App Rejections

For anyone following the “yes, you did”, “no, we didn’t”, “I’m telling the FCC!”, “please don’t sue us – sue our partner!” Apple vs. AT&T vs. Google debate here’s a fun one: AT&T released an excited press release (NOTE: that is allegedly not the original release) implying that – thanks to AT&T’s hard work – Sling had “improved” their app to make it “good enough” to run on the AT&T network:

“Sling Media was willing to work with us to revise the app to make it more bandwidth sensitive,” AT&T Mobility CEO Ralph de la Vega 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.”

…but, what’s this? Sling Media denies making any changes at all for AT&T:

Sling Media’s John Santoro told Ars that no fundamental changes were required. “AT&T never discussed any specific requirements with us.”

Oh dear. I wonder what happened? Maybe, this:

1. AT&T told Apple to reject the app last year (April 2009), because their network couldn’t cope with it (or, more to the point, they *feared* the network couldn’t cope – it might actually have been fine, who knows?)
2. Apple rejected the app
3. Apple started allowing other bandwidth-intensive apps
4. AT&T worked with the app authors; my guess: someone senior at AT&T said “we have to approve this; it’s a PR disaster; get it fixed!”, and the folks in charge of the network laid down a harsh set of testing requirements that the app would have to meet “or else it happens over my dead body”
5. App gets through AT&T’s reqs fine; it would seem that AT&T’s network *could* handle the app in the first place
6. AT&T marketing folks attempt to shift the blame to the smaller company; they hope to hide their internal communications/political wars by pointing to someone else

There’s a less charitable explanation, of course…

Given the widely-reported public outrage at AT&T’s 3G network under-performing/failing repeatedly last year in major US cities … maybe AT&T’s network really was too weak to handle the loads that this app (and others) would provide. But now … it’s good enough.

How much can you upgrade a network in 9 months? Especially when you’ve got the bank-account and resources of AT&T? Hmm…

(honestly, I have no idea – I live in Europe. We had “real” 3G networks from the start, apparently. I guess it’s one of the benefits of living in a part of the world where Mobile has been taken seriously over the past few decades…)

And, PS: didn’t Apple last year explicitly deny allowing any partner to make app acceptance/rejection decisions, or did I imagine that?