Ouch! According to this thread on the Apple forums (via TUAW), AT&T users from Chicago to Milwaukee to St. Louis to Kansas City aren’t able to get online via EDGE. That’s a major black-eye for AT&T — and of course it doesn’t just affect iPhone users. Things are supposed to get running again by the end of the day …unless it take until February 5th. I’m based down in Florida so everything’s in the clear.
You down?
Update: Gizmodo tells us what’s going on:
However, an insider who works on networks dropped me a line as to why AT&T’s 3G network is having these sporadic issues today: apparentely, six GGSNs “rolled over”. (GGSNs are gateways between wireless and regular networks.)
Posted on Monday, Dec 3, 2007 by Mike Overbo
File Under:Uncategorized; Tags: AT&T
Mark Sullivan of PC World compiled a list of five technology groups that frequently conspired to be anti-consumer. That, or they were really just a bunch of jerks. Well, AT&T makes the list twice, showing up in the list for various groups they belong to at #3 and #4. Well, they kind of show up in #5 too — #5 is a critique of most wireless carrier parties involved in the 700 MHz auction that Google’s part of. What kept AT&T from being at #1 and #2? Big pharma and the recording industry. Not too shabby!
For the past few days, I’ve been working with the AT&T Tilt, a Windows Mobile smartphone. I’ve used Windows Mobile before, so this isn’t quite the new experience that the BlackBerry Curve was, but I haven’t used the latest version of Windows Mobile (version 6) either. I used WM5 with a Treo 750 for a while, but I ended up dealing with a bad bug that prevented calls from ringing. That was pretty much a killer for the device, and I stopped using it.
And that would be the end of the story, but for the Smartphone Round Robin. And here we are again.
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Highlights from a report from a report by Strategy Analytics:
- iPhone tops AT&T sales chart at 13% of AT&T’s device sales
- 4th best-selling phone in U.S., selling 1.1 million units. Total # of iPhones sold: maybe 1.325 million
- based on current trajectory, iPhone will be #1 best-selling phone in the next quarter or two
- current #1 is still the RAZR V3
- two age segments standing out that are purchasing iPhone in droves: 20-30 and 50-60.
Having owned a RAZR and been frustrated with the poor software shipped on it, I will do a little dance when it’s no longer #1.
One of my readers sent me the following story. You be the judge as to the true guilty party.
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figure 1: AT&T has made some changes to benefit customers out of enlightened self-interest.
In news that should please anyone on AT&T, and if you have an iPhone, odds are good that this is you, AT&T is making consumer-friendly changes to how they do things. First, AT&T announced that they will begin pro-rating termination fees. The longer you stay on in your contract, the less of a fee you’ll have to pay. They also announced that they will not require a new contract for a simple change of service. Both are welcome changes.
Odds are good that this change of heart is due to the Senate commerce committee holding those hearings, and T-Mobile’s lawsuit problems — AT&T probably doesn’t want to get into the same legal hot water that T-Mobile is currently in.
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Apple’s fiscal fourth quarter ended in September, and the bean counters in every investment firm are hard at work following the money trail, speculating on Apple’s quarterly results. Bear Stearn analyst Andrew Neff, the man most well known for his crazy but prophetic predictions about the implosion and consolidation of the PC industry, believes that iPhone could be the start of something big. He tells investors that while deferred profit sharing with AT&T won’t have an immediate impact on Apple’s bottom line, he sees iPhone being a money machine, driving profits. Doesn’t it warm your heart to read those words?
Of course, what really drove profits this quarter were the purchase of two iPhones by one Kent Pribbernow. Yeah, don’t think I won’t be wanting stock options in return Apple. It’s time I start seeing some greenbacks. Capiche?
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In case you were living under a Palm tree today, AT&T is airing three new ads on the tubes (TV tubes, not internet tubes). The ads depict three common plebes burbling on about how iPhone impacts their life, in various real-life situations. Perhaps the meaning of these spots are lost upon me, or maybe I’m still hungover from that bottle of Cotes du Rhone I downed Saturday night, but I’m not moved or engaged by what I see. iPhone is only vaguely referenced, and done so in a very casual way. The characters lack depth, and serve as typical uninspiring stereotypes aimed at demographics; a businessman, an average “young guy” (or wuss if you will), and a rough cut tattooed mechanic designed to appeal to car thieves working in a chop shops. Yeah, they’re going to move truckloads of iPhones with these ads. I can feel it.
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The New York Times has a neat article on third party applications and how the iPhone is currently the only device on AT&T’s network that doesn’t support them. The article has some good things to say about Palm too, which I always welcome. The big gist of it is how Jobs’ quote from a January Newsweek interview doesn’t jive with reality:
“You don’t want your phone to be an open platform… You need it to work when you need it to work. Cingular doesn’t want to see their West Coast network go down because some application messed up.”
Whereas the reality of the situation is that Cingular/ATT welcomed development on every single other phone they had on their network, whether it be Java/J2ME, PalmOS development, Windows Development, or Flash Lite / whatever. This is backed up by Mark Bercow, Senior VP of Development at Palm. Talk about your David vs. Goliath situations here; I feel like Steve Jobs’ famous reality distortion field just failed for a second or something. But, there’s another quote that the Times dug up that I’d forgotten about from his video conversation with Walt Mossberg at the All Things D conference in July:
“This is a very important trade-off between security and openness. We want both. We’ve got good ideas, and sometime later this year, we can open it up to third-party apps, and keep security.”
The more I think about this quote, the more I think he’s talking about widgets here. You only really have to worry about a widget’s security if there’s a browser bug or exploit, and HTML/CSS/AJAX is definitely open. He probably doesn’t want to open up a full native SDK until the software and hardware platforms are stable and proven, much like he did with the original Mac series. That is, if he wants a full native SDK available to the public at all.
There are a few other interesting tidbits from the article that I can’t help but mention:
- Two-thirds of Treo owners have purchased 3rd party apps
- Ten percent of Treo owners have purchased 10 or more 3rd party apps
- AT&T has a website to get developers on all of their development platforms except the iPhone.
The honeymoon is over between AT&T and Apple, or at least the romance has gone. Today the wireless carrier takes the wraps off its new flagship smartphone product for business and pro customers; the AT&T Tilt . Better known to the world as the HTC TyTn II. Now granted, carrier branded Windows Mobile smartphones are nothing new, and AT&T has offered these johnny come lately devices since before the name changed from Cingular. What makes this product unique is the promotion and positioning it’s receiving. Noticeably absent from AT&T’s website is any reference to iPhone. I searched high and low and uncovered only one mention of iPhone, obscurely located in a section called “Learn.” Perhaps the partnership between the two companies isn’t as strong as we might think, eh?
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