If there were no so many 'but's, I would perhaps be very excited about new iPhone 4 announcements of its new features, particularly about the 720p video recording feature and the ability to video chat, called FaceTime by Apple, and even about the possibility to watch Netflix on the iPhone 4. But the shortage is in the fact that Apple's innovations have unsurprisingly surpassed the network's ability to handle support of all these new mobile features.
The reason for worry is not only AT&T and its much-blamed 3G network. As an example, at recent Steve Jobs WWDC keynote, those users attending via Wi-Fi have overloaded the network so that Jobs couldn't even perform some of his demos. Several times during the keynote, Steve Jobs had to ask the livebloggers to close down their Wi-Fi connection so that he could go on with the demos. Can you believe that?
So it didn't come as a big surprise when AT&T made an announcement about its new data plans, dropping the word "unlimited" from them. Seems like they've realized the bandwidth they'd have needed for all those new innovations coming. Really, the waves of users trying to use all new bandwidth-intensive features on the AT&T network can't be imagined if all of them had unrestricted data access. Most likely, 3G infrastructure, and even that of Wi-Fi (providing you are in the same room with lots of other Wi-Fi users) won't be able to support the most attractive features of new iPhone 4.
What are we talking about here, if even while travelling somewhere in Vegas for an event you can find yourself unable to make an ordinary phone call because the network is overloaded? Now imagine what will happen when the consumers find themselves unable to also access e-mail and other services we can't live without today - and the reason is the poor network! Is there any sense in owning a device if you can't use it while all the others are also using them? There's quite a list of the bandwidth-heavy iPhone 4 innovations.
Let's start with the video camera allowing to shoot 720p video at 30 frames p/sec. It is located at the back of the device, but is easy accessible even if you have iPhone 4 case put on your device. Estimating a 2-minute 720p video weight of about 50MB, it can be calculated that the its uploading via a really fast in-house network (with broadband width of 12.5Mbps) will take just 30 seconds. However, in most cases the users can consider to be lucky if they have access to 1 Mbps upload speed, increasing the uploading time up to 6 minutes. Another application, iMovie, allows you to send video in MMS and e-mails and upload it to YouTube over the network, but back in the real world, most consumers will wait till coming back home and synchronize the iPhone with their computers to upload the video over a better network. In addition to the speed, there's also a factor of saving the bandwidth cap.
Talking about the FaceTime video chat application, it should be mentioned that it can only work over Wi-Fi, meaning that the application is just not good enough for 3G. Moreover, it can only work if you have other iPhone 4 owners at the far end, thus limiting your ability to have a video chat with anyone you like. Keeping in mind that it's sometimes hard to get people even to sign up for Skype to video chat with them, it can be quite problem. Think of all this limitations: to get FaceTime working, both parties need to own iPhone 4, and find a Wi-Fi network that is not overly busy. That makes problem bigger, because Wi-Fi connections may be not good enough even for Skype running on the ordinary computer. Perhaps that's too many conditions for two people to video chat with each other. One could wish the only condition would be just the identical iPhone 4 covers on the devices to be able to communicate and no network troubles. But we still live in the real world.
Move to the Netflix discussion. As you might have seen from the iPad, this application is very good in caching or buffering or doing whatever to optimize video streams to the device. Here the iPhone's screen, which is smaller in size, can help. But only users grandfathered in on the AT&T unlimited broadband plan will benefit. You don't really expect people facing bandwidth caps to use up the bulk of their bandwidth allowance to watch old episodes of some show, do you?
Frankly speaking, iPhone's new features are just coming on top of the consumers' long insatiable appetite for data-heavy applications for mobiles. This can be proved by some trends and statistics on today's data usage over mobile networks:
- Video accounts for 50% of all mobile traffic, transmitted over the networks that are not ready to manage this strain.
- YouTube is responsible for 30-50% of actual traffic.
- Data cap of 2GB is reached by the major part of users very quickly, into 2-3 weeks of their monthly subscription if being used regularly (just 2-3 videos a week).
- Netflix now offers users full-length streaming features.
AT&T can't be blamed for capping the bandwidth on data plans, as they couldn't foresee the iPhone 4 announcement, and therefore didn't consider their today's network problems and the probability of more applications coming. If we see other carriers capping their bandwidth as well, the conclusion is clear - the current infrastructure just can't handle the traffic.
Seems like it's not easy to find solution to this problem. Consumers can yell at the service providers to build faster networks, but that would make no sense - everyone knows they won't appear out of a clear sky. That's actually what the carriers are doing anyway with WiMax and LTE. However, it's not clear if Verizon could have any more luck with its EV-DO than AT&T has had with 3G. The developers of these devices can't be blames for creating cameras allowing to create 720p videos and faster processors, as well. Nor Netflix can be blamed for coming up with offering to stream videos over the mobile network. There's nobody left to blame so far. May be producers of iPhone 4 cases, just in case?
The only solution coming to the mind is Apple simply buying or developing their own network to provide quality services for Apple's apps. That's what users can get really excited about.
