The Fake Steve Jobs unloads in a hilarious post on AT&T for trying to create “incentives that would encourage people to stop using AT&T’s data network so much.”
Along comes Randall Stross in New York Times and quotes Roger Entner, senior vice president for telecommunications research at Nielsen
“AT&T does not publicly defend itself because it will not criticize Apple under any circumstances”
and Randall ends with
“AT&T, send some engineers to redesign the iPhone to make better use of the country’s fastest wireless network.”
Wow, this is what Denny Strigl of Verizon would call ‘unfairly maligned”
Somehow, I don’t think the facts support AT&T:
a) They have had 8 years to roll out 3G. Can understand their white space in say, Wyoming– but even there,8 years is a long time – but problems in New York and San Francisco, two of the most important and affluent markets?
b) for a while, now they have been encouraging iPhone consumers to shift network load to Wi-Fi – so Verizon FiOS and cable networks have already been bailing AT&T out
c) if they are having contention/capacity issues why do they keep signing up newer 3G demands via Netbook campaigns? And why are they still running 3G ads? If you need to demarket, seriously demarket and fix the delivery issues
d) why not take a page out of the playbook of telcos like Vodafone in Europe and Bharti in India and outsource the network to the equipment manufacturers like Ericsson or Nokia-Siemens? Let them manage the capacity needs if your folks are not able to.
e) quit whining about data plans being underpriced unless you are willing to open up about SMS pricing which is overpriced by a factor of 20, and open up about double charging for voice – minutes to the caller and the receiver.
Like Fake Steve says “Randall, baby. we’ve got a hit on our hands.” Quit whining and start delivering…
