I’ve been waiting for this day to come since the beginning of 2009, not that I like to hear about Carriers under stress due to inadequate infrastructure but because that stress signals a new round of investment. In case you’ve missed the news, the iPhone or rather the data-hungry applications that run on it, have been named the reason for spotty or poor data service across the USA.
- AT&T shocked by iPhone bandwidth usage
- AT&T and the Mysterious New York iPhone issue
- The iPhone Bandwidth Problem
…..and now in Europe
They’ve known about it for awhile as the statement below from April 2005 can attest to, but now the Carriers are actually admitting that the much sought after device is too much for their networks.
“In our view, this data is a strong indicator that performance of the mobile carrier’s network is affecting the iPhone 3G more than the handset itself. This also furthers our thesis that it’s highly unlikely that Apple is going to wave a magical wand and say, “3G problems, be gone,” with a software update. Before Apple can make such a claim, it needs to wait for all of its carriers to optimize 3G network behavior — in terms of number of towers, how they’re positioned and how much bandwidth each tower can handle. (link)”
Remember the above statement was prior to the launch of the 3G, which has exacerbated the effects of an infrastructure that wasn’t prepared for people to actually use the device.
In Europe, the UK seems to be experiencing the most pain or at least admitting the root cause of the issue. I have heard of other issues in Sweden, Switzerland, The Netherlands and France. So far Germany and Austria are enjoying good data speeds and relatively no service issues (related to data usage).
The bright side of this is that mobile carriers across Europe have been watching this development closely and have been addressing any potential lack of bandwidth in the backhaul network. The answer to their issues is clear; Replace those old TDM circuits with Ethernet; and now they have a pressing business reason to do so.
Let’s hope that 2010 brings Carrier investment to upgrade common metro and access networks to a resilient Ethernet based architecture.
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