In my mind, this is what net neutrality means. I have written Congress asking them to legislate separation of the content from the pipes. That would be true neutrality. A company like Comcast wouldn't then care what data was being passed around on their cable, they would just have to worry abut enough lanes to get it from A to B.

For the wise backbone provider, this is the beginning of an opportunity to roll out the best networks in the country. Whomever puts the money in now, will be assured a majority of the subscribers in the future. For the most part, our networks are behind other countries for this sole reason.

AT&T should be focused on their network, not what's being transferred over it. If they could, say, have DSL like speeds next year, they wouldn't need to worry about App Stores and iTunes. They would get the subscribers based on their network integrity. No drops, full speed all over. That's the focus of a network provider, wireless or otherwise. The US sucks for this and it needs to change. The only way to get the Bells to change is through law, unfortunately.

iSuppli are morons

the 3% are jail breakers who tether. there is even a thread on howard forums with someone claiming they used 30GB per month over a few months by tethering multiple PC's to his iphone

As I've posted elsewhere, the use of the word 'unlimited' in marketing material is a dangerous practice. Like 'unique', it cannot be modified; something is either unlimited or it is not.

When customers take the meaning literally some will of course push to consume as much as they are technically within their rights to consume. The same thing happened with dial-up internet access; at a time when established providers charged by the minute, newcomers showed up and advertised 'unlimited' connection times. Most people could not stay online indefinitely, but when people started getting second phone lines exclusively for modem use they had no reason to disconnect. The ISP's modem pools became oversubscribed, and companies like AOL suffered the black eye of competitor's ads showing them to always have busy signals.

Now we're reliving this same lesson with the prospects of 'unlimited' data use on mobile devices. Something has to give...


EDIT: Replaced 'bandwidth' with 'data' for clarity

What BS! AT&T has made a ton of money from all the new subscribers the iPhone has bought in and is part of the reason AT&T is still afloat. They decided to sit back and pocket the cash for two years and only decided recently to really upgrade their network.

I'd never trust the telcos with anything. Didn't the gov't give them $15 billion earlier this decade to build out their networks? From what I understand try did nothing and pocketed the cash. Let them be the dumb pipes they were meant to be. I hope that Comcast/NBC deal never goes through.

Newsflash telecom service providers: you offer a utility. Utilities don't get high margins. The reason there has been so much industry consolidation is that when you have low margins, the only way to make more money is through volume. If the iPhone increased your number of users, you won; if you want more, you need to provide extraordinary value, not a service that is mediocre at best and abysmal at worst.

And of course users are more tied to their hardware. Who cares what the brand of the carrier so long as it is available in all desired locations and it is cheap?

Ehhh...I take that last bit back...I much prefer that cute Cingular logo to AT&T's...

What's true is that the iphone has little to no affect to the AT&T network, want proof? in the last 10 years when has the AT&T network not suck? when!? They even change their name to get rid of the bad rep that they always had.

I pay those people $250 a month for unlimited service and a wifi card for my mac. I tried to buy the AT&T network to Internet dongle to improve myservice at home but they refused to sell it outside of their "test group"

for what I pay a month I don't wan to hear them cry about bandwidth. Someone's making money and for that Monthly bill rest assured Apple got paid off long ago.

All iPhone users pay extra every month to AT&T just cause it's an iPhone. In my opinion they can just deal with it. Unlimited is unlimited. If they wanna offerlower prices for limited accounts that's fine but don't charge me for unlimited then send me an overage bill.