AT&T Tiered Data Plans: Femtocells For Heavy Bandwidth Users
AT&T iPhone’s exclusive US carrier, was considering “incentives” for some subscribers to “reduce or modify their usage” of bandwidth.
Ralph de la Vega, AT&T’s president and CEO of mobility and consumer markets, said that just three percent of the iPhone population consumes 40 percent of its bandwidth and AT&T would address them and not the 97 percent with more regular consumption rates. He also clarified that the carrier would not implement any tiered data plans.
AT&T is considering making more Wi-Fi hot spots free for its mobile customers, where they can access the Internet on a faster network than the cellphone network.
It’s possible AT&T intends to offer its customer femtocells, which is personal cell towers that offer 3.2Mbit/sec 3G service connects to the Internet through the user’s cable or DSL service. Femtocell was tested in Charlotte, N. C.
AT&T hopes it can relieve some of the pressure on its network that has caused issues. Issues with dropped calls and spotty reception have led to bad publicity for the carrier, which market leader Verizon has attempted to capitalize on with a series of advertisements.
AT&T has come under criticism from some customers who say the network is too congested and is inferior to competitors’. It has been struggling to keep up with the explosive growth in wireless data, which it says has expanded in volume by nearly 5,000% over the past three years.
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