I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that wireless carriers in the US tend to move slow on the innovation and development fronts, and I’m going to use AT&T’s recent SlingPlayer Mobile announcement as an example. I’m not even going to mention how the Windows Mobile and BlackBerry versions of the app were happily humming along over 3G for a while now, while the iPhone version got the shaft. Nope, what I’m going to talk about here is how long it took AT&T to simply review and approve the bandwidth optimization feature that has been built into SlingPlayer Mobile since its release last year.
First, background. The blogosphere blew up today, claiming that AT&T lied when they said that they were working with Sling Media to optimize its SlingPlayer Mobile app to stream video over 3G more efficiently. AT&T Mobility CEO Ralph de la Vega said in a statement that “Sling Media was willing to work with us to revise the app to make it more bandwidth sensitive. They made important changes to more efficiently use 3G network bandwidth and conserve wireless spectrum so that we were able to support the app on our 3G mobile broadband network.”
Sling Media’s John Santoro mentioned to Ars Technica that “AT&T never discussed any specific requirements with us.” This is the statement that got bloggers all riled up today, with many positing that AT&T lied about having worked with Sling Media on their SlingPlayer Mobile app. Turns out, though, AT&T and Sling Media have been working together and that AT&T has “Over the course of the last couple of months, they have been testing the app in their labs,” according to Sling Media’s general manager John Gilmore.
Sling Media says that while AT&T did not specifically request bandwidth optimization code in the mobile app – the app has been able to optimize bandwidth use to minimize its impact on data networks – they have been working with AT&T for months now. AT&T may have overstated their involvement in the development of optimization code in the SlingPlayer Mobile app, but it’s not like they lied straight-out about the two companies’ relationship.
So, the issue isn’t about whether or not AT&T specifically requested 3G bandwidth optimization code in the SlingPlayer Mobile app. The issue is that the app has been capable of streamlining its data use over 3G network since it was launched last year. That means it has taken AT&T several months to approve a feature of the app that has been available for a long time. Should we even be surprised that AT&T needed all this time to review and approve that feature?
Did AT&T drag its feet in approving the app in order to buy time to shore up its 3G network to handle the flood of video-streaming iPhone hitting its airwaves once the 3G feature was rolled out to SlingPlayer Mobile for iPhone? Does that mean the 3G network is now robust enough to handle 3G video streaming apps and other data-heavy iPhone and the iPad come this summer? Will AT&T find itself playing having to play catch-up with its data network again?
Time will tell, folks, time will tell. What do you think?
[Via: Ars]