AT&T’s actions are those of a desperate man…
Charging $15/mo for data plans? Moving up six months (or possibly more) worth of upgrade eligibility to now?
AT&T knows they’re losing exclusivity. The question is when. Based on the six month window they provided, I’d venture to say we’ll see the announcement in September (along with the other iPod upgrades and a rumored iPad upgrade), with release in early November – just in time for the Christmas shopping season.
Previously, in January 2010 at CES in Las Vegas, AT&T announced a network improvement plan. This plan was supposed to be completed by the end of the year. At the D8 conference last week, Jobs stated that things should be fixed by the end of summer (September). Moving up their time frame 3-4 months (20-25% of the project time frame) is a huge change from a project management standpoint. Something significant must have made AT&T change their plan.
AT&T does have the advantage over a Verizon or Sprint iPhone 4 – namely that HSPA+ (7.2 or 14.4Mbps) is faster than CDMA can ever be. Its why Verizon is going to LTE before AT&T is – Verizon needs LTE to get user speeds past 1.4Mbps. AT&T is about that right now with HSPA 3.6 and users could see 2Mbps with HSPA 7.2, possibly more if AT&T’s backhaul can handle it (in Canada, users have benchmarked speeds up to 3.5Mbps on HSPA 7.2 using the same GSM frequencies AT&T uses in the US). The fly in this ointment is that T-Mobile could end up with a faster 3G network than AT&T (they’re moving straight to 21Mbps HSPA+, however the iPhone 4 cant handle speeds that fast).
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