An AT&T reality check...

[macmadandproud]

So, I love my iPhone, it is elegant, sleek, paradigm-shifting and utterly Apple.

However for the past 19 hours I have had no little "E" symbol on my phone and no edge connectivity at all. Calls to At&t result in their typical clueless crap, and the reality has really been re-enforced (to me at least) that all of Apple's hard work really is dependent on a backbone of utter crap.

I have no doubt that the lack of a quality network really taints people's perceptions of their iPhones, and given their 5-year exclusive deal, I am not really sure where that leaves Apple and the iPhone.

I can't speak for anyone else here, but for me, the only thing worse than not having Google maps, always-on email, sexy internet browsing, and youtube streaming video on my phone, is having to spend hours on the phone trying to figure out why the hell they are not working.

Back to my w810 I go-- and the iPhone, it goes on Craigslist!

See you all again when 3g comes around...

 

[unity]

I LOVE these threads. Sure, the support staff knows nothing of outages usually and that is stupid.

But what I love about these is that everyone hates Cingular - which is now ATT. The reality is that ATT and T-Mobile own little of the networks they run on. Guess who does? Alltel! Oddly they sell no GSM service to their customers, they just build the networks.

So dont say you hate a provider, just say you hate GSM and do NOT get a GSM phone, thats all there is to it. If you do, well, thats just silly! Its one big pool of GSM out there in the US and you never really know which tower you are on. ATT, T-Mobile or more likely Alltel.

About you problem. I take it you re-booted the phone? I have heard of no outages - yet.....

 

[[G5]Hydra]

See you all again when 3g comes around...

AT&T sucks so much for you and you still want to go onto their 3g network, which has far more limited coverage, when a 3g iPhone is out? I would wait out the 5 year exclusive so maybe you could get another superior provider or you could buy the 3g iPhone test it out for a while and return it like you did with the current one. A JD powers survey just ranked AT&T's customer care second in the Industry with Verizon in 3rd so experiences vary.

 

[unity]

AT&T sucks so much for you and you still want to go onto their 3g network, which has far more limited coverage, when a 3g iPhone is out? I would wait out the 5 year exclusive so maybe you could get another superior provider or you could buy the 3g iPhone test it out for a while and return it like you did with the current one. A JD powers survey just ranked AT&T's customer care second in the Industry with Verizon in 3rd so experiences vary.

And lets not forget that 3G is slower than Edge when it comes to real world use. Sure, if you downloading huge files it can speed up but when loading we pages the latency is so bad that is can easily be slower than Edge.

And what I like about Edge is that its everywhere. The ability to use Google maps when I am lost is great - now if 3G I would be screwed since 3G is only in major cities - and major cities have lots of signs lol