For the last few years, wireless carriers and manufacturers have been pushing smartphones as the way to go. But now that a growing numbers of Americans are using them, the system seems like it's starting to choke.
New York and San Francisco are giant dead zones for many iPhone users. Research In Motion, maker of BlackBerrys, had two outages within a week recently, highly unusual for the reliable devices. Last January, some of the 2 million people attending the presidential inauguration couldn't get phone service because the area around the nation's capital was so congested with cell traffic.
Some say such congestion could be more common this year because of nearly 280 million Americans' growing reliance on cell phones, continuing consumer demand for data-intensive mobile programs like video and audio, fourth-generation cell networks that are not in place for most of the country and inadequate wireless spectrum to meet customer needs.
AT&T, the exclusive seller of Apple's iPhone in the United States, in particular, did not adequately anticipate the device's huge popularity, critics say, making the company a victim of its success, and its customers frustrated in the process. Users around the country have complained about sometimes-spotty coverage with the phone.
"What’s driving usage on the network and driving these high usage situations are things like video, or audio that keeps playing around the clock," said Ralph de la Vega, president of AT&T Mobility. "And so we’ve got to get to those customers and have them recognize that they need to change their pattern, or there will be other things that they are going to have to do to reduce their usage.”
Whether those "other things" include higher rates for whatever data usage is deemed excessive is not known. De la Vega said first AT&T will concentrate on "improving all of our systems so that we can begin to give customers real-time information about their data usage and begin to get customers educated."
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