14 DAY TRIAL // Owners of Apple's iPhone iconic device that live in the US will be able to benefit from the MMS functionality that the iPhone OS brought to their iPhone 3G and 3GS devices as soon as September 25, wireless carrier AT&T announced today. The long awaited feature will finally come to the iPhone, and it will only remain to be seen when they will also get tethering, another feature supported by the device but not by their carrier's network.
As many of you might already know, AT&T's network and the functionality it can deliver to the carrier's iPhone users have made it into the headlines quite a few times before. The main reason for this state of facts is the long list of complaints concerning the poor user experience, based mainly on the fact that the network is overcrowded by the nine million iPhone owners that use their devices intensively. Some of the latest reports point towards iPhone users eating up to ten times more network capacity than other smartphone owners on AT&T.
“We’re riding the leading edge of smartphone growth that’s resulted in an explosion of traffic over the AT&T network. Wireless use on our network has grown an average of 350 percent year-over-year for the past two years, and is projected to continue at a rapid pace in 2009 and beyond. The volume of smartphone data traffic the AT&T network is handling is unmatched in the wireless industry. We want you to know that we’re working relentlessly to innovate and invest in our network to anticipate this growth in usage and to stay ahead of the anticipated growth in data demand, new devices and applications for years to come,” AT&T notes.
Indeed, data usage is expected to be on the rise in the future. The availability of iPhone MMS functionality will bring more string on the network, and the same will probably happen when tethering comes around too. We already talked about how the network is still unable to meet the tremendous demand for bandwidth coming from AT&T's iPhone users, so it shouldn't come as a surprise when the complaints on call drops and slow speeds will increase in numbers. Hopefully, the carrier will manage to improve its network fast enough to put them to an end and before its customers choose a carrier that does not face the same issues.