by Louie Villalobos The Arizona Republic Jun. 5, 2010 12:00 AM
Marta Celis stood outside a Tempe Sprint store Friday morning to buy a new smartphone.
The Scottsdale resident wants to surf the Internet, text, e-mail and take the occasional picture regardless of where she is.
Celis, 28, might even dump her digital camera if the phone is good enough and the network can handle it.
"I rarely go online on the computer," said Celis, who was there to purchase the HTC EVO 4G, Sprint's newest Android phone. "So the more I can do on my phone, the better."
Celis is part of a user base becoming more comfortable with mobile devices that can take quality pictures, stream live video, handle various messaging capabilities and share that content on social-networking services.
She's also part of a massive increase in the amount of data that cellphone users are consuming.
"We're going to a mobile broadband world where your device is going to be the central point for anything that you want to do," said Chris Percy, AT&T's vice president and general manager for Arizona-New Mexico. "It's amazing what technology is going to bring."
AT&T has seen a 5,000 percent increase in data use over the past three years, Percy said.
Officials at three of the biggest carriers said they're responding to the growing data use by improving networks and offering updated mobile devices.
Sprint's EVO, for example, comes with two cameras. One of those is capable of taking 8.0 megapixel photos. And it records high-quality video. The device also works as a mobile Wi-Fi spot that can connect up to eight devices. The EVO works on both Sprint's 3G and 4G networks.
AT&T has exclusive rights to sell Apple's iPhone, which is in its third model. Verizon, meanwhile, joins Sprint in offering Android phones that are a direct competition to the iPhone.
Then there is the investment.
AT&T has spent $375 million in Arizona over the past three years, Percy said. About $175 million of that has been specific to the wireless network.
There are plans to activate more than 300 new cell sites in Arizona this year. Phoenix, Tucson and Flagstaff currently have 3G services, and Percy said Yuma will get it later this year.
Verizon has put $59 billion toward its network since 2000; $955 million of that was invested locally, and the company expanded in southern and northern Arizona by integrating Alltel networks. That effort is still under way in Maricopa County.
Sprint didn't provide investment numbers.
The payoff from that network spending, the companies said, is that they can keep up with the surge in data use and remain poised to stay ahead.
Percy said AT&T is focusing on improving the 3G network and offering hundreds of free Wi-Fi spots around the country to users.
He said the company's 3G network is scalable through software upgrades and can reach speeds competitive with the 4G network that Sprint and Verizon are aggressively pushing.
Iyad Tarazi, vice president of network development for Sprint Nextel, said his company has seen an overall leveling off on the voice side. Data use, however, has tripled year over year. And Tarazi said it's still early in the growth of data. He wouldn't say when or if Arizona would be getting 4G access.
Tarazi noted that a typical user still using a digital camera will wait to use a computer to handle large quantities of photo.
That's changing, he said.
"It's just a progression," Tarazi said. "The more you provide, the more people will change their behavior."
Meeting the new data appetite
