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Activation Problems in iPhone Paradise
Thomas Hawk writes "Unfortunately it appears that some activations of Apple's new iPhone have gone badly. After waiting in line 36 hours I'm still unable to activate my phone. I'm documenting the AT&T circus call by call on my blog. I've had my hold calls dropped, been patched into other users unable to activate their phone instead of AT&T customer service reps, been told that my wife must get a new phone and that the family plan can't work for me. I've been told that the problem is that I'm not putting a new chip into my iPhone in the slot on the left side of my phone when no slot there exists. PR Blogger Steve Rubel has also been documenting his problems on his Twitterstream. According to an unscientific poll being conducted by Engadget about half of the people who bought iPhones have had activation trouble with about 38% of problems still unresolved." Even the folks at MacWorld weren't immune to these issues.
If you read the other person's problem thingy, it states quite clearly that this is not AT&T's problem, but it is a problem with iTunes and the iPhone.
The Poll that Engadget had about the service problems was fairly badly put together. The only way to be able to see results is to vote first. For for all the people that don't even have iPhones, they had to choose 1 of the 3 options before they could see the results. Since there was no "I Don't have an iPhone" options, it severally screwed with the results.
Its not what it is, its something else.
http://thomashawk.com/2007/07/hot-donkey-after-36
Ramen
You don't have to care about Apple at all to know that 38% of people aren't having problems with activation. Just ask Reuters. They say 2%, and I trust their sources infinitely more than an Engadget poll with roughly the same number of responses as every other Engadget poll and absolutely no mechanism to restrict responses--two clicks to a vote is an easy target.
"Just activate in-store like any other cell phone."
You think people are having problems now? A Piper Jay analyst said Apple has probably sold a half-million phones this weekend. I waited in line, then once inside the store, paid and had my phone in two minutes. Went to an WiFi-enabled restaurant nearby and was activated in three more, while I had some coffee.
So given that, the Apple store I went to processed an entire line of 200 people in an hour and a half, and I'd saw a quarter of those at least bought two phones.
Now. Picture a half-million people standing in line and having store employees REQUIRED to do all activations, transfers, credit checks, purchases, and all the other garbage usually associated with buying a phone, and now taking 10, 15, or even 20-minutes with each one. Now THAT would have been a disaster.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
How many GSM providers are national in the USA? ZERO. Not one of them has a network with "home" service where I live or with ANY service in most of the places I spend time other than home and the office. You may find it surprising, but that vast middle part of the country is part of the nation, and it is by and large CDMA-only. It sucks, too. And here's AT&T, whose shitty service doesn't surprise me given that they lie about having the largest digital voice and data network in the country, given that only a CDMA provider with lots of good partnering agreements.
I have trouble understanding why you were moderated insightful, since publicly available information disproves the second part of your hypothesis.
Total revenue for AT&T first quarter of this year was $28 million compared to $22 million for Verizon and much smaller numbers for others... Leader in market share for wireless at 27.1%
I think the more likely explanation is AT&T is much, much larger than any other GSM provider in the U.S. (As in more than twice as large... subscriber-wise). By far has the most GSM network infrastructure and bandwidth. I think the desperate hurting for money thesis is totally ludicrous.
I'm really interested in more info on what the nature of the activation issue is, so I'm disappointed that all the articles I read on it seem to be Apple fanboys saying "it definitely can't be Apple's fault, must be AT&T." But they don't provide any details... Most GSM phones don't need to be "activated" at all... put a(n appropriate) SIM card in and it works. What happens during activation? And before launch I heard that you'd be able to activate via iTunes at home... What happened to that?