At the UBS 37th annual Global Media and Communications Conference, Ralph de la Vega at AT&T mentioned that AT&T’s been having cellular data network problems because of heavy users – touting out the usual “80/20 rule” bandwidth hog rule (in this case, that 3% of users use 40% of the data) the company’s representative, Ralph de la Vega, suggested to its investors that AT&T would likely introduce a pricing scheme that would penalize heavy data users, according to the LA Times.
We’ve written before about how the “X% of users use Y% of data” is kind of a boondoggle, but that doesn’t mean that congestion problems aren’t real for AT&T.
Which makes me wonder: If your data network couldn’t handle data streaming services for downloading web browsing, video, and applications, why, in fact, did AT&T team with Apple to sell a phone whose selling points were web browsing, video, and applications?
This is compounded with the idea that a lot of the problems have occurred in New York City, where AT&T rolled out the 850 MHz spectrum. The 850MHz spectrum travels further into office buildings and apartment complexes than the previous spectrum – and as a result data usage in the area went up 30%.
Again – to me this seems like a case of infrastructure not being able to support the sales claims. So the end result is that AT&T is trying to do the most difficult thing of all – trying to solve the problem by changing end-user behavior. To their credit, AT&T is, at this moment at least, intending to use incentives to get people to use less bandwidth rather than punishments for heavy users.
Still I feel a little frustrated. Business Internet has been around for nearly, what, 15 years now? How long will it take before people learn you don’t roll out new applications or services without baselining your performance and making sure that you have the infrastructure capable of supporting it.
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