iPhone 4 Pre-Order Disaster: Total Collapse, Security Breaches … FWIW, my “pre-order” was processed via the “imprinting credit cards and calling customers back over the phone when [AT&T’s] systems get back up” method. So we’ll see what happens. … As kcatnd said, “Welcome to AT&T!” Heh. *sob* [shakes fist at Steve Jobs for making me become an AT&T customer to buy his awesome toy]
You think Steve Jobs is happy right now? I’m guessing he is right pissed. He should send the Santa Clara County Sherrifs to break down some doors at ATT’s headquarters…
Between this and the network failure at WWDC, it’s almost like God is telling Steve Jobs to end AT&T’s exclusivity deal already.
(Uh, except now I’ll be pissed if he does that in the next two years, since I’ll be locked in…)
Except the thing at WWDC was a WiFi thing, not ATT 🙂 Speculation also abounds that it may have been exacerbated by the number of wirless 3G/4G hotspots operating in the conference, something they are not designed to do well, thus potentially SEVERLY interfering with other wireless networks.
Except the thing at WWDC was a WiFi thing, not ATT
Except that, when WiFi failed, AT&T’s network wasn’t available as a backup option, and in fact produced an error message on one of the demo phones, saying “Cannot connect to network” or something like that. If AT&T had a functioning network in the Bay Area (where WWDC was held), the failure of WiFi wouldn’t have been fatal, it just would have resulted in slightly slower loading times on the stuff Steve Jobs was demoing. But of course, everyone knows AT&T can barely function at all in the Bay Area, and certainly can’t function in a crowded room of iPhone-bearing techies in the Bay Area, so it’s taken for granted that WiFi was the only viable option, and thus the problem is seen as purely “a WiFi thing, not ATT.” This is an incorrect attitude. It’s just that AT&T’s problems (at least in that market) are so severe that no one even considers the possibility that 3G would be a viable backup option if Wi-Fi goes down. Which, if you think about it, basically means Steve Jobs was demoing two supercharged iPod touches.
And yes, I say this as someone who just paid $600+ and signed a two-year contract for two AT&T-enabled iPhones. But then, I don’t live in the Bay Area, and the feedback I’ve gotten is that the network problems in Denver are annoying but tolerable. I also believe the fever pitch of AT&T problems is unsustainable, and the network will inevitably improve over the next year or so — it’ll have to, or else AT&T and Apple will have a real customer revolt on their hands, by, say, the next WWDC conference.
I’d be curious to see if with the thousands upon thousands of phones at Moscone for the WWDC along with the aforementioned portable 3G/4G hotspots that Verizon’s network would have fared any better. Seriously You put that many people in one place, especially that many TECH people with those devices goign non-stop and its going to cause issues.
Would rogue 3G/4G-based Wi-Fi hotspots interfere with regular old 3G reception (as opposed to interfering with Wi-Fi reception) any more than regular phone usage would? I would think not, but I honestly don’t know.
If not, then I’m not sure I buy the explanation that it’s reasonable to have those sorts of 3G reception problems purely because of “thousands upon thousands of phones” being in the vicinity, and some of them in use. I get it when we’re talking about, say, kickoff of a football game, with tens of thousands of people talking/texting/tweeting at once, all inside of a bowl-shaped structure. But in a big auditorium at WWDC? I dunno.
Still, that’s at least potentially a reasonable explanation. But it’s not the same thing as saying the problem was purely “a WiFi thing, not ATT.” My point is that — for whatever reason, whether reasonable or unreasonable — both WiFi and AT&T failed that day, and AT&T shouldn’t be let off the hook just because it’s so thoroughly unsurprising that it failed.
Normal WiFi hotspots? Not sure, but the ones that are the 3G/4G ones like from Sprint would definitely hog that bandwidth and add traffic. I’d think that at WWDC the traffic is bad enough to be an issue. The bandwidth people are pulling up and down (live bloggers for example) along with the type of data is going to exceed the texts/tweets from a football setting.
I’ve never had a problem using my iPhone in Palo Alto or other parts of the Bay Area. My understanding is that the network problems AT&T has in the Bay Area are really only in San Francisco.