SAI’s Dan Frommer reports that “AT&T says iPhone 3G users are using less bandwidth than they anticipated…The carrier expected a 5x growth in data consumption over the old iPhone, but it’s been closer to a 3x jump.” He speculates on why people are not using the 3G service:
In our experience, AT&T’s 3G service for the iPhone has been anything but impressive — so slow and unreliable that we’ve found ourselves forcing the phone to use AT&T’s slower “EDGE” network just to keep a steady Internet connection. Add to that the legions of iPhone 3G owners who’ve turned 3G off to keep the phone’s battery life at acceptable levels — and the vast number of people who live outside AT&T’s 3G network area — and it’s easy to see how iPhone 3G data usage has been underwhelming.
All good points, though I’ve had less trouble in the past week since the 2.1 software was released.
What’s more interesting to me, which is not explored in Frommer’s post, nor in the Mocconews post he got the information from, is what the increase in 3G reliance means to AT&T’s network and profits. The AT&T exec said they are working on improving their 3G infrastructure, presumably to handle the incoming deluge of bandwidth traffic from the increasingly data centric smartphones. Is the company ready for a 5X, a 7X increase in data usage? Will this whack out their margins? Will it overload the network?
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