AT&T How Doth You Scorn Me
When I first got my iPhone I had a perma-boner. My favorite features, without even installing any outside Apps, were the map, which allowed me to jump in a car and not worry about getting lost or writing down directions, and the mobile web browser. It was only a few weeks later that I started downloading podcasts and other iphone apps.
I had an iPhone erection that lasted longer than 4 hours. But it felt good enough, and didn’t lead to any adverse effects, that I neglected the advice to visit a doctor.
The honeymoon is now over.
Like pretty much every iPhone customer I talk to, my frustration is growing. My formerly sexy phone / service is packing on the pounds. I’m losing interest.
I first noticed my service getting worse about 6 months ago. Dropped calls, few bars in wide open Manhattan locations, slowness loading web pages.
About 3 months ago the service started to nose dive. Sometimes the service works and I have full bars. But more often than not, my “connection” bar says “searching”, “no service” or just diplays all 4 bars @ zero.
My favorite moment among many? I went to a wedding in Burlington Vermont. From Hartford CT to Burlington, and all the way down to Boston I had “no service” the entire time. Three straight days of either being in the car, passing through real towns and small cities, or in a college town such as Burlington with no service.
To add insult to injury, someone else in the car, who has T-Mobile, connected to the AT&T network. And she doesn’t even pay AT&T $100 per month. She pays T-Mobile $30 per month for voice / text service.
Back in New York my service has been non-existent. As I’m writing this from my office, I have no service. Generally, if I go into the subway and get out the phone starts searching for a signal and fails. The trick I learned, which is sometimes successful, is to put the phone on airplane mode for a few seconds and back to normal mode. Sometimes the phone then finds a signal. But even when it does, God forbid I want to talk to someone for more than a minute. The phone loses the connection.
My frustration is reaching a boiling point. I remember commenting in July on a PaidContent.org article, Why You Should Thank AT&T, where all the other commenters were ranting. I wondered when AT&T is going to upgrade their infrastructure. They better do it soon as the masses are rumbling and their exclusive contract with Apple is coming to an end.
My question is if my 2 year contract requires me to commit to paying about $100 per phone to AT&T each month, isn’t AT&T required to provide reasonable service in return? Am I allowed to break the contract, arguing lack of performance on their end?!?
Or, if I’m stuck with AT&T, can’t they at least prioritize voice traffic over the network and provide the basics? Not a great solution, but at least my calls wouldn’t be dropped.
Sigh…
Tweeting AT&T now: @ATTNews
Peter Cervieri is co-founder of and Director of Business Development for ScribeMedia.Org. He has many fetishes. Among them is collecting business cards.
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