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AT&T CEO's "Only Regret" is Offering Unlimited Data Packages
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I'm glad Apple is hitting AT&T where it really hurts with iMessage. I have no problem with AT&T making a big profit on texting. It's supply and demand and AT&T simply charged what the market would bear. This is a clear-cut example of disruptive innovation.
BBM was a major selling point for BB. People could send texts without their carrier knowing. Except that the BB platform was not a fast-growing platform like iOS or Android. The carriers were probably very happy that BB had a relatively small user base. I'm quite certain that the carriers could have controlled a threat from BB since carriers still had all the control.
All that changed with the iPhone, however. Apple negotiated for full control over the platform. AT&T was relegated to simply providing a service. Coupled with that, iPhone users put a bunch of pressure on AT&T's network. I'm quite sure AT&T asked Apple to restrict certain features like YouTube to WiFi only. If that happened, Apple must have told AT&T to take a hike.
So with Apple's user base and habit of refusing carriers control of the platform, Apple took the BBM concept and blew it up a thousand times. Now, AT&T is sweating bullets.
As a consumer, I am displeased that I had to pay a lot for texting. But I have no problem with AT&T wanting to make as much money as possible. That's just business. My response is to look to companies like Apple and Apple has answered. I hope Apple keeps hitting AT&T where it really hurts.
BBM was a major selling point for BB. People could send texts without their carrier knowing. Except that the BB platform was not a fast-growing platform like iOS or Android. The carriers were probably very happy that BB had a relatively small user base. I'm quite certain that the carriers could have controlled a threat from BB since carriers still had all the control.
All that changed with the iPhone, however. Apple negotiated for full control over the platform. AT&T was relegated to simply providing a service. Coupled with that, iPhone users put a bunch of pressure on AT&T's network. I'm quite sure AT&T asked Apple to restrict certain features like YouTube to WiFi only. If that happened, Apple must have told AT&T to take a hike.
So with Apple's user base and habit of refusing carriers control of the platform, Apple took the BBM concept and blew it up a thousand times. Now, AT&T is sweating bullets.
As a consumer, I am displeased that I had to pay a lot for texting. But I have no problem with AT&T wanting to make as much money as possible. That's just business. My response is to look to companies like Apple and Apple has answered. I hope Apple keeps hitting AT&T where it really hurts.
I guess paying employees, building towers, capital investments, etc. don't count
Sometimes the easiest explanations leave a lot of things out
Saying that offering the service costs them nothing is a little naive
I complain to AT&T about throttling my unlimited data contract. I get a letter back from their legal department telling me it's not really unlimited, yet here, their CEO outright states in this interview it is "all-you-can-eat". Any Lawyer out there wanna sue the crap out of them for lying through his legal department?
If "WE" break our contract, it cost us money to get out. Yet, AT&T can break our "all-you-can-eat" contract and we are still stuck with them while they pay nothing. Where's the crappy Washington AG when we need them. Get off your butts back there!!
We will be moving off this crappy company when our fraudulent "unlimited all-you-can-eat" contract is up.
If "WE" break our contract, it cost us money to get out. Yet, AT&T can break our "all-you-can-eat" contract and we are still stuck with them while they pay nothing. Where's the crappy Washington AG when we need them. Get off your butts back there!!
We will be moving off this crappy company when our fraudulent "unlimited all-you-can-eat" contract is up.
I have no pity when innovation threatens the business model of a company that clearly gouges its customers. If they charged what they should be charging for messaging, iMessage wouldn't be threatening anything, and nobody would use it because text messaging is nearly free.
I hear what you are saying, but I assure you the grass isn't always greener. I left ATT for Verizon and it didn't take me long to come back. This is not a knock on Verizon by any means, but in my area and for my personal needs.. ATT is simply best network choice.
Build Capacity - Not Empty Excuses.
Instead of making excuses for his failures, and complaining on how he over booked limitted capacity, recorded record profits, and failed to deliver on his own promises, how about the man just doing his job and Build More Capacity ?
All the fancy smart phones and cell towers and fiber optics are useless if a weak man refuses to provide the leadership needed to bring USA telecommunications to be the #1 leader on the Planet.
Unlimitted data should be the default plan always for everyone, with the restricted plans as only the 'economy' budget plans.
AT & T needs to re-focus on their mission:
- make USA telecommunications the Best On Earth.
Instead of making excuses for his failures, and complaining on how he over booked limitted capacity, recorded record profits, and failed to deliver on his own promises, how about the man just doing his job and Build More Capacity ?
All the fancy smart phones and cell towers and fiber optics are useless if a weak man refuses to provide the leadership needed to bring USA telecommunications to be the #1 leader on the Planet.
Unlimitted data should be the default plan always for everyone, with the restricted plans as only the 'economy' budget plans.
AT & T needs to re-focus on their mission:
- make USA telecommunications the Best On Earth.
They LAG because their confident (too confident in my opinion). They are heading back to proprietary (force you to buy all upgrades and services through Apple), which is a huge sign of greed. I am a big Apple fan, but extremely disappointed with them in the last year.
No, it is not costing them anything.
It is true, that you need the techies, the towers, the capital investments, BUT you did not invest in all of that for the SMS network. These posts are paid for by the voice and data services for what they are build. To have a voice or data service, you have to connect to the tower. From there you go either via directional radio to the next tower or thru fiber to the backbone. Whatever, that is the infrastructurer the providers invested in and this infrastructure is being used and paid for for these services and there customers.
One of the technical issues is, to connect a handset to the system, for that it sends a individual code for the handset and the SIM and then is permitted to go online. So far, so good. The authorisation as well as the tracking and handovers to the next tower (in case the handset is moving) are done in a small carrier your device is permanently sending and receiving. Over this carrier wave is all kind of information send. Of course, your personal code, to be allowed on the network, the speed you are travelling, your location ect pp. This signal is not to be confused with the large and powerful signal that is being send when you actually speak or transmit data. But it is always on and because it operates on a much lower frequency then the actual mobile network, you can often see a signalbar and send or receive messages but can not connect with voice or data.
This carrier wave is used to send and receive SMS and the slow and small band nature of this carrier is also the reason, why a SMS is limited to 160byte chunks. In the early days of GSM, SMS where free, they where a side product nobody cared about as ist did not need any extra frequency oder other technical stuff then that, what was already there (and was already paid for)
Similar to the old days when you just called a number and let it ring, once for "I'll be coming soon" twice for " get dinner ready" three times "will be late" ect. At no cost, the line was there and paid for. SMS do not cost the provider anything extra on top of there needed, installed and paid for infrastructure.
Only when Nokia and Ericson in the last century introduced this "new" message feature to there phones (if you could call those bricks then phones) it took off. The telecoms quickly saw an easy money making oportunity and started charging for the service. Soon, a big chunk of income came from these services. Understandable that they do not want to loose this free money.
As a matter of fact, the most expensive equipement they have to install is actually the metering facility. Before you could simply send and receive SMS, in order to charge, there had to be tech installed, so they can control what you send and how much. SMS are not encryted and can be read by anyone that has youR network access code, easely found out standing close (within a mile) to your handset. If you know the (lately often changing) access codes to the message centers, you can send SMS for free by bypassing them, you can even use this carrier wave for internet access, if you are content with 8baud speed.........
Google BS Translation:
BS Translator:
INPUT:
And its a variable cost model. Every additional megabyte you use in this network, I have to invest capital.
OUTPUT:
"It takes money to make money. If a customer wants to use the product he already paid for, I have to do real work and deliver the goods."
Lazy Leadership poisons AT & T.
BS Translator:
INPUT:
And its a variable cost model. Every additional megabyte you use in this network, I have to invest capital.
OUTPUT:
"It takes money to make money. If a customer wants to use the product he already paid for, I have to do real work and deliver the goods."
Lazy Leadership poisons AT & T.
Exactly! Man, when Apple bought Twitter last year and rolled it into iCloud Gold it really screwed the community up. Hopefully we'll get some integration of Twitter into the OS eventually to make up for how much they're milking us with a website only service.
What post did you read?
I didn't say anything about profit... yet.What I was trying to explain, in simple terms that hopefully anyone can understand, is that SMS are NOT FREE just because one tiny packet section of the whole enormous transmission path reuses some free space.
In fact, I suspect that SMS cost has actually been going up because of the massive switch to texts by today's youth. At times, over a million messages a minute are being handled by each carrier.
This has required carriers to invest into more text handling centers and/or outside contractors... plus rearranging priorities at cell towers away from data and voice in order to prevent deadlocks.
Are texts profitable? Clearly they are. Are they free? No way, not even close, especially when sent between carriers, where a fee around 4 cents is charged for handling them. (That's why some plans are free inside the carrier, but cost when going to another.)
Question: do we REALLY want to pay closer to what each text costs? I truly think not, unless we send very few. I think that the way the carriers sell plans that allow them to spread the cost out to everyone (because some use all the plan, but most do not come close) is the only answer for people who text a lot. (This is same as with phone calls: some really cost much more, some less, but the prices are based on an average cost spread out to everyone.)
It's like when people say without thinking, "Oh calls should be charged as data", without realizing that suddenly the price of a call would be dependent on the encoding quality, method and possibly even how much noise is around us with an encoder that might otherwise stop sending packets during quiet moments. So do we REALLY want to pay for voice calls by byte instead of by minute? I also think not. However, VoIP is coming big time, and the carriers will have to figure out pricing based on max data usage.
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So I guess I'm not the only one who cancelled the $20 unlimited text message scam in favor of iMessage, Twitter, TextFree app, email and the thousands of roll over minutes I've collected.
My only regret is that I didn't cancel my text plan sooner.
My only regret is that I didn't cancel my text plan sooner.
Look at the headline "'only regret' is offering unlimited data packages". So he thinks it was a mistake. If he hadn't made the mistake, then nobody would have paid for an unlimited plan and then discovered that it wasn't unlimited.
Maybe he should have said "My only regret is offering limited data packages but calling them 'unlimited'".
Is this written with the implicit knowledge that current mobile call quality sucks badly?
As far as the switch, it isn't just about call quality. Many people communicate using services that fall under the data plan already. The only thing left are the people who use SMS and voice calls extensively. The switch from SMS to services like iMessage and Twitter (BBM too if you think RIM will survive) has already started. People are making calls less and less and when they do they're probably also around a WiFi network that could take over (e.g. home or work).
Basically, we need to have a service that can make logical decisions about more things than call quality to make efficient usage of resources at hand. If Apple somehow made an iCall service that can seamlessly switch between voice calls and VoIP depending on the situation for iPhone users that would be a huge deal (although not so much for me because I'm perma rollover minute capped...they seriously need to reduce the voice plan on these phones).
But this will never happen with the current batch of companies. They're too busy making weird and convoluted plans and pricing every new and potentially disruptive technology out of existence (or even non-disruptive technology like AT&T's monthly GPS plan or monthly family location tracking plan or...). This happens every single time and it is always disrupted by a newcomer. Does anyone remember long distance call rates? It will happen again with data and AT&T and the rest will be dragged kicking and screaming.
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You bring up a good point. One of the major features of a true 4G network is that it's all IP based... "data" to the layman.
That's why we see companies like Verizon investing heavily in LTE and FiOS, and stating that their policy is to eventually move all calls, wireless and landline, to VoIP.
It is certainly a major move. Voice ARPU is continuing to drop overall, while data ARPU is rising but at a slower rate. That means customer plans have to be re-invented. It's why Verizon is reportedly going to introduce shared-data plans this summer. They need to get data revenue up to cover the eventual loss of traditional circuit switched voice and text revenue.
It's a giant juggling act, with the possibility of some new app changing everything quickly and throwing the best laid plans aside. That's why a good CEO will be worried about what he cannot foresee. It's not evil. It's doing his job.
It is indeed a giant juggling act. And I have to give credit to Verizon for having a long term plan here that looks sustainable (AT&T looks like they're blindfolded and just swinging a broomstick around wildly). My problem with AT&T's CEO is that I don't think he can foresee what he is going to have for breakfast tomorrow and he only just now is worried about it. I honestly think they had absolutely no clue what the iPhone was going to do to the industry. Neither did Verizon but at least they were quick on the uptake once everyone saw what was happening to AT&T. I wish Verizon would speed up their FiOS rollout too.
(For the record I've been with AT&T for probably around 8 years now so I'm not really a Verizon fanatic.)
Yes, although I believe with LTE everything is treated as data. Someone correct me if I'm wrong.
As Bernard would say.
The More I know the moneyed class the more I understand the Guillotine.
Yes this means you too pions of the moneyed class.
The More I know the moneyed class the more I understand the Guillotine.
Yes this means you too pions of the moneyed class.
What an old-minded guy in this new era of communication bussiness...
he should already know 5 years ago that SMS would die someday, h*ll even voice call as well...
nowaday u should provide fast, reliable data connection with logical price and u r pretty much on bussiness already..
he should already know 5 years ago that SMS would die someday, h*ll even voice call as well...
nowaday u should provide fast, reliable data connection with logical price and u r pretty much on bussiness already..
I don't think you understand how mobile networks work.
A voice call uses a fraction of the data than even a 2G data session can use.
As someone who is not a data hog I absolutely don't want to subsidize those who are. So I'm glad unlimited is gone. We should all pay for what we use.
Only those wanting to take more than they actually paid for will disagree with that.
Nobody cheers for the 400lb glutton getting booted from the all-you-can-eat buffet except people just like him.
Michael
Greed
This SOB is whining, but the fact is that AT&T robs all of their iPhone costumers. $20 per 100kB overseas data? $30 for 5GB? My bill is almost $150 a month for horrible service. Here in the States we overpay big time and what do we get? Spotty and mediocre service. And this @sshole has the audacity to complain about the cost of doing business? I won't shed a tear when these telecom companies go down the pooper.
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Apple should have bought T-Mobile and turned it into a data only service and let the people choose their preferred VOIP service for voice.
This SOB is whining, but the fact is that AT&T robs all of their iPhone costumers. $20 per 100kB overseas data? $30 for 5GB? My bill is almost $150 a month for horrible service. Here in the States we overpay big time and what do we get? Spotty and mediocre service. And this @sshole has the audacity to complain about the cost of doing business? I won't shed a tear when these telecom companies go down the pooper.
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Apple should have bought T-Mobile and turned it into a data only service and let the people choose their preferred VOIP service for voice.