AT&T delivers iPhone data choke relief
And Big Phone finds love beyond the bright lights
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AT&T has begun rolling out a fix for the glitch choking two per cent of its wireless customers' uplink speeds. The bug-squashing is scheduled to take two to three weeks.
The data-strangling gremlin resides, according to an AT&T statement of July 7, in Alcatel-Lucent equipment employed by Big Phone in its HSUPA service, and thus effects only HSUPA-capable handsets, such as Apple's iPhone 4.
That same statement noted that the glitch affected "less than two per cent" of AT&T's wireless customers. Last week, in the company's second-quarter 2010 financial results, AT&T noted that it now has 90.1 million wireless subscribers — which would mean that a about 1.8 million custormers are affected.
Since the glitch was detected earlier this month, those 1.8 million users have been provided with "normal 3G uplink speeds and consistent performance", according to Big Phone.
On Monday, 18 days after the problem was first announced, those customers learned that it'll be another two to three weeks before they can begin to experience their promised HSUPSA-level uplink speeds.
In related news, a survey released Monday by the Yankee Group found that 73 per cent of AT&T's iPhone customers are "very satisfied" with their service. By contrast, only 69 per cent of all smartphone users were similarly satisfied.
As David Goldman remarked on CNNMoney.com: "The results are surprising, given the pounding AT&T has taken in the media and on the blogosphere about its service-related issues with the iPhone."
The Reg avers that those missing 27 per cent of AT&T subscribers are likely to be clustered in such densely packed cities as New York and San Francisco, where AT&T's service is known to be far less than "very" satisfactory. ®
