Epic Fail of the Week: AT&T
Disappointment.
“-AT&T will experience some server/network-side problem.
-Users will experience AT&T related problems.” -These were predictions from this post.
Ah, I love the satisfaction of being correct about something. First off, I’d like to say that the update was available sometime shortly after noon yesterday (I’m not sure what the exact time was because I was at school, but looking around the net, it was some time near 12:45). There was no documentation for this update (which is understandable, seeing as there hasn’t ever been documentation with a carrier update for the iPhone). I believe there should have been some type of link or pop up telling users that they had to reboot their iPhone to enable the MMS feature. In the past, when a carrier update was available, it was only some type of band upgrade or something similar, and no one really fully noticed if they weren’t yet upgraded, and their phones would upgrade when they were shut off and turned back on. No one knew they weren’t instantly upgraded because their was no visible evidence telling them that. But with the MMS update, it was very noticeable that there was no MMS feature yet on my phone after I updated. If I hadn’t searched online to find that I only needed to reboot, then it probably would have taken me a good half hour to realize that I should reboot considering I didn’t update until about 1 this morning and was half asleep. But what were the not-so-technologically-inclined customers (the ones that didn’t wouldn’t immediately think to search the News section of Google) to do? I can pretty much guarantee that AT&T has had calls today with customers asking where their new feature is, and also I can safely assume that there are still customers out there who update their carrier settings yesterday and they still haven’t rebooted their iPhone or searched/called about this so they still don’t have the feature. On top of all of this, it was nearly two hours later before many people could even send media with the shiny new MMS feature. When the feature was finally ready for use, sending was (and still is) extremely slow (2 minutes for a picture in some areas that are even on 3G), and some people couldn’t send at all (INCLUDING ME!). Last night, I updated, rebooted, chose a pretty little MMS iPhone picture to send my girlfriend, and then waited two minutes only to see the biggest fail of the week:
MMS Fail
With that said, I hope that AT&T shapes up soon. I mean, they’re already losing the exclusivity of the iPhone soon (Verizon and Apple have been talking lately; the Internetz assume that AT&T’s contract is going to run out soon), and they aren’t even doing anything to preserve their contract. I don’t know if Apple would just completely stop selling the device through AT&T, but it is within their power to do so. They made the phone, so they can choose who gets to sell it I suppose. I think they would keep the device on both (if not more than 2 US carriers) carriers, but it would require some extra investing considering they would be making two slightly different devices. See, Verizon’s network is a CDMA (code division multiple access) network. AT&T’s is a GSM network. The current iPhone contains the hardware for a GSM network. If Apple were to authorize Verizon to sell the device as well, they would have to make a whole new line of iPhones that support the CDMA network (and also LTE, considering Verizon is already moving to 4G (we’ll talk about this in a sec)). This would mean two separate types of assembly lines, thus costing more money to build more factories if they don’t already have the space to do so.
Okay, so on to the other phase of my rant: AT&T… WHY ARE YOU LAGGING BEHIND??? Are you stupid? Seriously, we can find you some tutoring in economics (and telecommunications) if you wish…
Verizon has recently began to switch to 4G. If I’m not mistaken, they already have a couple of phones that are supporting LTE. It is reported that LTE trial runs have statitically proven speeds of 50-60 mbps (the current 3G doesn’t go over 10). This is a MAJOR advancement in mobile broadband technology, and it is expected to become the world standard by 2012. But my rant is this: AT&T, you recently (in June) started selling the iPhone 3GS (which was the new brilliant piece of technology from Apple (who I will yell at a little bit in a sec). The new masterpiece (which still wasn’t perfect, but was good) finally brought nice new, long-awaited features like video recording, voice dialing, voice recording, and more. It also brought along hardware that can support 7.2 mbps HSDPA 3G. AT&T reported in March that they only expected 7.2 HSDPA to be available in select (only a few) cities by the end of 2012, and they expected to have 90 percent of the network converted by 2011. There’s a few obivous ‘WTF? DUH’ ’s here. Firstly, Apple, why would you distribute this phone for sell to AT&T when you knew that it wouldn’t support this feature for a while? You could have saved the beauty for Verizon (even though I couldn’t use Verizon, and still won’t be able to when the phone begins being sold by them)? I’m hoping you are smart. I’ll assume you are. So I will assume that you have an even bigger beauty that is already CDMA-compatible. I’m guessing there’s a prototype sitting in Steve Jobs’ desk right now (or he has it in his pocket). Anyway, back to AT&T; what is the matter with your board members’ brains? I mean, Sprint and Verizon have already started transitioning into 4G, and you are still stuck at 3G (with a “3G” upgrade that won’t be complete until 2012!!!). WTF? By the time you get your network fully upgraded to 7.2 HSDPA, 2 things will have happened most likely. First, Apple will have already put out an even better iPhone for you to sell (that will be “4G” compatible!). And secondly, Verizon and Sprint will be fully converted to 4G! AT&T: YOU ARE LAGGING BEHIND!!! You’re like the little kids on Halo 3 that get host and have a Wal-Mart connection. Come on, guys… Please. I am stuck with you because of my area. So please.
AT&T, you are the fail of the week.
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