Who’s eating up AT&T’s data capacity? It’s not new customers

[CA]

[top]Capacity crunch or poetic justice?

As you have probably figured out by now, AT&T’s capacity crunch seems to be a problem largely of its own making. Customers are finally growing into the data plans, and they’re eating up all of AT&T’s mobile data network capacity in the process. I should also point out that AT&T’s networks have also become far more efficient than it used to be, allowing it to deliver more bandwidth over the same infrastructure and spectrum. When the iPhone 3G first launched in 2008, the typical AT&T HSPA cell could support a theoretical limit of 3.6 Mbps. That number is now 14.4 Mbps. An LTE cell using the same amount of spectrum can theoretically support 37.5 Mbps.
So I wouldn’t feel too sorry for AT&T, despite all of its claims of being broadsided by traffic demand. When it set up its current tiered pricing structures, it knew its customers would eventually scale their usage to match their monthly allowances – and they’re still a long ways from even getting close to those caps. If AT&T didn’t know this, then it never should offered 2 GB and 3 GB tiers in the first place

http://gigaom.com/broadband/whos-eat...aOM%3A+Tech%29

[GSMinCT]

This is nothing new.

[i0wnj00]

Wirelessly posted (i0wnj00: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10_6_3; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.16 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0 Safari/533.16)

Customers are finally growing into the data plans, and they're eating up all of AT&T's mobile data network capacity in the process.

Either my reading comprenshion is terrible
In other words is that the current tiered data plans

[i0wnj00]

Wirelessly posted (i0wnj00: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10_6_3; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.16 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0 Safari/533.16)

Customers are finally growing into the data plans, and they're eating up all of AT&T's mobile data network capacity in the process.

Either my reading comprenshion is terrible or this small tid bit implies that the current tiered data plans is too much for at&t too handle. It also mentions that that customers are adjusting their usage and dont even come close to use their full monthly allotment. If at&t is still experiencing issues data capacity on its network then maybe they need to take a look at how many customers they have or re evaluate their current PR campaign to push smartphones.

Its not only the new customer, it ends up being anybody who is an at&t customer.

[GSMinCT]

Most customers aren't anywhere close to the limits. If they grow a lot, AT&T will have to add even more capacity. Luckily, they are somewhat densely built out in many markets, and they are doing LTE pretty fast now.