AT&T drops a lead ball in a glass house

Yesterday at WWDC, the world found out about the next iteration of the iPhone and all that good and bad that is coming with it. While we all know about and are excited about things such as voice control, better camera/video capture support, faster process, etc., the real cream of the crop was the announcing of MMS and tethering support. However, one big, large, fat, caveat remains. The sole U.S. carrier of choice, A suck and T won’t have MMS ready until the end of the summer. As far as tethering is concerned, keep holding your breath as there has been no mention or mumbling from the death star camp as of yet. In reality, tethering will come and more than likely they are still working on pricing schemes. But, after thinking about it for a few seconds, a certain question comes to mind: Shouldn’t AT&T have had all of their ducks in a row several months ago?

The iPhone is by far AT&T’s saving grace. Without it, they would be less several millions of customers as their CS and service all around puts the suck in suck. Any normal halfway intelligent person would think that if your entire life savings rides on keeping your customers happy, making sure your network and software services are up to par with your hardware offerings would be top priority. Apparently AT&T operates differently. I have see article after article, forum post after forum post of disgruntled consumers speaking out against AT&T’s tardiness to the iPhone 3GS/OS 3.0 party with equally vocal AT&T trolls CS reps stating such things as “it’s harder than you think”, “it’s not our fault”, “this is a big launch…we can’t help it”, yada yada yada. No matter what they try to conjure up, anything that comes out of their mouths is an excuse.

For example, if you happen to spot an AT&T employee in a forum post online complaining about having to manually remove each opt out MMS code from every iPhone users’ account, quickly remind them that they have had plenty of time to get this s*** straight. It’s not like Apple went to AT&T headquarters Sunday night and said “Hey guys, guess what? We’re going to announce MMS and tethering tomorrow…best get on it!”. No! This has been a collaboration for many months. It is simply AT&T being AT&T – slow, stupid, and incompetent.

Second, tethering has long been a requested feature for iPhone users. Since every other smartphone and even many more basic “feature phones” are now garnering tethering abilities, with Apple’s announcement came initial excitement. That is until AT&T’s name was left out of any reference to iPhone + tethering. Again, wtf?! Why the delay. Some are speculating that AT&T needs more time to hammer out plans and pricing. Really, is it that hard. At $30 for the standard iPhone data plan it’s already overpriced by about $10. Tethering should add no more than $10-$15 to the price of a data plan. Really when you pay for a data plan w/ tethering support you’re getting screwed twice because you’re being double billed – paying for the same 1′s and 0′s twice. Soon smartphones will be able to suck down just as much traffic as desktops and laptops, will carriers raise data plan rates across the board? AT&T has long stated that the wildly popular success of the iPhone 3G has caused their network to be stressed to the max as data traffic has risen exponentially. Ok…so what are you going to do about it guys? Are you going to stop bitching and actually do something proactive about like upgrading your network to a level beyond absolute suck to just minor suck? Or, are you going to raise prices and leave everything else the same so you don’t have to expend any more money?

The fact that AT&T completely failed yesterday and continues to do so was clearly evident at WWDC when Apple announced the MMS/AT&T delay and left AT&T out of the tethering announcement. After said statements, even the crickets themselves were silent. People weren’t, and still aren’t happy. There is absolutely no excuse for this crap. I wish T-Mobile had better coverage in my area because I would go back to them in a heartbeat. Do you think that Apple themselves are a bit peeved on AT&T’s digital ball dropping? Could it affect the manufacturer/carrier relationship come exclusivity renewal time?

Are any of your past/current/future iPhone buyers being swayed in any shape or form by yesterdays events? Is AT&T the sticking point in keeping you from joining the Jesus phone revolution? I’m sure you have some pretty strong opinions on this sensitive issue. Let’s hear them. I’ve been ranting long enough.

/rant

Author: Mike Norris

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Gadget lover, smartphone collector, and beer connoisseur. I've been writing about gadgets for three years now and loving every minute of it. Outside of the digital landscape, I enjoy being active outdoors. I'm always up for a good conversation, so feel free to drop me a line!