iPhone4idiots

It appears AT&T finally has a coherent policy on data throttling. Their stated policy of throttling unlimted data plan users at 3GB has finally been implemented. Well, at least for me. In past posts I showed how I was going as high as 10GB and still not getting any message from AT&T. Yesterday, I got the text displayed here and as you can see in speedtest results below I have certainly been throttled. This happened exactly when I went over 3GB. For once AT&T is on it. So now the question is whether or not to stick with AT&T? Continue Reading…

In today’s digital age I don’t understand why a company the size of AT&T can’t manage its’ network better. AT&T updated the information page on its’ website with a throttling section. The page states that this starts at 3GB. Well this simply isn’t happening here in Nashville. Dial *DATA# (*3282#) from your iPhone and AT&T sends you a text with how much data you have used that billing cycle. You can see in the picture that this iPhone has been over the cap since February 17 and still no text about throttling. Since they have this information why can’t they start throttling at 3GB? Are they just doing it in some markets or is the fact they lost $850 in small claims court caused them to abandon the policy. Doubt it, but I’m curious.
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So AT&T finally decided to clarify their data throttling policy. Yesterday they announced that anyone still on the unlimited data plan (I believe that number is north of 15 million) would be throttled when the went over 3GB. The current headline on CNN is, “AT&T increases limits on data usage”. What horse manure, but that’s pretty much all Ted Turner produces. No, they didn’t increase anything. Maybe they are finally becoming transparent with their policy but I’m not sure that is true either. It was supposed to start today, but nothing has been sent to one AT&T iPhone I can still check on even though it is over 6GB this month. Now this is a good thing, but if the policy is throttle over 3GB and they aren’t doing it here in Nashville, I bet they are likely still doing it under 3GB in other areas. The bottom line is AT&T is too big to manage their network tightly. This policy announcement comes after a California man won $850 from AT&T in small claims court over data throttling. I guess they were paying attention to that. I’m sure this won’t be enough to prevent the next person from taking AT&T to court. I’ll let you know the judge rules. For the record, I’m still happy with the service Straight Talk is providing on my iPhone 4. I’m just under 3GB for the billing cycle so far. If you are interested in making the change see this video.

Verizon? Hell no, not until LTE anyway. Sprint? If you want horrible data speed. AT&T? Too many dropped calls. Actually for me the problem was AT&T started throttling my data and I felt screwed. There is nothing I could do about it other than switch carriers so I did. Straight Talk is a Mobile Virtual Network Operator that offers a $45 unlimited everything plan. That’s right unlimited talk, 3G data and texts for only $45. That’s about half of what I was paying AT&T to get throttled. I was worried the coverage would be bad, but it’s been great. While not perfect the amount of savings should make this the iPhone carrier of choice for many. Watch the video to see how easy it was to switch from AT&T to Straight Talk and how I’ve found my new carrier to compare.
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Late last year AT&T began throttling the top 5% of data users on their grandfathered unlimited plans. I mentioned in a previous article how this throttling reduces your iPhone’s speed by almost a factor of ten making your iPhone slow and frustrating to use. Watch this quick video to see how the throttling beings and continue reading to see why ATT is doing this and how you best can avoid it. Continue Reading…

I’ve written in the past about how ATT has instituted a policy of data throttling for it’s top 5% of bandwidth users. I was curious as to how much speed would be cut back and the folks over at AppAdvice uploaded a video demonstrating the extreme nature of the slowdown. Using the popular Speedtest app on two identical iPhone 4S the download speeds on the throttled device are almost ten times slower. What’s even crazier is that the throttled speeds are similar to Edge! Now I haven’t tested this myself as I don’t want to suffer through these slow speeds until my next billing cycle. However, the video is quite clear as to what happens. ATT’s reduction of the data speed by such an extreme amount serves a purpose. It encourages their heavy users to cut back or switch to another carrier altogether. I’m sure ATT doesn’t mind losing the bandwidth hogs. The reduced speeds make it impossible to stream video and make apps like Maps and Safari quite slow. So where does the throttling begin. In the past ATT stated that 98% of it’s users use less than 2GB of data. However, I went over that amount last month and didn’t get throttled. In any event, if you want to avoid this keep an eye on your data usage and use wifi whenever possible. You can easily check your ATT data usage at any time by dialing *3282# (star DATA pound) on your iPhone. You’ll get a text showing how much data you’ve used, when your next billing cycle beings and how many texts you’ve sent. Not sure where this is going as I’m confident Verizon and Sprint are or will be doing something similar. In the meantime just hope you don’t get the text displayed here!

Starting Sunday January 22, ATT is once again changing their data plans for smartphones and tablets. Current ATT customers can keep their existing plans, but any new ones will be subject to the new contract pricing. Why are they doing this? Simple, just like any company they are doing it to make more money. The bottom line is that they raising prices $5 per month putting them more in line with Verizon. To see the new pricing and comparison to Verizon and Sprint Continue Reading…

After numerous reports, it’s quite clear now that in the United States ATT has the fastest data speeds for your iPhone or iPad. Mush faster if you have the iPhone 4S due to ATT being the only one supporting HSDPA technology. Verizon is next best with Sprint having the slowest speeds. This surprises me as Sprint only has about 1.5 million data hog iPhones on its’ network. I thought it would be faster for sure. On the positive for Sprint customers, it’s being reported Apple and Sprint are working to improve 3G data speed. This first step to a fix is admitting there is a problem. Expect 5.1 software update for Sprint soon. All this will remain the same for about a year. Once true 4G iPhones (and despite what they market, ATT’s iPhone 4S is NOT 4G) hit the market the question of which carrier has the fastest network will start again. Anyone feel your iPhone’s data speed is too slow?

Love my new baby! Here is video of first speed test I ran. This is for 3G on ATT in Nashville, Tennessee. As you can see the HSDPA technology which is only available on an ATT iPhone 4S makes the download data speeds 50% faster. If you haven’t decided which carrier to go with yet, I highly suggest ATT for this reason. Think of how much faster you’ll download all those videos.

I’ve had ATT as my carrier for years. When Verizon finally got the iPhone, I posted an article saying you shouldn’t buy it because of lower data speeds and not being able to use voice and data at the same time. That said, you have to call BS when you smell it. Like when Apple released Ping or when Research in Motion released the 7′ Playbook. ATT is about to claim the iPhone 4S is a 4G phone and Apple is playing along. Check my article from two days ago. While it’s true that ATT’s GSM network is the only one to support the iPhone 4′S HSPA+ technology which is faster, it is not 4G. While twice as fast as 3G, it’s no where near 4G and I hope next year when Apple likely releases an LTE iPhone 5 Verizon and Sprint put ATT in their place. Heck, at that point they should market it as 5G since there is no truth in carrier advertising when it comes to data speeds.