Wednesday, September 9, 2009

AT&T's Dirty Little Secret

It is becoming a little more obvious that AT&T has a problem: the iPhone. Yes, one of AT&T's biggest benefits is also one of their greatest downfalls. While we have known that the iPhone is a real data hog, and that AT&T's 3G network is still not ready for prime time, these problems have recently appeared in mainstream media. Until recently, AT&T claimed they did not have any coverage or access problems. But now with inquiries from local newspapers and TV stations, they are finding it harder to deny the reality: AT&T users, and more specifically, iPhone owners, are suffering from a lot of dropped calls.

Our most recent exposure was reports on local TV about these coverage problems, showing maps of the greatest amount of dropped calls. Finally, AT&T has admitted they are working on the problem. Really troubling is that AT&T reports there will be substantial outages as some cell sites actually go offline "for a day or two" to replace equipment. A day or two?? And customers should expect bad service for several months! Refund? Hah!

The cNet article implies that the fault may not be solely with the network, but as we have hammered for years, AT&T needs to step up their network upgrades. There may be only so much they can do so fast. But they'd better do it, and tell us they're doing it...their dirty little secret isn't much of a secret any longer.

Oh, did we mention that there are dozens of Alltel cell sites that need to be upgraded to GSM?

1 comment:

William said...

The largest underscored problem that AT&T currently has is the perception that the I Phone is it's only knockout device. AT&T certainly has a large enough selection of phones, including high end devices. But when most of the people I know who have AT&T upgrade to a smartphone, they do so with tunnel vision, "its the I Phone or bust." All of the hype surrounding the phone has turned AT&T's best selling point into it's only selling point, which of course can only be good or bad. Friends and colleagues of mine who have it are for the most part disappointed in the device, perhaps because too much is expected, or because there isn't anything more it does in comparison to Blackberry, Palm, etc. These experiences don't even account for the 3G issues; there is no 3G to speak of where I live. AT&T (and it's network) has it's faults, but it's too large and too good of a company to hinge all of it's success on one phone. I'd like to see them do more proactive marketing of their other high end devices.