It's an obvious question - even though it's an ugly one Apple may wish to ignore. Can AT&T accommodate the likely burdensome data demands of the iPad?
While many of us wondered about this to ourselves, some folks at the FCC are now wondering the same thing aloud. A blog post by Phil Bellaria, director of the National Broadband Task Force at the U.S. Federal Communications Commission suggests that the governmental body may also doubt how much more the overextended AT&T network can handle.
Of course, if speculation proves accurate that the iPhone won't jump ship in expansion to Verizon after all, the FCC might sound a full-blown red-alert regarding AT&T's ability to shoulder any more network demands.
Apple’s iPad announcement has set off a new round of reports of networks overburdened by a data flow they were not built to handle.
With the iPad pointing to even greater demand for mobile broadband on the horizon, we must ensure that network congestion doesn’t choke off a service that consumers clearly find so appealing or frustrate mobile broadband’s ability to keep us competitive in the global broadband economy.
Are we getting ahead of ourselves here? Maybe. But Bellaria made it perfectly clear that a modern "dial-up style congestion" simply won't be acceptable.
Reply
