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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.
There's been a lot of coverage indicating problems with iPhones in New York, including one Gizmodo piece saying a 30% dropped call rate is apparently normal.
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
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.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I live in NYC under a 114xx zip code and had no problems buying one in person at an ATT store. I bought it the weekend after Thanksgiving so it was about a month ago. Maybe they changed it since then.
Summary makes it clear it's AT&T that isn't selling the iPhone in New York City. Headline says it's Apple, who last time I checked have iPhones for sale in their New York City stores. :)
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
Nope. It's the most popular phone in the US based on units sold. 4% of the market.
That's almost 10% better than the best BB. 75% better than the entire RAZR V3 line.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Clearly, this is a devastating experience for aforementioned individual, as they are unable to procure an iphone. In fact, there is a potential that an entire city may be denied the presence of the iphone. Here at slashdot, we feel their pain.
Always proofread carefully to see if you any words out.
No iPhone for You!
Interestingly, here in rural Alaska we get at least 20% dropped iPhone calls. After a particularly annoying one (I was within 200 yards of the tower, line of sight, over water) I complained to the local AT&T rep and the FCC.
About 2 weeks later, I got this nice call from an AT&T droid who says he was asked by the FCC to look into this. After a few pleasantries, he suggested 1) Making sure the battery was charged (OK), 2) Turning off 3G (already done, don't have 3G here in the boonies) and getting closer to the tower. I explained that if I got any closer to the tower on the last dropped call, I'd have to marry it.
His final suggestion was to take it up with Apple, maybe I needed a new handset.
I suppose it's something of a start but AT&T isn't going to solve very much of the problem this way.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
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.
Go back to the FCC and resubmit your complaint. Obviously AT&T simply read you the script to meet the barest of "compliance" requirements...by sending you to some script reader in a call center. They won't do jack shit until the FCC requires them to. Or, you're able to find someone within the local ranks at ATT that are willing to listen to you, not just some corporate weenie.
Actually you may have been too close. I am far from a wireless engineer but I do know that depending on the antennas used the base of a tower can be a dead zone. I've seen this in the wireless ISP world a few times and its frustrating.
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
"AT&T's service is crap"
correct.
BUT...
You could be standing under the tower and your phone not work.
Its called site geometry you actually could have a dead spot in certain areas that are very close to the tower and even in plain sight, including directly at the site.
Just because you see one tower, its not ONE cell site. Depending on the location and the needs for that are it could be upto 6 sites depending on the sectorization used at that location. Most are 3 at a minimum, 120 degree sectorization. As you move into the urban area, and to meet other coverage needs it can go down to about 60 degrees.
this applies to all RADIO systems, which cell phones are nothing more than radio systems.
1311393600 - Back to Black
Maybe that CSR just watched A Few Good Men.
AT&T: You want coverage?
Consumerist: I think I have the towers.
AT&T: You want coverage?
Consumerist: I want the iPhone!
AT&T: You can't handle the iPhone!!
Weird indeed. I've been to Manhattan, and there are lots of towers.
I'd rather you rationally disagree than irrationally agree.
Not all AT&T phone reps are equally versed in what's going on, as Consumerist later admits on their site. AT&T will sell you the iPhone in their stores throughout NYC. They won't sell you the phone online within NYC. Apparently this is because of fraudulent resales as people order the phones online, take delivery and then ship them overseas. Skipping out on the contracts in the process, as they never intended to honor them in the first place.
I wonder why NYC has more of a problem with this than other locations. Large transient international population I suppose...
It's like a ghost town compared to a few Asian cities. Light traffic, hardly any people, clear air, you could almost eat off the concrete. :-)
I live in Manila, we have 10,500 people per square kilometer across the metro on average, though some of the slum areas are as high as 40k - and yes, they all have cell phones - we send 140 billion text messages a year, the entire country is bathed in 3.5G, surprisingly you can actually get the juicy speed goodness anywhere at any time too, so the telco drones must be doing something right.
I'd say a good 97% of all dropped call complaints on AT&T come from iPhone users. Not that I keep score, but every time I hear "customer is getting poor signal, dropped calls", I immediately think "another damn iPhone call". I'd assume unlocked iPhones work well, because odds are, they're not connected to UMTS towers much of the time. It's the phone. It's been trash since day zero, when Apple didn't supply AT&T with any documentation on the original iPhone until five minutes before launch, making for a lot of fun for everybody trying to activate the hockey pucks. Did you know that all the Visual Voicemail breakdown crap this past summer was from Apple pooping out repeated failed updates, jamming up iPhones that hadn't even been updated? Check Settings, General. If you have "Profile" listed there, surprise! Delete the corrupted AT&T profile and watch your messages roll in after two minutes. Also, anybody who knows how cell phones work knows better than to expect uninterrupted calls while driving. You're playing tarzan between towers. There isn't always a long vine in reach. Unless you're doing 120.
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.