Iphone, Data Usage | featured news

Mike Trang likes to use his iPhone 4 as a GPS device, helping him get around in his job. Now and then, his younger cousins get ahold of it, and play some YouTube videos and games.

Wireless carriers have us right where they want us. When there are only four significant national providers in the US, there’s only so much competition for our business. So when they all band together (even if only in mindset) and decide on a “new rule,” customers are forced to play along.

An MSNBC investigative report, and related lawsuit, claims that AT&T has “systematically overstated” the data usage of iPhone and iPad customers. Lawyers for the plaintiffs, seeking class action status, hired an independent computer firm to compare the actual amount data used by iPhone and iPad customers with the amount that AT&T bills users for.

Verizon Wireless warned customers it may clamp down on heavy users of its wireless data services before an anticipated deluge of Apple Inc iPhone customers.

In time for the widely expected launch of a new iPhone model, carrier AT&T Inc. is pulling in the reins on data usage by its customers with smart phones and iPads....

AT&T says it has worked hard to improve its much-maligned third-generation (3G) network over the last eight months — erecting hundreds of new cell towers, using better-performing wireless spectrum, and souping up its cell sites across the country — and the results of our latest 13-city, 3G network performance tests suggest that the network has indeed undergone a drastic makeover.

AT&T said it will introduce "incentives" to encourage iPhone customers to cut back on data usage, as it battles growth in wireless traffic and perceptions of network problems.