AT&T CEO Ralph de la Vega, told investors at a UBS conference in New York that it will probably change its policies to some form of usage-based pricing for data.
De La Vega said that just three percent of smartphone users are eating up 40 percent of available capacity, most of it due to video streaming apps.
Right now, the carrier doesn’t limit data usage for smart phones. It also doesn’t make it easy for subscribers to know how much data they’re consuming. By contrast, data card subscribers (at $59.99 per month) have a 5GB cap.
AT&T plans to boost speed by adding 850MHz spectrum and upgrading to HSPA 7.2. That upgrade is expected to double network throughput speeds with a theoretical maximum download speed of 7.2 Mbit/sec. It will be complete in six cities by the end of this year, with 25 cities online by mid-2010, de la Vega said. He didn’t name the six cities.
While Verizon is moving ahead with some rollouts of LTE in 2010, de la Vega argued that that coverage will only be in pockets; AT&T customers will have wider access to HSPA 7.2 technology, while their LTE service will begin in 2011.
This week AT&T released a free iPhone application called Mark the Spot that lets users report data problems, dropped calls and spotty coverage.
AT&T is facing a boatload of iPhone apps that promise to use even more bandwidth.
- Ustream Live Broadcaster, now available from the App Store. It enables live video broadcasting from an iPhone 3GS or iPhone 3G over either WiFi or 3G cell network to unlimited desktop and mobile clients.
- Qik writes in a blog post that they’ve already submitted their app for approval their iPhone broadcaster App.
- 12seconds is also offering iPhone live streaming, says TechCrunch.
- Knocking, another App Store-approved entrant, offers a peer-to-peer service that transmits live video from one iPhone to another.
