The iPhone Just Launched — And It's Going to Change How We Think About Internet

Steve Jobs just took the stage at Macworld and introduced what he called "a revolutionary product that changes everything." He's not wrong, though maybe not for the reasons Apple is emphasizing.

The iPhone is a phone, an iPod, and an internet communicator rolled into one device with a 3.5-inch touchscreen. It runs on AT&T's (formerly Cingular) EDGE network. The price: $499 for the 4GB model and $599 for the 8GB, with a required two-year AT&T contract.

Those are eye-popping numbers. But the spec that matters most to anyone who cares about broadband is the one Apple is glossing over: EDGE tops out at roughly 200 kbps. That's barely a step above dial-up.

The Speed Problem Nobody Wants to Talk About

Let's be blunt. EDGE is slow. Painfully slow by modern broadband standards. Most DSL connections deliver 1.5 to 6 Mbps. Even the cheapest cable plans hit 3 to 4 Mbps. The iPhone's EDGE connection is roughly 10 to 30 times slower than a basic home broadband connection.

Jobs demonstrated the iPhone loading the New York Times website during the keynote. It looked slick on stage, but real-world EDGE browsing is going to involve a lot of waiting. Loading a full desktop webpage over EDGE could take 30 seconds or more, depending on the page. Heavy sites with lots of images? Even longer.

Apple's choice to go with EDGE instead of AT&T's faster 3G UMTS/HSDPA network is puzzling. The company reportedly chose EDGE for better battery life and because 3G chipsets were too large for the iPhone's slim design. Those are engineering tradeoffs that make sense on paper, but they saddle a premium device with last-generation data speeds.

Why the Browser Changes Everything Anyway

Here's the thing, though. I've been using mobile internet for years on various phones and PDAs, and almost every mobile browser is terrible. The experience is stripped-down, clunky versions of real websites — or worse, special "mobile" sites that barely function.

From what Jobs demonstrated, Safari on the iPhone renders actual, full desktop web pages. You can pinch to zoom, scroll with your finger, and interact with websites the way you do on a computer. Nobody else is doing this. Not Nokia, not Palm, not BlackBerry, not Microsoft with Windows Mobile.

The browser experience alone could be transformative. If the iPhone delivers on what Jobs showed, it will be the first mobile device where people actually want to browse the web — not because they have to (checking email on a BlackBerry out of necessity) but because the experience is genuinely good.

And that's what matters for broadband. When millions of people start expecting real internet on their phones, demand for faster mobile data will explode. AT&T is going to feel that pressure immediately. Every iPhone owner is going to be pulling data through AT&T's network in quantities that feature phone users never did.

The Bandwidth Demand Bomb

Consider the math. AT&T reportedly expects to sell 10 million iPhones in the first 18 months. If even half of those users start regularly browsing the web, streaming YouTube clips (yes, the iPhone has a YouTube app), and checking email with attachments, the load on AT&T's data network will be enormous.

EDGE wasn't designed for this kind of usage. It was designed for occasional email checks and lightweight data. The iPhone is going to push it to its limits and beyond.

This is going to force a conversation about mobile broadband capacity that the wireless industry has been slow to have. Right now, wireless carriers sell "unlimited" data plans that are anything but — fair use policies, throttling, and deprioritization are common. When millions of iPhone users start hammering the network with real web browsing, those policies will get tested hard.

What This Means for Home Broadband

Will the iPhone replace your home DSL or cable connection? Absolutely not. At 200 kbps, EDGE isn't a substitute for anything. You're not going to download files, stream video, or do any serious work over an EDGE connection.

But the iPhone might change how you think about internet access. Right now, "going online" means sitting at a desk. The iPhone makes the internet portable in a way no previous device has managed. That changes expectations. Once you're used to checking the web from anywhere, the times when you don't have a connection start to feel like a problem.

That's good news for broadband in general. More demand for internet access, more willingness to pay for it, more pressure on providers to build out networks — including in rural areas where broadband adoption has been sluggish.

The Bottom Line

The iPhone has real problems. The price is absurd. The EDGE speeds are frustrating. The AT&T exclusivity locks out subscribers on Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile. No third-party apps. No expandable storage.

But none of that matters as much as what the iPhone represents: a mass-market device that makes people want to use the internet on their phones. Once that genie is out of the bottle, the demand for mobile broadband is going to reshape the wireless industry.

Expect faster networks, bigger data plans, and heated debates about bandwidth and pricing. The iPhone just lit a fuse. We'll see where it leads.