AT&T performance
There’s been a lot of talk swirling around the great internet basin and it’s about how EDGE speeds on AT&T’s network may now be juiced up to something much more useable. Here’s the latest one I’ve run across.
Let me backtrack and present my theory (totally unsubstantiated) about the wireless networks. I’ve been bouncing around the carriers since ‘94, and which one is the most solid carrier is never a static thing. One year one’s the best and one’s the worst, the next year it’s different. My thinking is that they vary based on their subscriber base, when one is the best and the other is the worst, people leave the worst and go to the best. This has the effect of making the best become oversubscribed, their network can’t handle the traffic and their quality goes down. The worst lose subscribers (opening capacity and thus quality) while at the same time scrambling to increase their capacity. Wash, rinse, repeat.
So, AT&T just spent all kinds of money increasing their capacity and their network quality. Some people have seemed to notice that EDGE is now significantly faster. But will that remain the case as the millions of new iPhone users come online? This will not only add a significant boost to the subscribership of the network but these users will presumably also be using significantly more data than the average user. Remember, this is the “real internet” - so people will be surfing more, images will be turned on, entire applications for the iPhone will only be available online and everyone will have an unlimited data plan.
Did AT&T build out their network enough for that? I’ll believe it when I see it, but who knows.
Oh. And today’s the day! Maybe I’ll write something that isn’t about the iPhone next week. Of course, there’ll probably be a lot of responding to the reactions, mugging someone for their iPhone, you know… We’ll see…
