Apple and AT&T Sued, Again, Over 3G

Macworld is reporting that Apple and AT&T are being sued, again, for the lack of delivery on their 3G network. This follows a long line of other lawsuits in San Jose, San Diego, Alabama, Florida, Texas, and New York "The lawsuit charges the companies with Negligence, Breach of Express Warranty, Breach of Implied Warranty of Merchantability, Unjust Enrichment, Negligent Misrepresentation, Violation of the New Jersey Consumer Fraud Act and Other Similar State Statutes, and Breach of Contract. Dickerson is seeking to force Apple and AT&T to correct its labeling and advertising, as well as to recover compensatory, statutory and punitive damages."

3G iPhone not all it's cracked up to be?

[Andy Dodd]

Sounds from the comments on that article that the iPhone's CPU just isn't fast enough to take advantage of 3G data rates even with a 3G radio present.

Based on those that commented on the linked article that their laptop data card was fast and my own experience with an AT&T Tilt in 3G coverage areas, it's *not* the network. The only time I have 3G speed problems is when I'm in a fringe area with only one bar of signal strength.

good

[pak9rabid]

Good...it's high time somebody smack them around in court for their bullshit data service. Although the connection to the tower is fine, it's slow as balls from the tower out. I mean christ, I experience lag when typing via an ssh session, something I haven't experienced since the dark ages of dialup.

Re:Yup

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not suggesting that the carriers don't want the iPhone, I'm saying that they're sacrificing their Network in order to do it. AT&T is being sued because their network can't scale up. They'll have to dump a cool billion in order to upgrade.

The marketing and business people see no problem with that, but believe me, it makes the tech's lives difficult. Blackberry's footprint is significantly lower because of how they handle data traffic.

Re:Yup

[TreyGeek]

The iPhone has absolutely destroyed AT&T's network.

Except I can go back to 2003-2004 when I was an AT&T wireless customer and their coverage in major cities was terrible. Their coverage and network issues are not because of the iPhone (IMHO), they've been having problems longer than that.

Re:Yup

[dave562]

I'm a fairly long time Blackberry user with AT&T. The network performance and internet browsing from the Blackberry devices was fine up until AT&T rolled out the iPhone. Once the iPhones were on the network, the internet browsing went straight to hell on the Blackberry. Page loads are easily over a minute and in the past they used to be reasonably fast.

Re:WTF?

[peragrin]

Pull your head out of your ass about cell companies screwing American's. AT&T is GSM, verizon is Cdma of one type, sprint is CDMA of another incompatible type. This isn't Europe where everyone uses GSM. In order to switch GSM carriers in the USA you have a chploice of at&t or tmobile in some cities. Tmobile for me is as useful as using posion ivy leaves for toliet paper.

You need a whole other phone if you want to use verizon or sprint.

Re:3G iPhone not all it's cracked up to be?

[novitk]

WiFi works well, so it's not the CPU on the phone. At least here in NYC the problem is not even the slow speed, as much as the the network is so oversubscribed that the phone can't get any response and the browser just times out.

You can add Los Angeles to that list

[carbona]

3G coverage is spotty at best, and as others have mentioned, sometimes full 3G bars doesn't even provide data.

Problem has gotten so bad that I have turned off 3G altogether when I'm at home as call reliability is improved and I can just use my Wi-Fi connection for data. I could have just kept my 1st gen iPhone and lived without GPS.

Re:good

[jargon82]

ssh lag is a really bad example. 3g has reasonable bandwidth but rather high latency. Stuff like ssh will always visibly lag, and this is not at all specific to AT&T.

Re:3G iPhone not all it's cracked up to be?

[shawnce]

Page rendering is rather fast on the iPhone when supplied by WiFi which easily exceeds 3G data rates in all but the rarest of situations. It isn't a CPU issue. Now it could be a 3G chip set issue... however I bet it is primarily latency that is killing fast rendering when using 3G. 3G latency is bad in general and given how "native" the Mobile Safari accesses websites it feels the full effects of this latency (unless a pre-fetching proxy, etc. is assisting the phone pipeline things... which is what BB does IIRC).

The AT&T Network

[rwwyatt]

The problem is network dimensioning and issues of the backhaul connection between the NodeB and the RNC. There are multiple configuration of the NodeB which provides for different Data Rates. There is 384 kbs, 1.8 mbps, 3.6 mbps and 7.2 mbps. AT&T was not interested in 7.2 Mbps until late 2007. In order to support these data rates, there must be a significant connection to the backhaul based for the most part on a number of T1 Lines. AT&T is attempting to dimension their networks based on current data usage so they will always be behind. This is due to cost and many other reasons. There is no reason to equip Nut New Mexico with a 7.2 Mb capable cells. Even on the device side, It is cheaper toi buy a device based on HSDPA only rather than HSUPA/HSDPA.

Beware of anecdotes bearing claims

[slimjim8094]

There's a lot of bitching about how much AT&T's network sucks. I'm not an apologist (though I have an iPhone) so let's keep objectivity in mind.

The iPhone has limited ram and a slower CPU. Websites will take a long time to render regardless of connection speed. Therefore, test a file transfer. You should get around 1.5MBps if you're on HSDPA (I think all ATT 3g is HSDPA)

I'm not arguing for a second that someplace like NYC will probably be oversubscribed. I doubt that's the problem in general (nothing like a 14.4kbps dialup for a backhaul... jeez) but it's possible if you're experiencing genuinely slow speeds.

Remember packet-radio tech will always involve latency. Over EDGE it's around 500ms, over a (good) 3g, it's about 150ms. That's something you'd be seeing if you see slow web speeds - many webpages have 50 requests, that latency adds up.

As for this lawsuit, AT&T makes no secret that 3G isn't available everywhere. It is exactly 3 obvious clicks from the homepage. If this guy expected 3g... tough. They're rolling it out pretty quick. If he didn't, or if the service is slow... perhaps he can call and tell them that he didn't contract for this level of service?

Basically, website 'speed' is not all about AT&T's oversubscription/crappyness. It's at least composed of latency, rendering speed, the page itself, and finally the speed of the network (which will fluctuate with users). Do a bulk file transfer and then talk.

And this guy probably needs to chill out. Probably

Re:Yup

[mmkkbb]

That was most likely AT&T's D-AMPS network, before they were bought by Cingular, and before Cingular was bought up by SBC which became AT&T. The brand names mean nothing in this case.

Re:Yup

[afidel]

Internet is starting to suck a lot less on the Blackberry as well. OS 4.5 makes the Blackberry browser very useable and Opera mini even more so. Heck on T-mobile I can even stream music just fine over EDGE using Slacker or Flycast. I'm not sure if your typical Blackberry user is as data intensive as I am (I doubt it) but you can certainly use as much bandwidth using a Blackberry as you can an iPhone.