The Wall Street Journal has an article about how iPhone users are purportedly “costing” AT&T a lot of money because they’re bandwidth hogs, that is, iPhone applications use up so much precious 3G bandwidth that the operator will be forced to spend a lot of money to upgrade its network and eventually, may even have to drop its flat-fee data subscription and replace it with a “metered” type plan. The article pointed out that AT&T isn’t the only operator facing this dilemma; all operators that sell smartphones will eventually have to upgrade their networks.
I’m not entirely convinced with the WSJ’s arguments. The operators have been charging people so much for text messages over the years and those charges bear no relation whatsoever to the cost of delivering text messages. They’ve been able to charge us so much because they can get away with it.
With metered pricing, it’s a different story especially now that people are very cost-conscious and there is so much more competition (at least in countries like France where Apple is barred from doing exclusive deals and must sell the phone through all the operators). Moreover, with Wi-Fi service in many places including Starbucks where iPhone users even have free access, people are unhappy with the performance of their iPhone apps on the 3G network will try to find and use Wi-Fi whenever possible.
- – - – - – - -
*Sign up now for the Muniwireless Vendor Directory which appears online and in the upcoming guide, How To Get a Broadband Stimulus Grant. Please send an email to esme[at]muniwireless.com.
*Join the MuniWireless / Muni WiMAX Linked In Group for networking and discussions.
*Sign up for the MuniWireless / WiMAX newsletter.
*Download the latest list of US cities and counties with WiFi
*Advertise on Muniwireless.com. Download our 2009 Media Kit and contact us.
WiFi is the “apps” last mile. Wifi is far from dead.