San Francisco in the US is probably equally anomalous and likely due to the quality of AT&T's network IMO.
Like Consumer Reports, French "Consumer Reports", Que Choisir, can't recommend the iPhone 4 due to antenna issue
http://www.quechoisir.org/pages/brev...6D0038AD89.htm
Click-baiting, no doubt.
What you're saying about coverage is true, but my comparison was (at least in my mind), between cities in Canada and Australia versus cities in the USA. It's clear that performance is going to be bad in rural areas for the reasons you mention and it seems to me it will be the same in all countries.
What I mean is that if you are walking around in Vancouver or Toronto or Adelaide or Sydney, the quality of the connection seems better (anecdotally of course), and the incidence of dead zones or dropped calls much lower. So the scarcity of coverage in rural or remote areas doesn't really feed into that at all.
As I've said a bunch of times over the course of this whole "antennagate" thing, before the software adjustment of the bar reading, I always got five bars or sometimes four bars everywhere I went. I've also never *ever* experienced a dropped call in over five years of cell phone use in my area (Canada). That's probably anomalous, but I would argue that the (apparently) huge number of dropped calls in New York and San Francisco in the US is probably equally anomalous and likely due to the quality of AT&T's network IMO.
Yeah I'm on a 3GS in Wellington , NZ. I had a spate of dropped calls a while back. But, to give Vodafone their dues they fixed the problem with a bit of feedback. Turns out that it was a repeater problem. If no one rings them about it, nothing gets fixed. The techs were very good.
Now the Off Shore based call centre on the other hand are a completely different story. What a disaster!
Europe actually has fewer competition than the US --- Norway has 2 carriers, France has 3 carriers, Sweden has 3 carriers. It doesn't matter whether you can use the iphone in all 3 French carriers if all 3 carriers face minimal competition (they were all charged with price fixing a few years ago) are going to screw you.
A virtual carrier buys capacity from the physical carriers, in case you are unfamiliar
So there is absolutely a healthy competition here. Most phones are sold with a binding period of 12 months. If you want to leave before the binding period is over, you'll of course have to pay some money to cover the initial subsidy (at least with my carrier this fee goes down with the months remaining of the contract).
But you can buy the phone without any binding - or subsidy - too. If you buy from the Apple Store, you'll get the iPhone with no strings attached. Up to you to find the best carrier/program, and you can switch whenever you want. Sounds good?
No, it has EVERYTHING to do with what he said.
People only complained about AT&T's "weak" network --- because they compare it with Verizon's "THE network".
But when you actually do a international comparison, AT&T ended up with the 3rd fastest 3G iphone speed in the world.
So now instead of what he claims that Australia is 4 years ahead of US in mobile technology --- it is actually the other way around. Australian carriers are a couple of years behind AT&T --- which in turn AT&T is a couple of years behind Verizon.
AT&T's network ain't that bad when you compare it with the rest of the world.
You people are absurd.
AT&T doesn't even have 7.2mbit rolled out yet. Verizon 3G barely deserves the title with the pathetic EVDO rev A specs. Australia has 3 complete networks with 7.2mbit as a baseline, Telstra's network for example exceeded the iPhone4's specs before the 3GS release last year. Most of it now offers 4 times the bandwidth than the iPhone4 baseband even offers!
In Australia we haven't had ANY of the issues hyped up by the network poor USA since the iPhone3G. Nor the battery life issues because we all already had 3G phones for years and were used to it.
Just get over it America. Apple since the iPhone 3G have been releasing phones that exceed your cell network. It has been comic watching how insular the American view point is as it's news media still blames Apple.
With a bumper Telstra gives the iPhone4 approval for regional and remote use. I've personally taken a 3G and 3GS across half the country from city to desolate.
They have no issues.
Wake TFU America
Telstra upped it's data to 1 gig a day before launch of 4.
And while it is true about population concentration. Regional and remote areas in Australia still have broad coverage. There is also beyond remote.
Someone mentioned virtual carriers. Australia has between 1-4 iPhone4 compatible physical networks anywhere there is network.
You people are absurd.
AT&T doesn't even have 7.2mbit rolled out yet.
You sure about that?
Wake TFU America
Maybe you should check your totem because it sounds like you're the one who's not awake.
PS: It's expected AT&T will have 14.4Mbps HSPA+ by the end of the year.
Besides the observations were carried out using the iPhone 3G which tops out at 3.6Mbps.
Useless out of date information.
He was talking about reception but speed my friend
What you're saying about coverage is true, but my comparison was (at least in my mind), between cities in Canada and Australia versus cities in the USA. It's clear that performance is going to be bad in rural areas for the reasons you mention and it seems to me it will be the same in all countries.
What I mean is that if you are walking around in Vancouver or Toronto or Adelaide or Sydney, the quality of the connection seems better (anecdotally of course), and the incidence of dead zones or dropped calls much lower. So the scarcity of coverage in rural or remote areas doesn't really feed into that at all.
As I've said a bunch of times over the course of this whole "antennagate" thing, before the software adjustment of the bar reading, I always got five bars or sometimes four bars everywhere I went. I've also never *ever* experienced a dropped call in over five years of cell phone use in my area (Canada). That's probably anomalous, but I would argue that the (apparently) huge number of dropped calls in New York and San Francisco in the US is probably equally anomalous and likely due to the quality of AT&T's network IMO.
But that's population density and lack of competition as well. I am a Canadian --- 3 national carriers (until very very recently), each sharing massive amount of spectrum, and each carrier serving "smallish" cities.
NYC has something like 20 million people and San Francisco has a very hilly geography --- not that hard to understand carriers facing difficulties.
A virtual carrier buys capacity from the physical carriers, in case you are unfamiliar
So there is absolutely a healthy competition here. Most phones are sold with a binding period of 12 months. If you want to leave before the binding period is over, you'll of course have to pay some money to cover the initial subsidy (at least with my carrier this fee goes down with the months remaining of the contract).
But you can buy the phone without any binding - or subsidy - too. If you buy from the Apple Store, you'll get the iPhone with no strings attached. Up to you to find the best carrier/program, and you can switch whenever you want. Sounds good?
I am very familiar with MVNO's. There are a bunch of MVNO's in the US as well, but they don't really count in terms of anti-trust issues.
Out of all the outrageous iphone plans, the original Norway iphone plan ranks pretty much the worst in the world. (I am a Canadian, and I thought that the original Canadian iphone plans were bad --- the Norway one was just insane.)
http://www.omh.cc/blog/2008/jun/28/netcom-you-suck/
The best iphone plans have been Hong Kong (6 carriers), UK (5 physical carriers until last year, now they have 4 carriers) and US (4 carriers). The worst iphone plans were Norway (2 carriers), France/Canada (3 carriers). It's just that simple.
You people are absurd.
AT&T doesn't even have 7.2mbit rolled out yet. Verizon 3G barely deserves the title with the pathetic EVDO rev A specs. Australia has 3 complete networks with 7.2mbit as a baseline, Telstra's network for example exceeded the iPhone4's specs before the 3GS release last year. Most of it now offers 4 times the bandwidth than the iPhone4 baseband even offers!
In Australia we haven't had ANY of the issues hyped up by the network poor USA since the iPhone3G. Nor the battery life issues because we all already had 3G phones for years and were used to it.
Just get over it America. Apple since the iPhone 3G have been releasing phones that exceed your cell network. It has been comic watching how insular the American view point is as it's news media still blames Apple.
With a bumper Telstra gives the iPhone4 approval for regional and remote use. I've personally taken a 3G and 3GS across half the country from city to desolate.
They have no issues.
Wake TFU America
AT&T has 7.2 mbps HSDPA network national wide. Verizon is going to have 4G years before the Aussies.
No point of talking about how well Telstra's network is --- without talking about that peanut data allowance. Of course your networks are functioning well --- because they are hardly used at all. Americans talk maybe 3-4x more than Aussies and American carriers (AT&T until recenty) offer unlimited smartphone data. You people are so giddy about Telstra raising the data allowance to 1 GB per month.
Go take a look at the raw data, the Australian observations consist mainly of a group of Optus results at the lower end of the scale and group of Telstra results at the top end of the scale.
Besides the observations were carried out using the iPhone 3G which tops out at 3.6Mbps.
Useless out of date information.
So what? Every country has weak and strong carriers --- and that's my point. AT&T is only considered to be weak because they are compared with Verizon. Your weaker carrier is worse than my weaker carrier --- and my weaker carrier is AT&T. But somehow there is a conclusion by many that the US is years behind the other countries.
But that's population density and lack of competition as well. I am a Canadian --- 3 national carriers (until very very recently), each sharing massive amount of spectrum, and each carrier serving "smallish" cities. ...
I'm going to stop arguing about this with you as you just don't seem to be listening to what I'm saying. Your just finding possible reasons to support your original assertion which was only really based on what you thought might be the case. I'm interested in getting as close to the facts as possible, not just random supposing or arguing for the sake of arguing.
So you can win this little "debate" that you've got going here, but nothing you have said has actually convinced me that you are right and I don't see how you've actually presented any evidence, (even anecdotal evidence), to prove your case. I mean sure, New York is dense and San Francisco is hilly, that *could* be why the reception on the iPhone is "bad in the US and apparently not elsewhere," but I don't see it as very likely. When we are talking about the whole rest of the world versus a large country like the USA, surely matters of geography should all even out in the end and thus not affect the results at all.
In any case, since neither you nor I can conclusively prove anything at all, since your argument (IMO of course) really just amounts to a lot of supposing, and since you seem very set on believing what it is that you believe about this, I don't see that it's worth continuing.
http://www.thestar.com/business/comp...iphone-4-rocks
I live in western Canada but I grew up reading Toronto Star and still do so online.
I'm going to stop arguing about this with you as you just don't seem to be listening to what I'm saying. Your just finding possible reasons to support your original assertion which was only really based on what you thought might be the case. I'm interested in getting as close to the facts as possible, not just random supposing or arguing for the sake of arguing.
So you can win this little "debate" that you've got going here, but nothing you have said has actually convinced me that you are right and I don't see how you've actually presented any evidence, (even anecdotal evidence), to prove your case. I mean sure, New York is dense and San Francisco is hilly, that *could* be why the reception on the iPhone is "bad in the US and apparently not elsewhere," but I don't see it as very likely. When we are talking about the whole rest of the world versus a large country like the USA, surely matters of geography should all even out in the end and thus not affect the results at all.
In any case, since neither you nor I can conclusively prove anything at all, since your argument (IMO of course) really just amounts to a lot of supposing, and since you seem very set on believing what it is that you believe about this, I don't see that it's worth continuing.
Canadian carriers historically have always have faster networks than American carriers. Rogers had EDGE speed that was close to 180 kbps.
Each Canadian carriers have massive spectrum licenses, highly concentrated population in 5 large cities, highly regulated with insane government regulations that don't allow foreign carriers to own a Canadian wireless carrier, insane $720 ETF...
Canadian carriers basically mint money --- of course they can give us (I am a Canadian too) higher speed.
American military takes a big chunk of spectrum, then the spectrum available has to be divided by 4 national carriers, then that tiny spectrum has to be used by 300 million people with vastly inferior population density... Then they give you unlimited smartphone data.
Quite a few iphone carriers around the world have given out 100MB, 250MB and 500MB data allowance --- of course their networks look good. Americans also talk 3-4x more than the rest of the world --- of course American notice drop calls frequently.
Initially none of the partner retailers believed they would have iP4s to sell but reports are coming in that some partners had some phones, albeit fewer than 40 per outlet.
The numbers of iP4s available at launch seem to be lower than for pervious iPhone launches, in that supplies ran out within a couple of hours in most VF outlets.
Yes, the signal drop issue is evident here. See the iPhone forum at GeekZone for ongoing info. Local signal strength seems to have a bearing on its occurrence.
Online shipping via the Apple Store "estimated 3 weeks".
Prices unlocked are NZ$1100 and NZ$1300. 3Gs still available at NZ$900.
Ultimately the botched launch has perhaps dented Apple's reputation for immaculate stage-managed events, but obviously not as much as the WiFi issues at the WWDC. And we antipodeans are more forgiving of such things than some other cultures so I predict no lasting damage.
I'll probably add a post with my personal experience with the GOD™ issue once I've have an hour or two on a colleague's phone. Meantime, GeekZone is a very even handed tech site so check out the iPhone comments in the "So now you have an iPhone 4..." thread.
Chopper.
AT&T has 7.2 mbps HSDPA network national wide. Verizon is going to have 4G years before the Aussies.
Useless information for purposes of this discussion.
No point of talking about how well Telstra's network is --- without talking about that peanut data allowance. Of course your networks are functioning well --- because they are hardly used at all. Americans talk maybe 3-4x more than Aussies and American carriers (AT&T until recenty) offer unlimited smartphone data. You people are so giddy about Telstra raising the data allowance to 1 GB per month.
You are being disingenuous. Data allowances aren't limited to 1gb, never have been.
If you go by AT&T's stats, the usage patterns of this "unlimited" data showed that people were far from utilising "unlimited" 3G data per month. A very, very small percentage of users were using more than 2-3gb per month, the average was well under 1gb iirc. Hence they changed their plans this year, didn't they?
The "giddiness", as you refer to it, towards Telstra dropping it's prices is a very new thing. I myself am surprised by it (and Telstra). They have a long history of gouging users for their services of any description, particularly their "premium" services such as 3G and wireless broadband. Probably not too dissimilar to AT&T in this regard.
I don't believe the network loading is as much of an issue as you would like to think - Sydney and Melbourne would have similar traffic to any medium to large sized cities in the US. Heck, topographically Sydney could be quite equatable with SF. Telstra also sells wholesale bandwidth to other smaller telcos, so it's network has this traffic to deal with as well as it's own.
And whilst I haven't spent hours searching, I am yet to find any information that says AT&T matches Telstra's current network speeds. If they do, that's cool, as I said it's not a pissing contest. The main point of interest is the absence of antenna issues over here (so far), as far as I am concerned.
Useless information for purposes of this discussion.
You are being disingenuous. Data allowances aren't limited to 1gb, never have been.
If you go by AT&T's stats, the usage patterns of this "unlimited" data showed that people were far from utilising "unlimited" 3G data per month. A very, very small percentage of users were using more than 2-3gb per month, the average was well under 1gb iirc. Hence they changed their plans this year, didn't they?
The "giddiness", as you refer to it, towards Telstra is a very new thing. I myself am surprised by it. They have a long history of gouging users for their services of any description, particularly their "premium" services such as 3G and wireless broadband. Probably not too dissimilar to AT&T in this regard.
And whilst I haven't spent hours searching, I am yet to find any information that says AT&T matches Telstra's current network speeds. If they do, that's cool, as I said it's not a pissing contest. The main point of interest is the absence of antenna issues over here (so far), as far as I am concerned.
Useless to quote theoretical max peak download speed and conclude that you are ahead.
A very small number of Americans do use a lot of data --- and these small minority disrupts the network for the vast majority of the people who use data at reasonable amount.
People only have their iphones for a few hours --- too early to say that there is no problem down under.