Who Do You Believe, Randall Stross or Your Own Lying Eyes?

I think people need to stop jumping to conclusions. Maybe the "problem with the network" is that "there are too many iPhones on the network." This deals with every actual piece of evidence that people are putting forward to try to refute the original article. Is it really so hard to believe that Apple could put out a piece of hardware that does not behave nicely to others?

I'm not saying that the nytimes article is right, but just that people who say it's wrong are wrong.

As an analogy, you can take the routers that were stupidly configured to use stratum 1 NTP servers. These misbehaving devices placed too much strain on the NTP "network" because they used it inappropriately. But it was only the NTP servers that a lot of these routers were configured for that were having problems. Yet no one would claim that it's the NTP network's fault for the issues.

We can answer this pretty easily by looking at AT&T Blackberries. If 3G Blackberries also have issues, then it's the network. If not, it's Apple's problem.

Anybody out there with a BB care to comment?

I don't think this piece is very well-argued. For one thing, I've been trying out a new android phone (my iPhone is on the back burner but I doubt I will be making a permanent switch) and the signal quality does seem to be a little better with the Android phone.

Many of the points rely on comparisons to other countries, but analytical people will recognize that problems can be caused by interactions in systems that otherwise work fine on their own too. For example, I had an old wireless router that worked fine with my Windows computers, but not with my Macbook Pro. But my Macbook Pro worked fine with other b/g access points. Without better information, how could we possibly tell which one is at fault? But Gruber (fanboy that he is) is drawing the conclusion that AT&T must be at fault.

As for the "Apple would have fixed it" assertion, or the question of why the number of complaints have gone up as iPhone users have, Gruber's blindness to his own biases is truly startling. You could as easily argue that AT&T has had three years to fix their network, so it must be Apple's fault because if the blame lay at AT&T's door it would have been fixed by now. And _of course_ the number of complaints will rise as iPhone users rise if the problem is some interaction between the iPhone specifically and AT&T's network: there are more iPhone users in existence to complain!

All in all this is very, very poorly done. I have no idea who's at fault but I do know that I won't be going to Gruber for anything more than entertainment if I'm reading about this whole fiasco.

All of the major SmartPhone operating systems allow you to see GSM signal quality in an exact dB measurement. It should be pretty easy for someone with access to many GSM handsets to do field testing. Arguing back and forth with anecdotal evidence is pointless when it's so easy to obtain the facts.

My own little data point fwiw - I'm using an iPhone 3GS in Perth, Australia on the Vodafone network. The reception is definitely worse than my old Nokia on the same network. I've heard similar things from friends using iPhones on Optus which has a separate network from Vodafone.

I definitely think there's an issue with the iPhone's reception, but it's not so bad that I'd go back to my old "dumb phone".

When the problem is limited to highly populous areas like New York and Chicago and the phones work better if not flawlessly in suburbs and smaller cities the network most definitely is the problem.

Every smart phone I've owned, mostly T-mobile Sidekicks and now an iPhone, has had slightly worse reception than a 'normal' phone on the same network. So I take it as a given that the iPhone trades a bit of reception strength for better battery life, but not to the point of dropped calls. Those fall strictly on AT&T shoulders in my eyes.

More importantly, I couldn't care less whose problem it is. I paid $70/mo to T-Mobile for three lines on a family plan, in addition to three free (admittedly crappy) phones, and had a stellar reception everywhere. Now I pay $80/mo to AT&T/Apple for a single line, in addition to $250 cost for the phone, and I can't make a single call without problems in 90% of the places I go to. The important message is "shut up, stop pointing fingers, and fix it", not a guessing game about whose problem it is. It will only become interesting to me from a purely intellectual, technical perspective when they fix the problem. For now, I couldn't care less who's at fault.

I'm in Portland. We're not exactly a thriving metropolis. However, I've been living without 3G simply due to the horrible reception, the astonishing number of dropped calls and - even worse - the calls that I just never get. Edge, it turns out, is way more reliable for those of us here.

I never had any of these problems on T-Mobile, nor do those I know who currently have jailbroken phones on that network.

This reminds me of the advertising DSL-based ISPs used to run claiming that 'data hogs' on cable ISPs destroyed the experience for everyone else. Even if the iPhone was inefficient, that's something you compensate for with more aggressive network upgrades. If a communications network consistently provides poor service, that's not bad technology - it's poor management.

It's both. I hear from some friends at mobile operators that the radio network code on the iPhone is pretty troublesome compared to other vendors. At the same time iPhone users use more bandwidth than certain operators planned for.

Operators need to boost capacity. Apple needs to improve their networking code.

I am in AU and have terrible coverage with my iphone, as do several of my friends/colleagues. However, just as in the US it seems that some of the other networks are much better. I wonder if there is actually some issue or incompatibility in the infrastructure that leads to some problems.

I get much better AT&T coverage away from San Francisco. And AT&T customers not on iPhones don't seem to have the same level of complaint. (Lower expectations, or better on-phone radio-link-management?)

Perhaps it's a little of both: AT&T's network is somewhat thin and overloaded exactly where media and tech-influentials most notice, and the iPhone is more fragile when facing that than other devices.