March 06, 2010 :: Posted by - SoSly :: Category - News

Steve Jobs appears to have fired off a tersely worded email reply to a user in Sweeden who asked whether the WiFi-only iPad could be tethered to the iPhone: “No.”

Jezper Söderlund of the Swedish website Slashat.se reports that he sent Apple’s chief executive an email identifying himself as an Apple customer before adding, “I’m also awaiting the release of the iPad. However, I have one question: Will the wifi-only version somehow support tethering thru my iPhone?”

The full email headers Söderlund forwarded to AppleInsider appear to indicate that Jobs sent his one word reply at 8:30 AM from his iPhone. Read more…

February 15, 2010 :: Posted by - SoSly :: Category - News

Consumer Reports published an analysis of the wireless bills of 100,000 customers and found that that the average iPhone owner uses almost twice as much data as users of most other smartphones, and five times the average amount used by Blackberry owners. And a small proportion ofiPhone users upload and download three or more times what the average iPhone owner uses, with one in twenty-five using upwards of a gigabyte per month. Read more…

January 15, 2010 :: Posted by - SoSly :: Category - News

AT&T today announced new unlimited plans across all its devices including the iPhone.

“With more than twice the number of smartphone customers as our nearest competitor, we are committed to offering great value and choice for customers who want to talk, text and surf on the nation’s fastest 3G network,” said Ralph de la Vega, president and CEO, AT&T Mobility and Consumer Markets. “Our new plans reflect customers’ continuing desire to do more with their phones – including talking and browsing the Web at the same time. Plus these new plans make it even more attractive to choose AT&T which already offers customers the best 3G experience and the industry’s most popular and innovative devices.”
Read more…

December 18, 2009 :: Posted by - SoSly :: Category - News

An AT&T executive this week made comments to assure customers that the exclusive carrier of the iPhone in the U.S. will not implement tiered data plans.

The comments from Ralph de la Vega, president and CEO of mobility and consumer markets, came just a week after the AT&T official said the company would likely provide incentives to encourage bandwidth-hogging customers to “reduce or modify their usage.” What kind of incentives were never made clear, though de la Vega said it is inevitable that high-bandwidth users will be charged for what they consume.
Read more…

December 09, 2009 :: Posted by - SoSly :: Category - News

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

October 26, 2009 :: Posted by - SoSly :: Category - News

Verizon and AT&T have both reported their latest quarterly earnings, and the strength of the iPhone has continued to help AT&T close the gap on the market leader.

In its earnings reported Monday morning, Verizon said it now has an estimated total of 89 million subscribers, after adding 1.2 million customers during the September quarter. Last week, AT&T announced it added 2 million wireless subscribers during the same period, bringing its total base of customers to 81.6 million.

AT&T’s 2 million customer increase was the highest third-quarter gain in company history. Officials said nearly 40 percent of the 3.2 million new iPhone activations were customers new to AT&T. That means of the 2 million new customers, roughly 1.28 million were iPhone users. Read more…

October 15, 2009 :: Posted by - SoSly :: Category - News

9 to 5 Mac reports that it has received a note from an AT&T spokesperson asking the site to remove a reference suggesting that the company would support Internet tethering via the iPhone by the end of 2009.

We believed it was coming later this year, until we got a note from an AT&T spokeman. He told us to correct a post that said AT&T will be delivering tethering in 2009. Specifically, he said (his font color, not ours):

“Just reading again – where did anyone promise tethering by EOY? Where did you see that? We promised MMS by end of summer Read more…

October 09, 2009 :: Posted by - Thomas :: Category - News