A recent BusinessWeek online article about why AT&T and other U.S. carriers can’t keep up with the growing demand for mobile Internet access strongly communicates a major impending problem for the carriers: The carriers can’t keep up with customer mobile data demand. As the carriers market data-intensive handsets with data plans–especially the “use all your want” plans–they’re creating a mobile broadband shortage that can only end in customer disaffection and strained networks.
iPhone users are consuming three times the amount of data than other smartphone users. BlackBerry subscribers, for example, download and upload relatively small amounts of data (mainly emails).
Although RIM with its BlackBerry Curve and handsets on the way will increase data demands on the carriers’ networks, BlackBerry data use is dramatically lower than iPhone and other 3G handsets.
However, as carriers rapidly market multi-media handsets, capable of audio, video and other Web services, it’s dramatically impacting existing customers. To put it in the vernacular of one iPhone user who commented on the BusinessWeek article: “3G sucks.”
Read my Blogger post on 3G that further explains the problem.
Infoworld recently documented the impending problem in an article called “AT&T Lays Down the Law for Apple.” The article confirms that Apple’s iPhone is sucking bandwidth from AT&T’s 3G broadcand network at an growing, alarming rate.
Listen to my podcast on MobileBeyond called “U.S. SmartPhone Data Usage Growth: The Catch-22 of Mobile Data Performance” for further information.
Only a year ago, the Catch-22 seemed to be an impending carrier profit loss due to consumer reluctance about upgrading handsets for data use. Since activated cell phone lines exceed 265M, U.S. carriers have realized that profits and margins will only grow if they can convince the American public to upgrade their cell phones and start using data services.
But since the release of the iPhone, consumers around the world are demanding mobile handsets with iPhone-like capabilities. Mobile users are no longer satisfied surfing the Web with a tiny one inch screen.
Every day the demand for sophisticated handsets, displays and capabilities is growing beyond U.S. carriers’ ability to deliver.
The answer to the bandwidth problem is not only more cell phone towers, 3G radios and other carrier networking infrastructure. They’re other ways for mobile access to the Internet. Wi-fi is one answer. Witness T-Mobile’s Home Networking Service that automatically switches between wireless routers and cell phone towers.
Sprint and Clearwire’s partnership to blanket large geographic areas with broadband is another solution.
With AT&T exceeding 75 million customers, followed by Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile and other smaller carriers, finding alternative ways to provide mobile broadband is one of the critical issues of the day.
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