I Wonder if AT&T is Shocked Because WiFi Hotspot Usage Went Up?

As AppleInsider so rightly points out, AT&T finally removed their needlessly complicated WiFi hotspot authentication scheme for iPhone and then found that…

AT&T sees big increase in Wi-Fi connections following iPhone 3.0

AT&T WiFi hotspot usage rose 41% compared to the previous quarter. AT&T might find that if they let iPhone customers also use notebooks and netbooks at hotspots, there might be less of a clamor for iPhone data tethering and generally slamming their network (note that AT&T had two extended regional outages in the past week).

I must admit that now that I can type email messages in landscape viewing mode (without using 3rd party software), that I’m using the iPhone even more these days and do use it at WiFi hotspots.

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