Dear AT&T

Honey, we've got to talk. 

I've been patiently using your service on my iPhones for just over two years, originally on my iPhone 1st Generation, and my wife's, then on both of our iPhone 3Gs.  I would have also used you for an upgrade to the 3GS, had you not decided to punish your installed base with punitive upgrade pricing.

I've also watched with great interest your ongoing announcements about a micro-cell to provide me with 3G coverage at my home, as I receive just enough signal at my home to ring my iPhone, however not enough to answer the call.  Despite your assurances that I am in the middle of a strong 3G coverage area, I do not even receive EDGE service here, so was looking forward to the ever-slipping release date on your home cell tower. Even the outlandish idea of me personally paying for hardware to address your shitty cellular coverage so I could continue to pay you your monthly fee didn't strike me as asinine.

All of this would have been somehow acceptable, as it appears that the situation had been growing worse by degrees and I had been beaten-down to the point that the complete lack of cellular signal in my home, my office, and on my daily commute was my cross to bear for having the excellent Apple smartphone.  It must be what they say when they use the term 'boiling the frog', in that I hadn't realized how bad the situation had become, and had just decided to accept my fate.

When I was downtown in our capital city last Friday all day waiting for a phone call from my law firm and VCs so I could complete my venture funding, a call which was repeatedly placed but I didn't receive notification of until Saturday at noon on the small, rural Iowa golfcourse, I began to question our relationship.  When voicemails started arriving two days late that were critical to my company's viability, my loyalty began to waver.

This all came to a head yesterday when I tried in vain to keep a call up with an important investor, while downtown in a 5-bar 3G area.  I was disconnected from him three times before I finally had to resort to borrowing a land-line phone from my lawyer.  This, compared with your totally ironic timing of sending me my absurdly large iPhone-service bill at the exact moment of my peak frustration, drove me into the arms of another carrier.

I've found another provider, AT&T, and her name is Verizon.  Her BlackBerry's may be a joke to the Apple-rati, however I'll be damned if the thing didn't work out of the box, and I was actually able to maintain telephone conversations, without disconnect, all afternoon yesterday and at my home.

There's always a price to be on the leading edge of technology with excellent devices like the iPhone, however one of those prices shouldn't be that the damn thing never actually works as advertised because the carrier has a fatal combination of (a) lack of infrastructure and (b) complete delusion when it comes to addressing (a).  I've used new gadgets for years, but none of them asked me to sacrifice critical communication with my family and business associates for only $250/month.

I'm breaking up with you AT&T.  And it's not me, it's you.

Christian

Comments

[Stefano Crosta]

ah, USA!

i got my iPhone from the Orange operator at the time when they were the only ones allowed to sell it;
got it unlocked with a 100euro fee.
Got most of the device + unlocking fees refunded by my own phone operator, SFR, and started using my phone on SFR only 48 hours later (time to receive the unlock from apple through iTunes).

Now in France the iphone is available to all carriers, whatever model. I'll personally stick to my 3G, as I don't really need more.

But could you believe that France is a more liberal market than United States? Go figure, and vive la France! :-)
(i'll keep all bad sides of the story here for another comment).

stefano

[Glenn Gauvin]

Stefano,

Do you really think the US is liberal?!? Or democratic? ;-)

Glenn

[Terri Griffith]

I'm hoping they are listening... similar story here and a friend is still waiting on a text that we know was sent 15 minutes ago. I had the friend read your post and he wants to know if you can sing: a la United Breaks Guitars...

[Stefano Crosta]

@Glenn... well let's say I like to still hope so!

[Kim Smith]

Christian! I recently started experiencing the same thing with my iPhone that I love(d) dearly. Well said and I may soon be following you over to Verizon.