Sam OliverThe exclusive US iPhone carrier made the announcement at a conference Monday covering future technologies that will more closely tie mobile handsets with computers and television sets.
"We're looking at the whole landscape, of what people use, and what's out there in the home," said AT&T Chief Technology Officer John Donovan, who added that some of the services may launch later this year.
Instead of offering iPhone users direct access to U-verse, which provides IP-based television and phone services, it appears as if the telecoms company will leverage the Apple handset to drive home-based installations of the service.
U-verse currently requires a set-top-box and ranges in cost from $69 to $124 per month based on the number of television channels customers want to receive. Its supporting network was designed for download speeds of 20-25 megabits (1 to 3 megabits upload), with the majority of the bandwidth devoted to the TV programming.
AT&T said customers will eventually be able to listen to their voice mails on their television, and download shows from their digital video recorders onto their iPhones. A new application for the iPhone will reportedly serve as a television remote that will also allow users to virtually hurl "tomatoes at the TV screen."
Wesley Hilliard
AppleInsider Staff
Andrew Orr
Amber Neely
William Gallagher
34 Comments
U-verse would be great. But I can't get it in my area.
U-verse would be great. But I can't get it in my area.
I had it and on occasion it would just get all pixelated and the screen would go out. Of course it was in it's infancy then (about 2 years ago) so maybe they've fixed that. I would like to see non-competing providers come up with apps that would allow you to do something like that. Mainly cable companies, DirecTV and Dish. I know DirecTV's HD is in MPEG-4 so it could theoretically work and with a decent compression ratio to save space on the iPhone/Touch. Of course you'd need to enable something on your DirecTV to store an iPhone/Touch friendly copy of the video and have some USB dongle plugged into the back so it'll hook up to your wireless network but I'd willingly pay $49 for something like that (of course I realize it would likely cost more but here's hopin!)
If this means that slingbox won't be allowed on the iPhone, i'm going to seriously pissed, like get rid of the iphone pissed, why the hell is apple letting att have so much control over the content on the iphone, it's bullshit. Netshare, now Slingbox? Seriously, we're already giving att 30 bucks for UNLIMITED DATA, yet they wanna charge extra for tethering and mobile tv. Why is slingbox allowed on crapberry and not on iphone?
If this means that slingbox won't be allowed on the iPhone, i'm going to seriously pissed, like get rid of the iphone pissed, why the hell is apple letting att have so much control over the content on the iphone, it's bullshit. Netshare, now Slingbox? Seriously, we're already giving att 30 bucks for UNLIMITED DATA, yet they wanna charge extra for tethering and mobile tv. Why is slingbox allowed on crapberry and not on iphone?
Hey, come in off the ledge so we can talk.
Take a chill pill, nothing in the article says anything about exclusive.
Nothing I know of says one carrier in one country using the handset to do stuff with their services means anything to anything else Apple may do.
If Apple wants slingbox up and running, it will happen.
If slingbox wants to be up and running on the iPhone, it will happen.
If AT&T wants to use the iPhone to throw virtual tomat-s at your TV, it should be fine.
Relax, it's not AT&T's iPhone........ it's an Apple.
A new application for the iPhone will reportedly serve as a television remote that will also allow users to virtually hurl "tomatoes at the TV screen."
[ View this article at AppleInsider.com ]
Ooo, I LUV this idea!