After calendar month of complaining , AT&T willnowdoing the right thing , unchaining customers with regular tiered data plans to utilise FaceTime on their LTE phones and iPads with nothing more than a cellular phone signal . It ’s good , but definitely not enough .
AT&T enjoin the change will take billet within the next “ 8 to 10 weeks , ” and also provides a brief justification for dragging its hound on this :
“ With the FaceTime app already preloaded on ten of million of AT&T customers ’ iPhones , there was no room for our engineers to in effect model usage , and thus to valuate internet impact . It is for this reason that we took a more conservative advance toward the app . To do otherwise might have risked an contrary impact on the services our customers expect – voice quality in particular – if employment of FaceTime exceeded expectation . ”
One bummer : those grandfathered into “ unlimited ” iPhone data plan of yore will be excluded , AT&T confirm to us .
Another bummer : this only applies to LTE machine , which means if you ’ve got anything less than the latest iPhone or iPad manikin , you ’re also out in the cold .
But still , mostly effective news ! Soon we ’ll be able-bodied to FaceTime from the beach , sidewalk , or mountaintop . But do n’t leave , this will completely murder your ( overpriced ) data quota and bankrupt you if you are n’t measured .
Update : Not an update on news , but ofinsight . Free Press Policy Director Matt Wood has the following to say about AT&T ’s decision , and I ’m inclined to agree . This is good news , but it ’s not enough . Grant Wood argues the pursuit :
“ The law is clear . AT&T can not block FaceTime based on claims of possible congestion . There ’s nothing even remotely sane about that approach . AT&T simply ca n’t justify blocking an app that competes with its voice and texting services unless customer buy a more expensive monthly plan that includes an inexhaustible amount of those very same services . AT&T ’s track rectification is a move in the proper direction , but until the company makes FaceTime uncommitted to all of its customers it is still in violation of the FCC ’s rule and the all-encompassing principles of Net Neutrality .
aright on . This is a good footfall , but AT&T is still stand firm the rule that matters most : we should be able-bodied to use the machine we buy the way they were designed , without hitch that ’s cook up to gain money for a corporation .
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