The fundamental disconnect that is AT&T
San Francisco is the center of gravity in the tech world and what happens there reverberates around the nation and world. Thereupon, Ma Bell could have the digerati singing their praises if they could do just one simple thing — make calls go through a reasonable percentage of the time in that one city. Why is that so hard?
News.com is running a story by Elinor Mills who, like a long parade of her San Francisco press brethren, can’t reliably make phone calls with her iPhone. Moreover, she can’t get anything more than fluff uninformed spin from her contact at AT&T.
“We lead the industry in smart phones,” said AT&T spokesman Mark Siegel. “As a result, we are having to stay ahead of what is incredible and increasing demand for wireless data services.”
I wanted to know specifically why my problems haven’t been resolved nearly one-and-a-half years after getting my iPhone and why my voice reception would be impacted by data traffic on a different network. “Well, it wouldn’t,” the AT&T spokesman conceded.
In San Francisco and New York, where Ma Bell’s service is known to be poor, the iPhone is loved. These are the people who created the whole Jesus phone mythos and exactly the sort of people, especially the ones carrying press credentials, you’d think AT&T would’ve found some way, any way by now to make happy.
Say what?
So, instead of reliable service and instead of straight answers when confronted with the issues, AT&T responds with spin and incredulity. Here’s a simply brilliant example of the latter also delivered by Miss Mills:
“So you are actively asking folks to submit their experiences? Sorry, but you and I have a basic disagreement about why you are doing this story. What is the news here beyond what others have covered?” he wrote in an e-mail.
Imagine that. A reporter asking people to share their experiences about a problem and then reporting what they said. Further, imagine a reporter presenting said experiences to the responsible party, in this case a corporate talking head, and asking him why the problems haven’t been solved years after they were first reported.
But here’s a crazy idea that could explain away it all — AT&T probably can’t survive more iPhone success than it’s already got, so the company incrementally pisses off the San Francisco digerati, which obligingly produce negative articles and blog posts by the score, in order to reign in the surging demand that threatens to bring the whole house cards that is Ma Bell down. How’s that for a conspiracy?
Well, as whack ideas go, it’s no more unbelievable than the conspiracy of dunces that is AT&T service in San Francisco…
What’s your take?
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September 22nd, 2009
My latest theory: in NYC at least, it is a backhaul problem (AT&T towers don’t have enough bandwidth to handle all the data traffic — AT&T needs to run fiberoptic cable to their towers, but that costs and takes time).
This is what I wrote on July 16th, 2009:
Last year soon after the release of iPhone 3G, for two – three months AT&T’s service lower Manhattan (Wall St. area/Financial District/Tribeca/South Ferry) was beyond abysmal. Eventually things improved and returned to the pre-iPhone 3G state — not great, but livable.
Now, since about a week ago, maybe a little longer, things are back to their 2008 badness. 3G data is at a crawl. Phone calls are getting dropped. People call and the phone doesn’t even ring. Voice mails arrive 48 hours late.
There were all these news stories about how AT&T was ramping up its network in preparation for the iPhone 3GS. Pure BS. Now we are seeing stories about how AT&T will be ramping up in the fall (switching 3G frequency, enhancing backhaul, etc).
They should be ashamed. Yes, I know that the USA is a huge country, blah, blah, blah — but lower Manhattan ain’t that big. And the fact is that Manhattan and San Francisco are where 80% of the tech writers and other opinion makers who keep writing about how bad AT&T is live, work or both. Wall St. is where T shares get traded. Why don’t they get it? Verizon obviously gets it — there are plenty of places where they’re service sucks eggs, but NYC & SF aren’t among them, thus Verizon’s sterling reputation.
Dear AT&T — some time next fall isn’t good enough. Fix your network in New York City and San Francisco NOW. Not some time in the future, not three months from now, NOW! You are out of excuses — you have had two years since the original iPhone was released. You have had a whole year to prepare for the iPhone 3GS launch, knowing what an impact the 3G launch had on your network. And yet you fail, and fail miserably yet again.
If you want ANY hope of salvaging what little is left of your reputation and holding on to your customers once the iPhone stops being an AT&T exclusive, you MUST FIX NYC & SF NOW!