TomTom has dropped the price of their U.S. & Canada navigation app to $69.99 until December 28th.
The price drop comes after TomTom recently announced a U.S. only version of their app for $49.99.
Via iclarified.com
A new article in the New York Times suggests that faulty iPhone hardware is the cause of network issues experienced on AT&T.
The article entitled, “AT&T Takes the Blame, Even for the iPhone’s Faults” by Randall Stross, notes that AT&T has performed worst according to customer feedback. It suggests that in reality AT&T is the best network but faulty iPhone hardware is causing a poor network experience.
Roger Entner, senior vice president for telecommunications research at Nielsen, said the iPhone’s “air interface,” the electronics in the phone that connect it to the cell towers, had shortcomings that “affect both voice and data. Read more…
AT&T told investors at a USB conference in New York that it will give high bandwidth users incentives to “reduce or modify their usage”.
Amidst poor public perception due to a network issues, AT&T has decided put iPhone users who watch video on tighter leashes, according to an Associated Press report.
AT&T head of consumer services, Ralph de la Vega declined to comment on when these “incentives” would happen but said that usage-based pricing for data is inevitable.
“We need to educate the customer … We’ve got to get them to understand what represents a megabyte of data,” de la Vega said. “We’re improving all our systems to let consumers get real-time information on their data usage.”
De la Vega says three percent of “smart” phone users are consuming 40 percent of the network capacity with a majority of the high-bandwidth activity being video and audio streaming.
I can’t help but think announcements like these worsen the public perception of AT&T. The last thing unhappy customers want to hear is that if they watch video or use Skype they will be paying more.
Via iclarified.com
Molinker, the prolific Chinese development company behind numerous iPhone apps, saw all its titles pulled from the App Store on Sunday after an attentive user noted that most – if not all – of its five-starreviews appeared to be fake. The scam caused over 1,000 apps – nearly 1% of all of the titles on the App Store – to disappear at once.
The user, “SCW,” contacted a Glyn Evans of the iphoneography blog whom he knew to have contacts at Apple top management. SCW had noted something odd about the glowing (and poorly written) reviews of the “NightCam Pro” app and went through the applications offered by Molinker. As many as 90% of the reviews on some of their applications appeared to be written by a group of people who only reviewed Molinker applications. On “NightCam Pro”, for example, 42 of the 44 5-starreviews appeared to be fake.
Read more…
AT&T has released an iPhone application that gives customers the ability to notify the carrier of their location when they experience poor service.
“AT&T Mark the Spot” was released in the iPhone App Store Monday. The 0.3MB free application, version 1.0.1, requires iPhone OS version 3.0 or later.
“AT&T Mark the Spot is an application that provides customers a means to provide feedback on network user experience to AT&T,” the application’s description reads. The nation’s second-largest wireless carrier also listed the following features for its new software:
Read more…
A survey of users of the four major cell phone providers in the U.S. has ranked AT&T, the exclusive carrier of Apple’s iPhone, last in terms of customer satisfaction.
Consumer Reports surveyed more than 50,000 readers in 26 U.S. cities, asking about carriers in a number of different categories related to service and customer support. In 19 of those cities, AT&T ranked worst.
Overall, AT&T came in fourth place with a total score of 66. It ranked worst in voice service, and average for messaging and Web/e-mail. Customer service on the phone and via Web ranked poorly, as did staff knowledge and whether the customer’s issue was resolved.
Read more…
AT&T is offering a refurbished iPhone 3GS for $49 with free shipping and no activation fee.
Requires purchase of a $30/mo data service. 2 year contract & new activation required.
Via iclarified.com
As you all may know Verizon out of no where started attacking AT&T and it’s network with some not so nice television commercial ads. These ads have to do with network coverage and how one is better than the other. In obvious retaliation AT&T came back with an ad of their own and since the iPhone is running under AT&T’s network it looks like Apple wants to protect it’s precious jewel so it fired back with a couple of commercial ads of its own:
AT&T is clearly not going to take it anymore. Today, they blasted back at Verizon for the nasty ads about AT&T coverage.
In a press release today, the communications giant pulled out all the stops:
“AT&T’s wireless data coverage reaches 303 million people – or 97% of the U.S. population, where they live and work.
AT&T is the #1 network for smartphones, with twice the number of smartphone customers than Verizon, our closest competitor. Some of the reasons include:
Read more…
Boy Genius Report is claiming that two separate sources have told them that AT&T is looking to sell an 8GB iPhone 3GS for $99 US before Christmas. While this news wouldn’t come as a shock, it would certainly take more than AT&T to make it happen. As most of you know, Apple doesn’t make an 8GB iPhone 3GS and it would probably mean the discontinuation of the iPhone 3G in general.
If you think back to the time of the first generation iPhone (it was so long ago now), you’ll probably remember that Apple quickly discontinued the 4GB iPhone after realizing that most people were opting for the larger capacity. Not too long after that, Apple introduced the 16GB version and discounted the price of the 8GB. Now that the iPhones themselves are subsidized by the wireless carrier, the game is a little different.
Read more…