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New iPhone Ads on TV - Slight Jab at Verizon?

Matthew Tilmann — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 07:11:23 -0600

Apple released two new iPhone ads on TV on Monday. While the ads tout its features, one can't help but think it's a slight jab at phones on other networks, particularly Verizon.

BusinessWeek stated that the ads are intended to show off the iPhone's ability to hold a simultaneous voice and data connection at the same time, a feature which is not known to be able to be done on phones on other networks.

One of the ads covers a set of work-related scenarios one might go through - such as checking out an email from a client while still talking to them. Or social scenarios - like sending your friends directions to the movie theater while still conversing.

This also comes in during the current rumble between Verizon Wireless and Apple's partner AT&T, who recently had drawn up a lawsuit against Verizon's "There's A Map for That" ads. In these, Apple does its part as a good tag team partner to AT&T, while showing a great feature of the iPhone at the same time.

BusinessWeek also provided links to the ads. The first is the work related one, with the second being the social setting ad.

No Relief For AT&T In Opening Salvo With Verizon

J.R. Bookwalter — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 08:13:55 -0600

Sadly for Apple’s domestic partner, AT&T, the first round in a legal battle with Verizon Wireless over their “There’s a map for that” ads is a defeat. A Federal judge in Atlanta declined to grant AT&T a temporary restraining order in an effort to force Verizon to stop showing the ads.

The series of ads almost appear aimed directly at the complaints of iPhone users against AT&T, showing two maps of the United States with seemingly poor 3G coverage in blue from AT&T, while the majority of the country is blanketed in red showing coverage from Verizon.

AT&T responded with a lawsuit in Federal district court earlier this month, going on the offensive in an effort to paint the Verizon ads as misleading. According to AT&T, the ads imply that mobile phone users outside of the blue areas won’t have any data or voice coverage at all. They don’t dispute the validity of the map’s depiction of the actual 3G coverage, but the reality is that any connection made outside of the blue 3G area will use the company’s slower EDGE or GPRS network.

For their part, they suggest that the advertisements simply point out that AT&T is not investing enough in upgrading its network to handle the increase in traffic from data-hungry smartphones like the iPhone. At any rate, Verizon has tweaked their ads slightly to make it clear they are referring to 3G coverage and not the slower 2.5G service. Verizon claims five times more 3G coverage, which their maps seem to bear out.

“While we are disappointed with the court’s decision on our request for a temporary restraining order,” says AT&T spokesman Mark Siegel, “we still feel strongly that Verizon’s ads mislead customers into thinking that AT&T doesn’t offer wireless service in large portions of the country, which is clearly not the case.”

In a sweeping 53-page rebuttal to the court earlier this week, Verizon claimed that AT&T is not suing because the claims are false, but because it doesn’t want to face the truth about its network.

Verizon Says AT&T Can't Handle Truth

Brian Proffit — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 17:07:50 -0600

ZDNet reports that Verizon fired off a public response to AT&T’s lawsuit. The two sides will meet in court in Atlanta on Wednesday, but Verizon chose to begin the arguments in the court of public opinion by emailing numerous reporters and bloggers with their response.

As we reported last week, AT&T’s suit is asking for a restraining order on the Verizon ads they describe as “blatantly false and misleading.” The latest Verizon ads aired since the suit was filed make it clear they are only discussing 3G coverage. But they’re still hard-hitting, with lines like “Good luck browsing the Web with that one.” The Atlanta Journal Constitution reports that AT&T commissioned a survey that found that "23.5 percent of people are deceived by the ads."

Verizon is apparently confident in their legal position, because they didn’t soften their stance. In the email they said, “AT&T did not file this lawsuit because Verizon’s ‘There’s A Map For That’ advertisements are untrue; AT&T sued because Verizon’s ads are true and the truth hurts.” They went on to say, “AT&T now is attempting to silence Verizon’s ads that include maps graphically depicting the geographic reach of AT&T’s 3G network as compared to Verizon’s own 3G network because AT&T does not like the truthful picture painted by that comparison.”

AT&T Battles Amazon For Cloud Dominance

J.R. Bookwalter — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 10:24:44 -0600

Everywhere you turn these days, cloud computing is the talk of the tech world. Apple’s domestic iPhone partner, AT&T, is preparing to take on competitors like Amazon Web Services as they roll out Synaptic Compute As A Service.

According to Data Center Knowledge, Compute As A Service offers processing power that can be used for “cloudbursting” of in-house apps or as a testing and development platform. It joins AT&T’s existing Synaptic hosting (a managed hosting service using cloud technologies) and Synaptic Storage As A Service. AT&T is hoping that its popular brand name will win the hearts of enterprises looking to the cloud.

“This will enable customers to create a provider-based private cloud accessed either via the public Internet or private connections, which many companies will already have with AT&T,” explains Steve Caniano, Vice President of Hosting and Cloud Services for AT&T.

“The model that folks like Amazon have introduced is of interest to a lot of customers. We’re offering the same kind of value proposition to enterprises, but without the issues that scare them a little bit,” Caniano explains, referring to end users’ control over their data, performance and security.

Synaptic Compute As A Service leverages Sun Microsystems hardware and VMware software and will launch in the fourth quarter of 2009. Compute services can be billed on a credit card or as a line item on an enterprise bill, offering yet another level of convenience. The service will be in U.S. data centers only for now, but AT&T plans to satisfy international customer demand by adding the service to some of its global data centers in the near future.

Delays En Route to Worldwide iPhone?

J Keirn-Swanson — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 22:23:33 -0600

While chipmalker Qualcomm would love to have something up and running
that Apple could put in their phones ready for Verizon's CDMA network
and AT&T's UMTS network, an industry analyst says "not so fast."

Before Verizon customers with iPhone lust in their hearts begin crying
and calling Qualcomm a tease, this doesn't necessarily delay Verizon
from launching their own iPhone handset. It merely means if Apple wants
two carriers, Apple's going to have to launch two handset models.

According to AppleInsider, Ashok Kumar, an analyst with Northeast
Securities, claims that while the chipmaker would love to roll out the
worldwide model by third quarter of 2010, they are nowhere near far
along enough in testing to make that deadline. To back up his claim,
Kumar cited insiders at Qualcomm who agreed with his assessment.

As a practical matter, Kumar suggests that complications in rolling out
the worldwide model iPhone would involve "hardware issues in terms of
the baseband, but also software issues." More likely, he suggests, 2010
will see a Verizon-only iPhone alongside an AT&T-only model.

"That's probably a 2011 story, not a 2010 story," Kumar concluded in
regards to the universal handset. While this is certainly a small
complication on the path to a worldwide iPhone model, it still appears
a sign that Apple is definitely moving ahead with breaking out of the
AT&T monogamy.

AT&T Responds to Verizon Ads

Brian Proffit — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 17:51:18 -0600

In a rare move, AT&T has posted an official response to Verizon’s ads on their website. The ads show U.S. maps covered in red for Verizon’s coverage, and another with scattered spots of blue for AT&T’s coverage.

The ad showing an iPhone sent to the "Island of Misfit Toys" appears to be what drove AT&T to respond publicly. According to their announcement, "As the U.S. market leader in wireless data service, we typically don't respond to competitors' advertising. However, some recent ads from Verizon are so blatantly false and misleading, that we want to set the record straight about AT&T's wireless data coverage."

The Verizon ads are specifically targeting 3G availability, which wasn’t as obvious in the original "There’s a map for that" ads. They’ve made that more clear in the latest, but AT&T believes they are still giving the faulty impression that wireless coverage isn’t available in the blank areas on the map. "AT&T's wireless data coverage reaches 303 million people—or 97% of the U.S. population, where they live and work," the post says. It admits that full 3G service is only available to 75% of the population, though, with the rest covered by EDGE or (ack) GPRS. But they make up for that by saying, "Unlike Verizon, AT&T has the nation's fastest 3G network." Clearly your mileage may vary.

Still, their claims that "Unlike Verizon, AT&T customers have access to more than 100,000 applications, more than with any other wireless company" and "Unlike Verizon, AT&T's 3G network lets wireless customers simultaneously talk and surf the web or do e-mail" should score some points. The problem, of course, is that they people they need to score points with aren’t on AT&T’s site—they’re busy watching Verizon ads on TV.

AT&T CEO: iPhone Tethering Coming Soon

Cory Bohon — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 16:28:26 -0600

AT&T is claiming once again that the much anticipated tethering for the iPhone is "coming soon."

This isn't the first time that the CEO of AT&T Wireless, Ralph de la Vega, has teased the notion of a tethering plan for the iPhone. In a somewhat reiterated event at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Fransisco last Thursday, de la Vega said that the tethering option is still forthcoming.

An AT&T spokesperson yesterday also told ComputerWorld the same thing, saying, "We plan to offer tethering on the iPhone but have not announced a date."

AppModo reports that AT&T hasn't imposed any rate plans for the promised tethering service, but they believe it could be in the neighborhood of $60 a month, as that is the current rate for BlackBerry tethering options offered on the same network.

Of course if you're currently using a jailbroken iPhone, you can already get tethering on your device.

iPhone on Verizon After All?

J Keirn-Swanson — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 20:00:23 -0600

The possibility that Apple might at long last break its exclusivity with AT&T has been a dream ever since the iPhone launched. The carrier has developed its own particular brand of fail with service limitations (MMS, tethering), app heavy-handedness (reputedly being behind Google Voice getting yanked) and dropped call records broken daily.

Yet publicly both Apple and AT&T have denied any rumors of a split and Cupertino even gave the carrier a one year extension. Rumors continued to proliferate that Apple was ready to jump ship for Verizon or at least to open up the handset to other carriers. If new leaks are to be believed, there might be some truth in this.

According to AppleInsider, a report given to them by OTR Global suggests that the development Qualcomm's new hybrid chip has spurred Apple to production of a universal model iPhone. Think of this as similar to the Intel chip allowing Windows to run on the newest Macs. The new chip will allow the handset to operate on Verizon's CDMA2000 networks as well as AT&T's UMTS 3G. This would also allow the iPhone to operate on virtually every cell network worldwide, spurring growth in additional sales.

The rumor's silver lining isn't without a black cloud as the new phones reputedly cramp screen real estate down from 3.5" to 2.8". Whether this is a result of potentially lower Verizon subsidies or just a Nano iteration of the iPhone isn't clear.

While Verizon's recent attacks on Apple with Droid ads seem to put the kibosh on any agreement, all's fair in business. In a recent call with investors, Verizon's CEO and chair, Ivan G. Seidenberg told listeners "We obviously would be interested...for them to have us as a partner...hopefully...Apple...will decide to jump on the bandwagon."

Rumors peg the worldwide model of the iPhone as hitting market sometime near the end of 2010, suspiciously around the time the AT&T extension lapses. All we can say to Verizon customers long plagued by iPhone lust, is stay tuned.