I'm getting like 200-500k here in garner now. Few months ago, I'd average about 1Mbps and about 1.5 a year ago.

1/11/2011 4:31:55 PM

Quote :

"lol if he doesn't speak for the majority of AT&T users neither do you"

i'm not speaking for AT&T, where did i say anything about my experience with AT&T???? I didn't.

how do you not know about the hundreds of surveys on the internet regarding AT&T?

just last month:
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/Wireless/att-named-worst-cell-phone-service-provider-consumer/story?id=12326064 (2nd year in a row)

man alive, what planet have you guys been on?

i get 800-1700 pretty reguarly in Denver on VZW.

[Edited on January 11, 2011 at 5:22 PM. Reason : /]

1/11/2011 5:15:57 PM

Upon 2nd thought, I'm glad this thread stuck around. We didn't need Prospero spouting his VZW Fanboyism over in the iPhone thread. I'm really glad you're happy with 800-1700 though. I would hate life if that was all I could muster up.

When you guys actually feel like talking about the iPhone, you know where to do it.

1/11/2011 5:40:11 PM

If anyone cares, at this moment in time I'm currently getting an identical 1.18 Mpbs from AT&T & verizon in N. Raleigh just outside the beltline. Ping is much lower on verizon & the upload is faster too.

1/11/2011 5:53:00 PM

^^^Me, nor anyone I've known with ATT, have ever been asked to be polled. Have a majority of ATT users been polled, or a few thousand maybe they want to claim will represent the whole?

1/11/2011 5:59:00 PM

^Must be a VZW fanboy and hence you are automatically wrong.

And bottom line when you live somewhere that one carrier has great coverage and you have to sacrifice not being to surf the net and talk (oh noes holy shit how do I survive not being able to do this) or having zero coverage, its not a tough call.

A guy that was dating my cousin got the first iPhone when it came out on AT&T. Had to drive to Raleigh I think, and was only able to use the phone within 3-5 miles of the interstate. Everybody else just waited and bought an iPod Touch instead, so they could have a phone that actually worked.

1/11/2011 6:00:54 PM

fanboyism? really?

it's clear you can't read as the polls were 50,000 people, not just a 'couple' thousand, if you are really that ignorant to think that you should have been one of the 50,000, or that they should really poll 93 million people to get an accurate result, you must be high-school drop out, because you suck at math.

this has NOTHING to do with me. i'm just calling you out on what the majority of AT&T users experience. just stop claiming that everything on AT&T is just fine and i'll stop posting polls of how crapping AT&T service is.

if AT&T works for you great, i don't care who you use. i'm just posting survey results here.

1/11/2011 6:19:31 PM

You can't browse and talk at the same time on Verizon... did I mention this yet? I kinda wanted to jump ship but that's enough to stop me.

1/11/2011 6:20:40 PM

Reading Ars Technica today on it, you all that want it are getting jipped. Its CDMA, not LTE, which is slower speeds (theoretical) than ATT, no dual voice/data connections (this is really gonna suck for people).

Ok they did put in direct mifi. And fix the antenna issue (maybe).

Id wait till they get it 4g. That and stay on ATT as all the idiots are gonna run to Verizon making ATTs network so much better as there wont be as much traffic on it.

1/11/2011 6:24:16 PM

I love the simultaneous voice & data argument. ~100 million people are apparently perfectly fine without it. I generally have access to wifi 90% of the time thus making simultaneous voice and data possible and can't say I've ever felt the need to use it. Pretty much the only thing AT&T has to brag about. There's a reason they gave up on that battle, because it was a losing one.

1/11/2011 6:33:23 PM

possible CDMA iPad too... http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/01/11/verizon_cdma_ipad/

1/11/2011 6:38:18 PM

Quote :

"I love the simultaneous voice & data argument. ~100 million people are apparently perfectly fine without it. I generally have access to wifi 90% of the time thus making simultaneous voice and data possible and can't say I've ever felt the need to use it. Pretty much the only thing AT&T has to brag about. There's a reason they gave up on that battle, because it was a losing one."

I wasn't really presenting it as an argument. It's the reason I'm not switching to Verizon. From what I read, this will be changing with the switch to LTE, but FOR ME it's still a big enough factor that I don't want to "live with it" for however many months.

guess I'm not part of the 100 million

I admire your brand loyalty, though

[Edited on January 11, 2011 at 6:39 PM. Reason : -]

1/11/2011 6:38:30 PM

was referring to the 100 million on Verizon. And even the LTE phones may or may not be capable of it at least until they switch to voice over LTE which is still a ways down the road.

1/11/2011 6:39:49 PM

Why is this no simultaneous voice/data thing really going to suck? Am I missing something?

I'm not trying to be sarcastic or anything. I've done this maybe once while on hold, but am I missing something else that it does?

[Edited on January 11, 2011 at 6:40 PM. Reason : ]

1/11/2011 6:40:14 PM

The voice/data argument is a ridiculous one.

I can think of only a handful of times in a few years I've needed to do this and if I did, I was usually at or near a computer or in a wifi area.

1/11/2011 6:49:39 PM

Well personally, if I'm just kinda "on the phone" with someone (work, wife, etc), I'll sit there and browse while they're on speakerphone. I'd say the majority of the time I spend on the phone, I'm browsing at the same time.

Sometimes I actually need to browse for something pertaining to the conversation, and it's just nice to not have to hang up.

I haven't had that many problems with AT&T, and I'm sure Verizon probably has a better network but I just can't handle this tradeoff.

[Edited on January 11, 2011 at 6:54 PM. Reason : f]

1/11/2011 6:50:50 PM

It's kinda the same argument for video chat on the Android platform vs. the iPhone. On one side you can do video chat anywhere on 3G, the other you need Wifi. Same thing with this analogy, you can talk & browse at the same time but just requires Wifi.

1/11/2011 7:14:06 PM

Quote :

"Why is this no simultaneous voice/data thing really going to suck? Am I missing something?"

I didn't understand this initially, but I actually use it all the time. It wouldn't be a deal breaker for me but does come in handy pretty regularly.

I was in the field & on the phone with my boss yesterday & emailed him a picture of the situation we were discussing while we were talking. It was convenient, not earth shattering, but you get the idea.

1/11/2011 7:29:30 PM

^that to me seems kinda pointless. You can do that from any smartphone and it'll just send when its queue becomes active again.

1/11/2011 7:42:16 PM

Quote :

"It's kinda the same argument for video chat on the Android platform vs. the iPhone. On one side you can do video chat anywhere on 3G, the other you need Wifi. Same thing with this analogy, you can talk & browse at the same time but just requires Wifi."

There are 3rd party apps for the iPhone that allow for video chat over 3G. The only video chat that doesn't work over 3G is the one built into the OS. I guess Android solves that problem by not having a video chat feature built into the OS. I suppose that's one way to do it.

1/11/2011 7:51:44 PM

That requires you hang up though.

Just for the record, I'm in agreement that it's not a big deal, but it is a thing

1/11/2011 7:52:43 PM

Quote :

"^that to me seems kinda pointless. You can do that from any smartphone and it'll just send when its queue becomes active again."

We can't discuss the construction issue at hand until he sees what I see. If he can see what I see while I'm seeing it & while we're talking its helpful. It is not a deal breaker by any means & I may switch to verizon if they get the next iphone at the same time as AT&T but it isn't the ridiculous feature I originally thought it was.

[Edited on January 11, 2011 at 7:57 PM. Reason : What Stein said. Its a thing, its nice & I could live without it but I'm glad I have it.]

1/11/2011 7:55:38 PM

yeah, it's always nice to have an extra option in case you ever needed to use it but saying anyone saying it's a deal breaker is a little meh. Local coverage area, price, speed, global use I can see as a reason to stay with a carrier but I wouldn't sacrifice either of those for a little feature.

1/11/2011 8:22:08 PM

Quote :

"it's clear you can't read as the polls were 50,000 people, not just a 'couple' thousand, if you are really that ignorant to think that you should have been one of the 50,000, or that they should really poll 93 million people to get an accurate result, you must be high-school drop out, because you suck at math. this has NOTHING to do with me. i'm just calling you out on what the majority of AT&T users experience. just stop claiming that everything on AT&T is just fine and i'll stop posting polls of how crapping AT&T service is."

50,000/93 million = .05%, 1/100th of the percent error we were allowed in the labs i took at state. And that's supposed to accurately represent all of them, and make me bad at math and a high school drop out.

1/11/2011 8:43:56 PM

i love how you apply science labs to polling, like they are equivalent.

just because you poll .05% of the population does not mean you have inaccurate results, there are tolerances built into polls too. good grief, i can't believe people in tech talk can't get a grasp on polls and surveys and how they represent the whole.

1/11/2011 11:10:12 PM

verizon sucks.

1/11/2011 11:14:51 PM

Quote :

"There are 3rd party apps for the iPhone that allow for video chat over 3G. The only video chat that doesn't work over 3G is the one built into the OS. I guess Android solves that problem by not having a video chat feature built into the OS. I suppose that's one way to do it. "

Not to mention that the point of FaceTime is not that it’s video chat. Video chatting on phones has been around for years. It’s the implementation that Apple has made better.

Just like Apple didn’t make the mp3 player, the smart phone, or the tablet, they just made better versions of these things that actually gained mass market appeal.

When Apple makes a “4G” phone, they’re going to add video chat over the network. They could probably add it now, but it would bog ATT’s network down even more, and people would complain that FaceTime sucks because of laginess.

1/11/2011 11:55:03 PM

Quote :

"It’s the implementation that Apple has made better."

Kool Aid.

1/12/2011 12:48:11 AM

^ clearly you aren’t familiar with phones pre iPhone. Or mp3 players pre iPod.

1/12/2011 1:10:54 AM

I had no qualms with AT&T in small market AK 3G was fast and very reliable, in Boston it can be a real shitbag. I drop about 5% of calls . To be fair thought I'm not sure verizon is any better. Anyway I just ran a datatest with barely a bar of 3G an dl was pretty solid, upload was shite.




[Edited on January 12, 2011 at 1:20 AM. Reason : Haha]

1/12/2011 1:16:18 AM

Quote :

"i love how you apply science labs to polling, like they are equivalent."

One is an accurate way to draw a conclusion, the other is a poll.

1/12/2011 1:26:41 AM

Quote :

"Kool Aid."

You can call it Kool Aid all you want, but I'll bet you can't name one other video chat service that even comes close to the ease of use of FaceTime.

I know it bugs some people when it's said that Apple does something (anything) better than everyone else, hell it bugs me too if they're saying it just because of the name brand. But in this case, he's saying it's better because it legitimately is better.

1/12/2011 3:44:26 AM

My only gripe with AT&T is their lack of coverage. I live in Greensboro and I rarely ever have more than 2 bars of 3G service (unless I'm outside). Pandora's connection will drop every 5 songs or so, and half the time I can't save my ratings. If I'm visiting family in Chapel Hill (Governor's Village area), I get "No Service". If I'm travelling to a town in NC that's outside of a major metro (e.g. Louisburg, Eden, Albermarle), service will get very spotty.

The GPS app on the iPhone is utter trash, though I'm not sure if fault lies with at&t, apple or google.

1/12/2011 10:15:00 AM

^the google maps app, or some other gps app? there's a lot of different ones...

1/12/2011 10:54:45 AM

Quote :

"You can call it Kool Aid all you want, but I'll bet you can't name one other video chat service that even comes close to the ease of use of FaceTime."

What exactly makes Skype a lot harder to use than FaceTime?

1/12/2011 11:17:01 AM

^

1/12/2011 11:22:55 AM

Skype just came out. But I'll take the bait. Both parties must have skype downloaded and installed with an account set up. This doesn't sound like it is integrated into the OS. We need a standard video conferencing protocol, such as faceTime, so more phone manufactures can directly integrate it into their os. I want to be able to switch between voice, video, and back seamlessly with no apps, no extra accounts, etc. FaceTime isnt there yet bc it currently doesn't work over 3g(Although I use it on 3g frequently with similar results to skype) and no devices other than the iPhone 4 or snow leopard macs support it. It is a step in the right direction though.

1/12/2011 11:36:59 AM

Quote :

"Both parties must have skype downloaded and installed with an account set up. This doesn't sound like it is integrated into the OS."

No one said it was integrated into the OS. Oh, and if you want to use FaceTime, you have to have an Apple ID, so you've got to worry about getting an account set up as well. You're acting like setting up an account with Skype takes more than about 10 seconds.

Quote :

"We need a standard video conferencing protocol, such as faceTime, so more phone manufactures can directly integrate it into their os."

Why does it have to "directly integrate into their os"? Skype (for example) has video chat clients for the following platforms: Windows, Mac, Linux, iPhone/iPod Touch and Android coming. Apple has the iPhone 4/iPod Touch 4th Gen and Macs running their latest OS. So if the goal is to be able to video chat with actual people, how is FaceTime the better option? Because you didn't have to go through a 3 minute setup process?

Quote :

"I want to be able to switch between voice, video, and back seamlessly with no apps, no extra accounts, etc."

What is so wrong with it being an app?

[Edited on January 12, 2011 at 11:49 AM. Reason : .]

1/12/2011 11:48:21 AM

There isn't anything particularly wrong with Skype or Fring or any other video chat app, they are just slower, less reliable, and have crappier video quality then I've experienced over Facetime.

1/12/2011 11:54:27 AM

I dont want to download a another phone app to make phone call on my phone. If I have one account which manages every aspect of my phone, why do I want to create another one for redundant features? Again I am agreeing with you that Skype currently has it's pros (more devices, 3g) but FaceTime is implemented in a manner that is more fluent and user friendly. FaceTime isnt even really what I am arguing, I am stating that Apples philosophy on providing integrated features provides a better user experience. If Skype worked the way FaceTime did I'd be all for using Skype. I just want the processess to be as stream lined as possible.

1/12/2011 11:56:21 AM

boo freakin hoo

1/12/2011 11:57:22 AM

Quote :

"^the google maps app, or some other gps app? there's a lot of different ones..."

The one that comes with the 3GS. I know there's others, and I've used them, but coverage issues still make my phone unreliable as a GPS.

1/12/2011 12:29:06 PM

ha you want unreliable, try one in the Galaxy S family. Just pray you don't need quick access to gps directions.

1/12/2011 12:30:50 PM

^^huh?? the only thing close is the google maps app, but that's not like a true navigation type app. i'm not sure what makes you think it's trash, but it functions the exact same way google maps does. if you're looking for turn by turn directions, you've got the wrong app. things like mapquest or navfree are what you're looking for. accuterra is great for trails & other off-road adventures. i've never had a problem with the gps apps.

navfree includes all of the US maps, just like garmin or tomtom, it takes up 1gb or so. accuterra lets you download only the maps you need. i used it on the AT last summer.

oh and you may know this already but cell coverage != gps coverage. i was able to get a gps connection & accurate location the whole AT trip. i'd never had to rely on an app like that so i was constantly checking where it said i was, versus the paper map, & actual landmarks.

navionics marine is really good for boating too. i've marked lots of little routes through the bogue sound in my skiff.

[Edited on January 12, 2011 at 1:20 PM. Reason : ]

1/12/2011 1:16:04 PM

Quote :

"What exactly makes Skype a lot harder to use than FaceTime?"

Neither one are particularly hard to use, but you really are completely ignoring the convenience factor of having the feature being built directly into the OS. If I want to make a FaceTime call all I do is start a call to the person I want to call (which can be set up as an icon on your main screen if you'd like) and then hit the FaceTime button. You can even be on a regular cell call and initiate FaceTime from within the call with one button. With Skype you have to make sure the other person is signed in. I've found that a great majority of my Skype calls need previous coordination in order to get them to work. Worst case scenario with FaceTime, you give them a call first and ask, "hey FaceTime?" then press the button and the call is converted to video chat right there. It may not be "OMG 1000x BETTER I<3U APPLE!!!1" but it's implementation (not to mention video and audio quality on the exact same hardware) is better.

Quote :

"Oh, and if you want to use FaceTime, you have to have an Apple ID, so you've got to worry about getting an account set up as well."

If you don't have an Apple ID you literally can't activate your iDevice in the first place. Don't act like it's any more work to type in an already existing username and password to use a feature. (which by the way, you don't even have to do on the iPhone. It uses your phone number as your identification.)

Re: the creating a new account aspect, I think I have a fairly unique perspective on this sort of thing because both my parents have iPhone4s and any time a new program like Skype or Google Voice/Talkatone comes out I have to spend, quite literally, hours up at their house helping them set up accounts and configuring usernames and passwords and showing them how to use the new apps. Yes, it might take a tech oriented person "10 seconds" to set up a Skype acount and get it working on the iPhone, but you have to remember not everyone is as completely technically proficient as the average 20-something. My mom still asks me which app she's supposed to use if she wants to call her sister and not have it use her minutes vs which app she needs to use to video chat with her friend. I'm not saying it HAS to be FaceTime (and am under no delusions that FaceTime will ever be implemented on anything other than an Apple device) but if every smart phone and computer had a unified, built in, easy to use video chat feature like FaceTime, I don't see how that wouldn't be better for everyone involved.

1/12/2011 3:48:49 PM

AT&T is fucked. My contract is up Jan 20th, I can't wait to abandon ship.

Ive had Att for 3 years now, and have used it in a number of different areas. Before that I had verizon for 5 years. The difference in amazing. AT&T has, by far, the worst service coverage, the worst reliability, and he worst infrastructure of the big 3.

BigEgo, you need to go look at the data. They had 40-60% dropped call rates in NYC until last year. The 3G network in Seattle is unusable for making phone calls. There is essentially no service across the Midwest at all, having driven the damn thing, their coverage maps are bullshit.

God I can't wait to leave

1/12/2011 4:15:32 PM

^In Charlotte it works excellent though. That's all that really matters.

1/12/2011 5:44:43 PM

I didn't know this, but apparently Charlotte = Center of the Universe

1/12/2011 6:07:07 PM

It's one of the most important markets in ATT's eyes. Question whether that's a good idea on you're own time, but in ATT's eyes Charlotte's one of their 5 most important markets.

1/12/2011 6:08:33 PM

you would think that New York and San Francisco would be. You know because they are two of the largest cities in the country, with the highest concentrations of cellular use and revenue.

but apparently no, instead at&t wants to target a relatively small semi-urban area. It wouldn't surprise me, because it would be adding just another stupid ass move to AT&T's long history of stupid ass moves.

1/12/2011 6:11:16 PM