AT&T, Be prepared to bleed like a stuck pig

They committed an unforgivable sin in my eyes. They wanted to put up a 3G tower in my town. Great! But, they took the old tower off line and it took them three god damned months to put up the new tower.

When all this infrastructure was built by Bellsouth, Bellsouth Mobility was an integral part of it. All of the city and county's infrastructure was centered on AT&T. Do you know what AT&T suggested when every Police, Fire, and EMS agency's laptops and Blackberry's stopped working? Go to WalMart and buy a throw away pre-paid phone.

Can you imagine what it's like to take your mom to the ER and have her die because AT&T's network won't let you call the Cardiologist? Yeah, it happened. Also, due to the topography, there are a few small spots where our radios simply won't work. That Blackberry was your only communication if something bad happened. This was a major clusterfuck to the point where AT&T's President came to town to try to save face and kiss everybody's ass. I thought he was going to get run out of town on a rail.

Even as shitty as Sprint is, back when I was a Sprint customer and they added EVDO here, they rolled in a mobile tower to cover the load while the old tower was replaced.

http://www.fastcompany.com/1716217/verizon-iphone-special-announcement-live

OK... it can serve as a hot spot. But will it allow talking at the same time? Probably not. Still, I use data cards.

Well the announcement is now official. Verizon is getting the iphone 4.

I LOVE what Verizon is doing, because it is deviously brilliant (if transparent). They're having their initial sign-on iPhone users get a 3g device (old technology), then in the future they'll roll out a 4g iPhone.

Oh, and it turns out that not only is Verizon getting a CDMA iPhone, but they're also getting a CDMA iPad.

I can't say that I really like Verizon. They are just a big telecom company too. But, i think they have better customer service than AT&T does. Plus they have a policy of trying to solve problems at the first point of contact too. Their customer service is US based. You don't get told how much the company appreciates your business only to get routed to some third world country.

Today I stopped by the TMobile store to pick up a new Android phone. I figured they could check my existing contract. Turns out they couldn't, so I got on the phone. While I'm on hold, in lieu of music AT&T was playing messages [paraphrased]: "You may have heard there will soon be other places you can get iPhone-type phones. Don't be fooled! Only AT&T gives you the finest network with the most blahblahblah..."

Man, it must suck to suck as much as AT&T, Comcast, or GM. More to the point, it must suck to be a competent person, stuck working for them.

Hey you leave those people in the Philipines, Rio, and India alone. They like their jobs with AT&T.

I'm in the telecom industry and have been for 10 years now, I'm not sure how much of a game changer this will be as a net positive for Verizon.

They will get millions of their existing customers to upgrade to iPhones. Millions and millions. If they keep their unlimited data plans they will also draw people off of at&t as well. What the articles don't mention about at&t's limited plans is what the cap is and more importantly why that cap is. Let me share some inside info with you. I can not provide a link, because it's all in annoying e-mail form with those bother legal disclaimers against copying them.

When at&t stopped offering it's $30 unlimited data plan for smartphones, it went to $25 for 2 GB of data as the top tier. Why did they pick 2GB? Since the launch of the iphone 3G, 98% of at&t smartphone customers have never exceeded 2GB. Now here's the kicker, the 2% of them that have, 2/3rds of them are some iteration of iphones and those 2% of customers gobble up over 40% of network bandwidth. If Verizon eats those customers, frankly I think at&t will be glad to see them go.

Time will only tell if Verizon's network can handle the new load. Iphones are horribly inefficent on the network when it comes to sending and receiveing data when compared to other smartphones like RIM devices and the Droids that Verizon sells. One thing going for Verizon is since CDMA is not capable of transmiting voice and data at the same time, in areas of low voice usage and high data usage their network can be better tweaked to accomodate that. Much of the issue at&t has in cities is the enormous data load iphones place on the network and UMTS carrying both a voice and data stream on the same link. Many times that voice stream is lost on someone just using the phone for data all the time.

On the flip side, all the iphone people who got used to being able to glue themselves to the internet and then while surfing, getting that call, I do wonder how they will tolerate that call always now going straight to voicemail unless they are hooked into a wifi connection.

Oh and to any WFers who are Verizon customers, but don't care about the iphone. If you have loved Verizon's awesome New Every Two discounted handset program, Apple is making Verizon kill that. Take advantage of that before it ends if you need to!

No shit? Goddamn it!

I just got a TMobile Comet. I it.

I think one of the reasons that Verizon isn't doing a bigger advertising blitz about them getting the iphone 4 is because even they realize it is old. They know that more than likely there will be a new iphone out this summer. Even they know that if they get too many people purchasing the iphone 4, come summer when they release the new iphone, they will be having to deal with a lot of angry customers who are only a few months into a two year contract with an old iphone. The iphone 4 is old. I think it is somewhat poor timing on Verizon's part beginning their sale of the iphone with an old iphone.

It isn't poor timing. If they can bring people in on a 3g device while launching their 4g network, they will make some big bucks and be able to appeal to late adopters.

Apple had to have made that a condition for carryin the iphone and here's why. Apple never, ever, EVER lets anybody by Apple set pricing for its products. There was no chance in hell they were going to let anybody selling a Verizon iphone sell it for anything other than what Apple has set the price at.