Open Internet groups to file FCC complaint over AT&T's FaceTime blocking

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Comments

  • Reply 21 of 87


    Sure it would be nice to have FaceTime over the cellular, but let be honest ... really honest with ourselves and ask your self this question ... would you really use face time?  Sure its pretty cool and all, but there is no way I would drop my AT&T unlimited plan and pay extra for a feature that I would only use once or twice every six months.  


    Lets face it, when your in public, do you really want to have a conversation over FaceTime for everybody to hear?  No, so where is the one place you would feel comfortable making a FaceTime call ... at home, where most everybody has wi-fi. 


    If they go ahead and reverse their decision ... great, if not ... no really big loss.  With that said, I do agree that while you are paying for DATA already, for AT&T to charge you just for the ability to use a feature that is already on your phone is not right.  You paid for your bucket of DATA and should be able to use it how you see fit ... period.  

  • Reply 22 of 87

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by bryanl View Post


    Did these same groups complain that Apple never released the specification of this so-called open protocol?



     


    Probably not since the 2 issues have absolutely nothing to do with each other.


     


    Quote:

    Originally Posted by AdonisSMU View Post


    What is Apple waiting for? Why haven't they released the specification for this. It's been two years already. What are they waiting for? 



     


    They are waiting for Google to actually release Android as open source. Not that linux/android thing that isn't actually Android, but Android itself. Oh, what's that, Google is never going to open source Android, just pretend that they did? That's what I thought.

  • Reply 23 of 87


    Sure it would be nice to have FaceTime over the cellular, but let be honest ... really honest with ourselves and ask your self this question ... would you really use face time?  Sure its pretty cool and all, but there is no way I would drop my AT&T unlimited plan and pay extra for a feature that I would only use once or twice every six months.  


    Lets face it, when your in public, do you really want to have a conversation over FaceTime for everybody to hear?  No, so where is the one place you would feel comfortable making a FaceTime call ... at home, where most everybody has wi-fi. 


    If they go ahead and reverse their decision ... great, if not ... no really big loss.  With that said, I do agree that while you are paying for DATA already, for AT&T to charge you just for the ability to use a feature that is already on your phone is not right.  You paid for your bucket of DATA and should be able to use it how you see fit ... period.  

  • Reply 24 of 87


    Originally Posted by enjourni View Post

    Tallest... this is from the main page (with the new theme) aka appleinsider.com. Went to the bottom under "Add your Comment", typed in 3-4 lines and hit submit. Only a portion of the 1st line showed up.




    Thanks for that. I think that's actually the problem here; typing an ampersand from there instead of the forum proper. 


     


    I'm not a fan of that comment section myself… 

  • Reply 25 of 87
    Any word if AT&T will change its throttling policy for the LTE iPhone 5 or keep the same 3GB limits
  • Reply 26 of 87


    Sure it would be nice to have FaceTime over the cellular, but let be honest ... really honest with ourselves and ask your self this question ... would you really use face time?  Sure its pretty cool and all, but there is no way I would drop my AT&T unlimited plan and pay extra for a feature that I would only use once or twice every six months.  


    Lets face it, when your in public, do you really want to have a conversation over FaceTime for everybody to hear?  No, so where is the one place you would feel comfortable making a FaceTime call ... at home, where most everybody has wi-fi. 


    If they go ahead and reverse their decision ... great, if not ... no really big loss.  With that said, I do agree that while you are paying for DATA already, for AT&T to charge you just for the ability to use a feature that is already on your phone is not right.  You paid for your bucket of DATA and should be able to use it how you see fit ... period.  

  • Reply 27 of 87
    TEST POST FOR AMPERSANDS: AT

    Yep, that's exactly the problem. Ugh… I'll tell everyone else.
  • Reply 28 of 87


    TEST POST:



    This is a sentencejQuery18108677812677342445_1347987703126!! This is another sentence. (Tested here was the use of two question marks in a row. "??")



    AT [sentence cut off] (Tested here was the use of an ampersand. "&")



    EDIT: Yep, that's exactly the problem. I'll tell the other mods, but there's nothing we can do to fix it other than tell the people who can.

  • Reply 29 of 87


    Sorry, my computer froze and I kept hitting submit and didn't know it kept posting it.  I don't know how to delete the extra ones. 

  • Reply 30 of 87


    Originally Posted by iButterfingers View Post

    Sorry, my computer froze and I kept hitting submit and didn't know it kept posting it.  I don't know how to delete the extra ones. 


     


    I only see one. So that's good. Maybe. image


     


    Don't worry about it; we're having all sorts of glitches lately.

  • Reply 31 of 87
    Eh what do I care? I use Skype anyway, and AT&T just bumped my unlimited-before-throttling threshold from 2 gigs to 5, so I'm pretty happy with my unlimited data plan right now. Now if they win their argument, I'll smile at their victory as a matter of principle, but again, not gonna affect me either way since I've not used FaceTime once since the day it was announced.
  • Reply 32 of 87

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Tallest Skil View Post


     


    I only see one. So that's good. Maybe. image


     


    Don't worry about it; we're having all sorts of glitches lately.



    His previous one shows up 4 or 5 times

  • Reply 33 of 87
    ryuk wrote: »
    Any word if AT&T will change its throttling policy for the LTE iPhone 5 or keep the same 3GB limits

    They already did. Throttling on unlimited plan for iPhone 5 users now begins at 5 gigs, up from previous 2.
  • Reply 34 of 87


    Originally Posted by joelsalt View Post

    His previous one shows up 4 or 5 times


     


    … On forums.appleinsider.com, or appleinsider.com? That's not the case for me in either place. 


     


    And IN that case, that's absolutely horrible. How am I supposed to clean that up if it's not even pushed to me?!

  • Reply 35 of 87

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Falkirk81 View Post



    Meanwhile here in the little UK, I get unlimited data with Giffgaff for £10/$15 a month with no contract! That includes FaceTime! When it comes to telecoms, the USA is a rip off :/


     


    Exactly, most other places have competition.  Here, Congress let the companies merge back into effectively 3-4 carriers total, and clearly that's not fostering much in the way of customer value. And the best part is that they're doing this using public spectrum that already effectively gives them a monopoly  - and then pumping up fat profits.


     


    I paid for my data, so let me f*&*^(*&ing use it. And if they don't like it because 'well, if our customers actually use the bandwidth they paid for it will bring down our network!",  then give me a refund my unused data every month since apparently I'm not really supposed to use it.


     


    Just total a-holes.


     


    Edit: Just wanted to say I hope that the advocacy groups are successful, and this is one of those things where I'm going to go look for their sites and see if I can donate. Somebody has to look out for our rights, it isn't going to be companies, and if our elected 'leaders' won't do it then it's worth supporting someone who will. Crazy.

  • Reply 36 of 87
    AT [sentence cut off] (Tested here was the use of an ampersand. "&")

    So THAT'S the "AT" that everyone's been posting?. I thought it was just some new acronym that I wasn't hip to.
  • Reply 37 of 87


    "Shared" data. What a joke. As someone posted here earlier, it's as if the water company charged your per faucet. How does AT&T get away with this? What a gouging of  the marketplace....

  • Reply 38 of 87
    So to get Cellular FaceTime, I have to go from a cheap plan with phone minutes to an expensive plan with "unlimited" minutes, in order to use a feature that makes phone minutes irrelevant, since I can mute the video and use FaceTime just a phone call. The face that FaceTime provides additional features doesn't mean that AT
  • Reply 39 of 87

    Quote:


    "We are broadening our customers' ability to use the preloaded version of FaceTime but limiting it in this manner to our newly developed AT&T Mobile Share data plans out of an overriding concern for the impact this expansion may have on our network and the overall customer experience," AT&T representative Bob Quinn said last month.


     




     


    I can currently stream YouTube or Netflix videos over 3G until my 200 MB of data is used up, how does my using FaceTime trigger "Overriding concern" about their network? AT&T's FaceTime policy is a transparent attempt to strong-arm conservative users of data into more expensive plans and consumers are justified in their anger. The very second a viable alternative exists millions will jump on it.


     


    Apple, when will you have the confidence to offer a VOIP solution that gives cellular providers no choice but to accept their inevitable role as data utilities?

  • Reply 40 of 87
    jragostajragosta Posts: 10,473member
    christophb wrote: »
    Is AT&T the only provider in the US that offers an iPhone that is capable of doing FaceTime over 3G/4G networks when iOS 6 goes live?

    Sure. Straight Talk allows it - and you're even using the ATT network, so there's no need to change phones.
    anonymouse wrote: »
    Probably not since the 2 issues have absolutely nothing to do with each other.

    They are waiting for Google to actually release Android as open source. Not that linux/android thing that isn't actually Android, but Android itself. Oh, what's that, Google is never going to open source Android, just pretend that they did? That's what I thought.

    Maybe, but Apple did state when they introduced Facetime that they would make its specs open so that anyone could use it. I wish they had done so as promised. It would be nice to have a single videoconferencing standard that everyone used.
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