ATT Says It Schooled Apple on iPhone Networking
Posted in: Apple, att, iPhone, Phones, Today's Chili
AT&T has taken a lot of heat from iPhone customers complaining about network performance, but the carrier insinuated in an article today that Apple was partly at fault as well.
AT&T executives visited Apple last year to provide Apple engineers a “crash course” in wireless networking to reduce the load that iPhones were putting out on the network, said John Donovan, AT&T’s chief technology officer, in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. As a result, Apple tweaked its iPhones to communicate with AT&T’s towers and mitigate network overload, according to Donovan.
“They’re well past networking 101, 201 or 301,” said Donovan, adding that Apple is now “in a Master’s class.”
That would imply that AT&T felt Apple engineers weren’t well versed in wireless networking, and the iPhone — not just AT&T’s network — was causing issues such as dropped calls, patchy coverage and sluggish downloads. A 2008 study by Wired.com found that iPhone download speeds were especially slow on AT&T’s network compared with international carriers, which suggested that AT&T was overloaded. However, a recent study by PC World saw significant improvement in AT&T’s network speeds — so perhaps AT&T’s crash course did indeed help address the problem.
However, iPhones keep selling, and network shortcomings are a prevalent problem. Donovan admitted that addressing these issues has increased his blood pressure 20 points.
See Also:
- Apple Doubles iPhone's 3G Download Cap
- TV 'Anywhere': AT&T Relents on iPhone 3G Slingbox
- What's Wrong With the 3G in iPhone 3G?
- Wired.com's iPhone 3G Survey Reveals Network Weaknesses
- AT&T Addresses Network Challenges, iPhone's MMS Delay in Video …
Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com
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