O2's network in London strained by data intensive iPhone owners

Apple’s data intensive iPhone has caused a lot of stress on AT&T’s network here in the US, but déjà vu is happening again in London with O2’s network. Customers have been experiencing network congestion since the summer which is partly due to the surge in data usage by iPhone owners. O2 CEO, Ronan Dunne, said that there has been an 18-fold increase in data traffic since the beginning of the year with data hungry smartphones like the iPhone causing some stress.  It’s already an ugly public relations mess here in the US for AT&T, who is facing some brutal ad campaigns from rival Verizon Wireless about map coverage. Vodafone may look to the recent events that occurred with O2’s network that resulted in thousands of smartphone users to lose data service – they may just pull a Verizon. Trying to regain their form after a damaging public relations nightmare from such outages, O2 has deployed an additional 200 mobile base stations in London to alleviate and meet the demands. In addition, they’re working feverishly with infrastructure suppliers on applying network tweaks to improve data service. We’ll just see if they can somehow turn the tides over in exceeding expectations and not have to duke it out through ad campaigns that we are witnessing with AT&T and Verizon.

via All Things Digital