AT&T had announced yesterday that it had decided to allow SlingPlayer Mobile, the application that lets you watch TV on your iPhone or iPod touch to stream live TV over their 3G network.
AT&T claimed that it had finally decided to allow the iPhone app to work over 3G as Sling Media had made some important changes to efficiently use 3G network bandwidth and conserve wireless spectrum.
Mobility CEO Ralph de la Vega made the following statement:
"The key for us is Sling Media was willing to work with us to revise the app to make it more bandwidth sensitive, "Ralph de la Vega, president and CEO, AT&T Mobility and Consumer Markets, said in a statement. "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."
However, Sling Media claims that it didn’t work with AT&T and didn’t make any changes to the iPhone app to get an approval from AT&T:
"We didn't change anything," Sling Media's John Santoro told Ars. "AT&T never discussed any specific requirements with us."
Santoro explained that SlingPlayer Mobile has always contained code to adapt the stream quality to the given network conditions. AT&T has been in discussions with Sling since it was first released last year, but AT&T never asked the company to make specific modifications. No changes were made to the app's 3G streaming capabilities between its being barred from AT&T and now.
Folks at MacRumors speculate that:
AT&T may simply have decided either that SlingPlayer Mobile's video streaming would no longer place an excessive burden on the carrier's network or that its continued refusal to allow such streaming was simply indefensible as expectations for wireless data networks have grown. Consequently, the carrier may have been looking to the SlingPlayer Mobile approval announcement as a venue to encourage future developers of bandwidth-intensive applications to reach out to AT&T to ensure from the very beginning that such applications are optimized for network performance.
At the end of the day, iPhone users who have bought SlingPlayer mobile should be happy that they’ll finally be able to watch live TV over 3G.
What do you think?
[via MacRumors]
I have been using my slingplayer over 3G ever since may of 2009 thanks to voipover3G and now 3GUnrestrictor. It works great. Just as good as wifi. I could care less if AT&T or slingmedia ever allow it over 3G. It won't affect me. Also I have my slingbox hooked up at my buddy's house who works for Comcast so I get all the premium channels.
That's Awesome