Daily Digest
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IPhone Users Report Network Outages; Second 3G
Lawsuit Emerges
While Apple’s iPhone sales continue to succeed, things
just aren’t looking any better for ATT’s network woes,
and their dysfunctional relationship has given birth to
a second lawsuit.
Several iPhone users on Wednesday morning reported
a complete outage of ATT’s data service. Reports have
surfaced in Boston, Chicago, Washington DC and St.
Louis; users have claimed in the Apple support forums
that a call to ATT’s support line confirms the outage.
ATT’s Brad Mays confirmed a ”routing issue” in the
Northeast region affecting wireless data and said tech-
nicians restored the service by about noon EDT.
The reports of a network outage work to the ad-
vantage of customer William Gillis, who filed a lawsuit
late last week alleging Apple and ATT are overwhelm-
ing the 3G network with the ”oversold” iPhone 3G. In
his 18-page complaint, Gillis says the popular handset
is requiring ”too much power,” and straining the net-
work.
Gillis’s hypothesis of 3G networks being strained
coincides with observations made in Wired.com’s re-
cent study conducted on iPhone 3G download speeds
around the world, in which we discovered network per-
formance varied greatly based on carriers and coun-
tries. Users reported the fastest 3G download speeds
in Europe, which possesses some of the most mature
3G networks that have been developed since 2001. By
contrast, ATT’s U.S. 3G network is relatively young,
having been introduced in 2004.
Before today’s reported outage and Gillis’s lawsuit,
femtocell developer Dave Nowicki also theorized that
in the United States, the iPhone 3G is straining ATT’s
young 3G network. He explained that ATT installed
the 3G cells on preexisting EDGE transmission towers
– meaning those towers were spaced based on the re-
quirements of earlier, 2G technology, which has a longer
effective range than 3G.
User complaints about the 3G network have been
passionate and widespread ever since the iPhone 3G’s
July 11 launch. The problems have varied from slower-
than-advertised 3G performance to getting no 3G con-
nection at all.
Alabama resident Jessica Alena Smith was the first
customer angry enough to file a lawsuit, alleging false
advertising on Apple’s part for touting the handset as
1
”twice as fast for half the price” compared to the orig-
inal iPhone. Smith claims in her complaint that the
handset’s network performance is grindingly slow and
only stays on the 3G network 25 percent of the time.
Apple’s public relations department has said recently
that the latest iPhone software update – 2.0.2 – would
improve 3G performance, but very few user reports
have backed the company’s claims.
Regardless of what’s said about 3G performance,
Apple is continuing to ride the high tide with the iPhone’s
popularity. Insiders have said the corporation plans to
produce 40 to 45 million more iPhone 3Gs by next year.
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Is Lover Boy a Louse? It May Be Genetic
We have heard about the God gene and the gay gene
– though each has been met with significant skepticism.
Now comes news of a gene that Swedish researchers are
touting as a possible biological basis for why some guys
won’t settle down.
Credit a young researcher at Sweden’s Karolinska
Institute for discovering a link between a variation in
the AVPR1A gene – which has been linked to autism
and how people interact socially – and a propensity for
men to skip out on women, or to have marital problems
if they do tie the knot.
In a photograph on the Karolinska’s website, the
researcher, Hasse Walum, looks a little like rocker Kurt
Cobain.
Walum did not report if he carries the tell-tale gene,
although in a study of 552 sets of twins, all in relation-
ships, Walum found that 40 percent of the men carried
the Ramblin’ Man variation of this gene.
The couples filled out questionnaires that asked ques-
tions such as:
I feel anxious when someone gets too close.
Have you ever regretted getting married/moving in?
Do you kiss your partner?
Researchers then ran genetic screens of the subjects,
discovering that a line of code at position 334 in the
gene had a statistical correlation with the less commit-
ted men.
Women married to men who carry one or two copies
of the suspect code were, on average, ”less satisfied with
their relationship” than were women married to men
who didn’t carry this code, Walum said.
This same gene has also been linked in a different
study to dictatorial behavior, and the hormone, called
vasopressin, made by this gene has been found to be
plentiful in voles that mate for life.
But before women rush out to test their men for
this genetic variation – or we run DNA screens of John
McCain and Barrack Obama to see if they have an au-
tocratic bent hidden in their genes – we need to realize
that these tests are very preliminary statistical links.
No one has physiologically linked this genetic variation
to behavior in a relationship, or to Stalinistic behavior.
Walum is well aware of this, and pointed out that
the effect of the genetic variation is ”modest,” and can-
not be used to predict the future behavior of someone
in a relationship.
A caveat that makes one wonder why researchers,
institutes, and the media keep trotting out these pre-
liminary associations between genes and profoundly im-
portant human behaviors like religion and relationship
management in this way.
One reason is that they can be fun, like reading
Tarot cards can be fun. These studies can also point sci-
entists in a possible direction towards where to look for
serious maladies such as autism, which is what Walum’s
work is focusing on.
”There are, of course, many reasons why a per-
son might have relationship problems,” Walum told the
BBC.
Indeed, there are.
Of course, in a perfect world, physicians would use
both tools to aid their decisions. The Department of
Health and Human Services wants the public to tell
them whether the genetic test is worthwhile. To get
some feedback, the agency has posted a survey on its
website, and the deadline to respond is tomorrow.
If Medicare starts paying for the procedure, the bur-
geoning field of personalized medicine will turn a ma-
jor corner. Private insurance companies might follow
the government’s lead, and offer reimbursements for
the evaluation. But the biggest benefit of a change to
the healthcare policy will be massive amounts of data.
Once a huge cohort of senior citizens has received some
pharmacogenetic services, there will be a large body of
evidence that individualized treatments are better than
a one-size-fits-all approach to medicine.
If you want to weigh in on this tremendously impor-
tant issue, visit the Health and Human Services website
and post a comment.

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Should Medicare Pay for Genetic Testing?

This may be your last chance to tell the federal gov-
ernment whether Medicare should pay for a cutting-
edge personalized medicine service.
Last year, the FDA announced that a genetic test
might help doctors avoid a common catastrophe – giv-
ing their patients an excessive dose of warfarin. Half a
million people start taking the anticoagulant drug each
year, and many of them – over 10 percent – wind up
in the hospital with serious internal bleeding because
they’ve overdosed.
By checking two genes, doctors may be able to make
a better decision about how much warfarin is right for
each patient.
In theory, the genetic test could save healthcare
providers a fortune by cutting down on costly emer-
gency room visits. But many doctors are not convinced
that the tests are necessary; some say that handheld
gadgets like the Roche CoaguChek system, which al-
low them to constantly monitor their patients’ blood,
are more useful.