iPhone users loathe AT&T

From Computerworld:

Owners of Apple’s new iPhone 3GS love the device, but more than half of them hate AT&T, the smartphone’s exclusive mobile carrier in the U.S., according to a just-released survey.

A part of it is that the carrier serves as a scapegoat for any problem it can be convincingly assigned. But it does have serious service quality problems, and the benefit of an exclusivity deal (and a marketplace in general) that means it doesn’t have to fix them.

1. [Matt]

   They also deserve a lot of the criticism they receive… “MMS late summer” anyone?

2. [exhilaration]

   My jailbroken iPhone 2G works amazingly well on T-Mobile. $68/month: unlimited minutes, unlimited 2G data, 500 texts!

3. [Marius]

   Scapegoat? Seriously?

   Actually I personally don’t use either tethering or MMS and I have my Google Talk app already.

   So I have zero problems with my iPhone… I still blame AT&T and think they are the worst Evil.

4. [nixiebunny]

   The AT&T 3G network is incredibly spotty in major metro areas.

   Maybe they’d have better ratings if their network was available in places like my house (right in the middle of town in a progressive neighborhood) so that my wife wouldn’t have to walk outside to take a call.

5. [Alan]

   Ditto the MMS thing. My three kids all have it on their various phones, including the bottom of the line Samsung. So what’s AT&T’s foot dragging excuse other than they don’t want to mess with iPhone users getting to use it? At first it was converting accounts – obviously my account already accommodates it just fine, thank you.

   Add to that the fact that they have iPhones automatically connecting to (painfully slow) public AT&T wifi when available, avoiding data use on 3G that we already paid for, thank you. I’m pretty sure AT&T has a 3G network that just can’t handle the traffic and they won’t admit it.

   Actually, I have better coverage than I did with Sprint. I’d stand down the block from a Sprint store, in the middle of a tech savvy mid-sized city along side a major university and get roaming signals. Gar!

6. [relawson]

   i’ve had att (through all of the name changes) for about 13 years.

   i’ve never had any big problem (or even a medium one) with customer service or the network. they’ve always been super helpful and get me what i need. but then again, i dont come off half-cocked whenever there is something i need to get changed or fixed.

   either i’m lucky, or everyone just likes to complain about them to hear their own voice?

7. [salsaman]

   1) AT&T will suffer Motorola-like banishment when iPhone-hooked users are freed from its craptacular network, just like Motorola went down in flames after other handset makers figured out the thin+light thing.

   2) When AT&T thinks it’s ok to lie to New York Times tech reporter David Pogue about the suckiness of its network, clearly its priorities are out of whack:
   http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/07/10/dead-zones-and-the-iphone/
   From TFA:

   “When I reported my “No Service” experience, for example, a public relations rep wrote back: “I checked with our technical people and told them about the experience you had on that 10-mile stretch of parkway. They looked into it and told me they know of no reason why you shouldn’t have had anything but good coverage along that stretch of road, so it’s hard to figure out why you didn’t get service.”

8. [chiefted]

   “They also deserve a lot of the criticism they receive… “MMS late summer” anyone?”

   Add in tethering and they deserve a lot of criticism

9. [Anonymous]

   Might also be because we still don’t (officially) have tethering or MMS while the rest of the world does. Not until ‘late summer.’ Seriously?