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Showing posts with the label ATT

Switched from iPhone to Droid for $20

With my contract expiring on AT&T I found myself in the market for a new cell phone. I could have waited for the next iPhone, by continuing month-to-month, but I really wanted to move to a 3G connection. With the announcement of the new iPhone OS only working on the 3GS, I had to spend $200 (and a 2 year contract) to get it. I'm not sure why with the threat of switching carriers that AT&T didn't have a better offer. From my research and testing a few Droids owned by 3 friends, it seemed like a good alternative to the iPhone. In speaking directly with Verizon, they too could only offer me a $200 Droid with a 2 year contract, so it didn't offer anything better. Then in searching Amazon, I found that I could get it for $20 on a 2 year contract. It's now been a few weeks, and I'm very happy with it. While the Droid has its own quirks, they're no worse than the iPhone quirks. There also is a promise to bring Flash to the Droid, which is a lot closer than Flas

Time Warner wants to put restrictive usage caps on your Internet access

The cable providers are scared of losing their cash cow by people watching TV over the Internet. In the latest volley from the cable companies, Time Warner is rolling out restrictive caps that are high priced, and extremely high if you go over. Sure, $15 a month for Internet sounds good, until you realize it's for 1 GB of data and an additional $2 for each gig you go over . As Wired points out (in "Congressman Wants to Ban Download Caps"), that's 3 hours of Hulu video or half a standard definition movie delivered online. For a mere (cough, cough) $75 per month, you can get 100 GB per month, and only pay $1 penalty for each gig over. It sure makes Comcasts 250 MB cap at $50 - $55 per month look good. I've heard some folks defend the caps, claiming we don't need that much bandwidth, but each argument has been based on 1 user. The typical claim has been from 50 to 90 GB average usage. Multiply that by a family of 4 and now you're at 200 to 360 GBs. And if t

Free AT&T Wi-Fi with your iPhone

Here are the steps to get your free AT&T Wi-Fi on your iPhone: Activate Wi-Fi from the settings icon on your iPhone Select "attwifi" from the list of available networks Enter your 10-digit mobile number and check the box to agree to the Acceptable Use Policy. Tap 'continue' You will receive a text message from AT&T with a secure link to the AT&T Wi-Fi hotspot. You will not be charged for the text message. The SMS link will only be valid for 24 hours at the location it was requested. Another request must be submitted when using another hotspot location. Open the text message and tap on the link for 24-hour access to the AT&T Wi-Fi hotspot. Enjoy! Credit for the documented steps goes to my great colleagues at work.

Real iPhone speed, not the commercial speed

As published on the Silicon Alley Insider , here's a video that compares the real speed of an iPhone against the speed you see in the iPhone commercials. In looking at the ad, Apple has clearly cut out much of the connection and load times. Now let's examine the reality of cell phone network speeds. As reported by tests done by Computer World , AT&T's network averaged download speeds of 755Kbit/sec. and average upload speeds of 484Kbit/sec. Computer World also included a 3 second network connection time. With this information, let's calculate the load time for an average 50kb page. Convert our download rate to Kb: 755/8 (8 bits in a byte) = 94.4 Kb/sec Download page time: 50 / 94.4 = 0.53 seconds Total time: connection time of 3 sec + download time of 0.53 seconds = 3.53 sec For us to really get the performance we have come to expect from our computers, it appears the issue right now is the connection times. We can grow our page sizes 6x (and many have) before the

AT&T gets on the bandwagon with network slowdown practices

AT&T has released new information that they will also start degrading customer network throughput for those that use more than what AT&T would consider average. You can read all the terms of service on the AT&T site . Here are some highlights in order of appearance, followed by my commentary: Broadband access is provided in speed tiers of: (1) 200 Kbps to 768 Kbps downstream (not available for AT&T U-verse High Speed Internet service) (2) 769 Kbps to 1.5 Mbps downstream (3) 1.56 Mbps to 3.0 Mbps downstream (4) 3.1 Mbps to 6.0 Mbps downstream; (5) 6.1 Mbps to 10.0 Mbps (available only with AT&T U-verse High Speed Internet service) (collectively “Service Capability Speeds”)... ... AT&T Uverse High Speed Internet throughput speeds may be temporarily reduced when a customer is using other U-verse services in a manner that requires high bandwidth. This could occur more often with higher speed Internet access products. ... While this performance optimization process w