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Consumerist Says AT&T Site Won't Sell iPhone In NYC, Citing Network
cowp writes "A Consumerist tipster couldn't get AT&T's website to sell him an iPhone when he shopped using an NYC ZIP code, but could when he tried other cities' ZIPs. Consumerist asked an AT&T CSR and seems to have gotten confirmation that this is carrier policy: 'Yes, this is correct the phone is not offered to you because New York is not ready for the iPhone. You don't have enough towers to handle the phone.' Considering Apple's gadget is currently the most popular handset in the US, its exclusive carrier's inability/unwillingness to support the device in the country's largest market is pretty huge news. If this proves true, I'd expect curtains for AT&T's exclusivity deal when it comes up for renewal." If you're in NYC, can you confirm or deny this outlandish-sounding claim?
Updated 20091227 1:03 GMT by timothy: Headline, now corrected, inaccurately named Apple rather than AT&T. Mea culpa.
Can we stop saying things like 'the most popular handset?' When we're talking about a market where no single handset has more than about 1-2% market share, saying 'the most popular' is entirely meaningless.
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This from the most technological advanced country on the planet.....
AT&T happy to take customers money, not willing to spend millions for a working network.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
This from the most technological advanced country on the planet.....
AT&T happy to take customers money, not willing to spend millions for a working network.
I didn't see any mention of Japan in TFA?
sudo mount --milk --sugar
... and both my phone (an at&t blackberry) and my coworker's iphone cannot make or receive calls indoors (despite having an allegedly strong signal of -80 or higher)
You must be referring to either Japan or South Korea, right?
No sig for you!!
Not because it's the best phone available, which it might or might not be depending on who you ask, but because there's a guy in Cupertino with a black turtleneck, a borrowed liver, and a really shitty attitude who owns the exact same phone I do, and who has the power to make it suck less.
Even if he has to stare down AT&T to do it.
What other phone manufacturer can go to bat for their customers like that?
This is responsible -- they don't have enough towers, and they shouldn't be selling any more phones until they build more capacity.
It's not any different than not selling additional seats on an airplane that's already full. No one would blame an airline for not overbooking. I don't think we should blame AT&T for doing the right thing.
As a New Yorker with an iPhone, I hope Apple follows suit and stops selling iPhones to New Yorkers until the network is robust enough to provide decent service.
Failing that, I think they should waive early termination fees for NYC users.
There was a time when the algorithm was to drop the longest-lived call on the tower if it was at capacity (number of calls) and another phone wanted to place a call. This was justified (passively) by the required 911 service -- if a tower were at capacity, and did NOT drop a call, there'd be no 911 service for new connections. Not sure what the algorithm is now, but somebody has to step-up and reduce if not eliminate the plausible deniability of carriers w.r.t. their reliability.
Many Americans seem to think their country is the best and most advanced in the world. They are brainwashed by the mass media's propaganda.
AT&T's choices:
Did they choose wisely? I think not.
Did you happen to try buying it online from the AT&T store? Because you would not have been able to. They aren't selling it.
The title was wrong, but the summary and story are both correct. It's getting bad if people can't even bother to read the whole summary.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
My phone will show 5 bars of reception but it will throw "no service" warnings when I try to make calls.
Not saying it isn't AT&T's fault but there is a highly non-zero chance the problem is with your phone instead. I've been an AT&T customer for over a decade (from back when they were AT&T Wireless before they became Cingular) so I'm pretty familiar with the good and bad about them. Whenever I've seen something like what you describe, a reboot of my phone has usually fixed the problem. I've also had cases where I couldn't get calls but other people with different phones could get calls standing right next to me. The problem turned out to be a wonky Nokia phone which I fixed by getting a new phone. Service didn't change but if the radio in the phone is broken (software or hardware) you can be standing next to a working tower and it won't matter.
You said you use basic phones so there is a good chance those phones are made as cheaply as possible. Wouldn't surprise me if a few corners got cut on the testing... Of course it could just be AT&T having crap service where you like too...
uhhh...i hate to rain on your parade...but isnt "3 or 4" dropped calls pretty much around your own quoted number of 30%?
they say it is often more relevant then the comment above, all we know is its called the Sig!
I have a cheap Verison phone and it has dropped a call once in the past 2 years. Why would you use something that drops calls at all ?
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
That's not how Apple works. They don't stick the best technology in something; they make very good technology do amazing things. Very few of their products are fully decked out - iPod shuffle doesn't have controls, the Air only has 1 USB port, etc.
But each product does amazing things with what it has.
The next iPhone won't be some amalgamation of every cool technology out there, but rather a careful selection of a few choice technologies that will work together.
This from the most technological advanced country on the planet.....
AT&T happy to take customers money, not willing to spend millions for a working network.
You forgot the sarcasm tag I'm hoping. The US is not the most technologically advanced country in North America let alone the planet. While AT&T was slowly rolling out 7.2, your neighbours to the North were rolling out 21Mbps HSDPA on the incumbent GSM carrier. While Verizon was busy coming up with clever ads to attack AT&T, Canadian CDMA carriers were getting ready to launch a coast to coast 21 Mbps HSDPA network and launch the iPhone 3GS on their network making the iPhone non-exclusive in Canada. A lot of technology that you take for granted every day was invented in Canada. The robotic arm used to construct the international space station was from Canada.
BTW. How is that LTE thing going for Verizon? Will we see come out before 2020?
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
I agree with you. My response was to Khyber who said it was bullshit to tell the credit card company that you were travelling to circumvent them declining your card. Even so, a simple phone call would clear it up.
It is a good idea for various reasons to have a backup, and not have all the money you eat and survive with locked up into a single bank.
I agree for credit, but I dont agree for general banking. I have all my money in a single bank, including car and home insurance, stock investments as well as mortgage and line or credit. I've had nothing but outstanding service from them over the last 20 years, and for my reward I currently have my home mortgage at 1.45%. Loyalty has its rewards. I do however have several credit cards from other institutions that I can draw on in an emergency.
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
WTF? Seriously? Why do Canadians always bring up that arm as if it is the greatest piece of technology ever invented when it is sitting next to a $10 billion Orbiter and a $100 billion space station, which are some of the greatest marvels of technology ever invented?
People really are dipshits with this "my country is more advanced than yours" idiocy. Advances in technology can only be compared with time, not locations. The rate of development of technology in the US is extremely high--but this doesn't mean that the technology is deployed there. Is a country like Japan more advanced than the US because it builds more hardware and software or is the US more advanced because it designs more? Or should we compare per capita?
I think it is a foolish thing to even worry about. Only nationalists would really care. I care about the technology, not who is the most 'advanced'.
The blue diode, the microprocessor, scramjets, the LHC--those are important. I don't give a shit which country gets the nationalistic props for being the most technologically advanced.
Canada still sucks
I wonder what Apple will say when they find out AT&T is helping to *REDUCE* the sale of more iphones.
Not good.
The rate of development of technology in the US is extremely high--but this doesn't mean that the technology is deployed there.
Therefore the country where it IS deployed is the more advanced. When I moved to the US from Europe I was amazed at how technologically backwards the place was considering the huge amount of tech development that goes on there. The amount and type of technology you encounter in everyday life is certainly far behind Europe and now living in Canada things are more advanced, but still not quite as much as Europe. Its true that some of the newest gadgets may get released in the US first but when it comes to applying technology to existing products (like the car) the US is surprisingly far behind.
The same South Korea that took over two years to get the iPhone. And the same SK that still blocks any non-Korean approved unlocked phone from being used on their networks without paying a $300 "inspection" fee? And the same SK where the majority of domestic websites require Internet Explorer 6 (yes, 6) to function correctly?
For those of you who don't know, South Korea is not a technological paradise. We have fast broadband but that's about it.
To be fair, the $300 inspection fee is for getting *any* device certified by the FCC-equivalent authority of Korea *for personal use*. To make sure that the device does't interfere with the government-authorized spectrum. You should blame (insert company name) for not doing the job for you, not the South Korean government. Hell, what kind of government authorize using non-certified devices in their soverign?
Additionally, I use IE8 and firefox, and I had zero hiccups using IE8, and nearly zero problem using Firefox except on-line gaming sites (which merely is a Windows game installer) and banks (which require so many addons). Everything else is fine.
Says the man who repeats the mantra of the liberal, pinning all their problems on some abstract idea of a colaborative and archetypal villain named "the mass media". There is no collaboration amongst them, they are not trying to brainwash you, or anyone else, instead they are trying to appeal to you, to watch them. In this way, they are a reflection of you. When you understand that there are no super villain's, nobody cares about you, and it's extremely hard to organize a group to do ANYTHING in even the best of situations, then you will come to the realization that these abstract concepts you create to define your super smart group compared to the other super stupid group, are extremely arbitrary and do not reflect reality in the least bit.
I think you'll find "many" citizens think their country is the best and most advanced in the world, given you don't come from an third world country. This is called patriotism, it's not particularly good, however suggesting that some out group ("Americans") are somehow worse than your ingroup, means you're doing the exact same thing.
Basically, what I'm saying is, you're an idiot, and are displaying the very biases and failures in logic that you're so pissed off at in others.
with the AT&T reps manner of presenting this, trying to make it sound as if the problems is the caller/potential customer's fault.
Its not that "you (the caller, or New York residents) doesn't have enough towers", its that "We (AT&T) don't have enough towers (in New York)"
My suggestion to the caller, would be to make their next question something along the lines of "So when will AT&T be putting up more towers then?" I mean heck, its not like they even have to build actual *towers* - there are skyscrapers all over the place to stick cells on top of or out the windows at lower floors.
A good majority of the posts here seem to say "it's expected to have drop's... give AT&T a break for not selling phones when coverage is bad.. it's normal business"... etc.. All basically excuses.
It is really shocking that customers or fan's feel like they need to make excuses for poor service by their phone carrier. Call it what it is, poor service. I own a US Cellular blackberry in the Kenosha Wisconsin market near Chicago IL. I barely ever get a drop, always have good signal and even while driving I rarely get drop's. Many of my friend's who have AT&T complain about drop's.
Stop making excuses for a poor company. AT&T should be left on the side of the road called "poor service".
People tend to forget that NEED is the real motivation behind technological advances and implementation. Japan, for example, has a high need to handle transit, housing, and recreation within their limited space and with a high population density. Therefore, Japan's need has compelled them to implement technology to handle these limitations. Such examples can be seen in their train infrastructure or space efficient housing.
On the other hand, the United States’ need for the same technology is not as high. Generally speaking, our space constraints are not as limiting and we don't have such a high population density that mass public transit has becomes a necessity rather than a convenience, thus we have large automobiles and expansive houses. The same examples can be drawn for most of the developed world. The transit system in Europe is more developed because the price of gasoline as a commodity is higher - they have a need for a cheaper alternative.
To think that one country is leaps and bounds ahead of others is naive. There are no countries full of Cowboy Astronaut Millionaires. With how globally tied together our countries have become, technological advances tend to propagate worldwide in a year or two, taking into account social and political considerations - the only exception to the trend is military technology.