December 11, 2009

Today in The Wall Street Journal, in an Article entitled AT+T Faces a Data Dilemma, we learn of a plan from AT+T to incent its customers to cut back on their data usage.

Well we can all imagine how well that suggestion went over in the comments. Who on earth wants to use their devices LESS? That is not going to happen.

AT+T is selling iPhones hand over fist, making enormous profits, but the data demands from all these mobile devices are killing their networks — shrinking coverage, dropped calls. In NYC and and SF, the service is getting pretty horrible.

There is no way on earth AT+T will ever be able to build out their 3G/4G networks fast enough to keep up with demand.

Here’s a simple graph of the problem:

With where Wi-Fi networking is now, and with 802.11n radios in the latest iPhone, they would do well to consider setting up Wi-Fi Hot Zones in their major markets so as to cheaply and quickly alleviate this congestion problem.

Now AT+T may lose some voice revenues to VOIP over Wi-Fi (iPhones can have Skype clients aboard of course), but they stand to lose a lot more in terms of customer churn if they just let the inevitable happen.

By Marshall Brown | Permalink | Comments (0) |