AT&T was once upon a time a powerhouse, dominating communications.
They owned the handsets, they owned the copper, they owned everything. They dictated what you could or could not use with the phone, whether it was an answering machine, or a hush-a-phone - and until 1976 you had to rent a protective coupler to ‘prevent the network from harm’
Well, Judge Harold Green might have wondered what he accomplished by splitting up AT&T and creating the RBOCs. SBC re-branded as AT&T and is buying up all the old AT&T children.
I have the suspicion (no confirmation) that the reason the only applications available for the iPhone are web applications is because AT&T is attempting to ‘prevent the network from harm.’ Fine and well, an application is different than a hush-a-phone. Still, it falls a little flat, knowing that third party apps are written for the Sidekick, Blackberry, and Symbian based phones. Or anything that can run Java.
Tonight a friend of mine purchased an iPhone. He’s a corporate account as a small business owner. Essentially a corporation of one. He’s individually responsible for the account. The phone failed automated activation and linked him to a FAQ he hadn’t seen before which said that corporate accounts could not activate. In the small print at the bottom of the page was a phone number to call to activate manually.
So he called.
And the number failed. The voicemail system and phone queue fed back an error.
“they play this excess hold time error and then xfer to the error
they say please hold. then it borks”
This is AT&T. The phone company. And they can’t handle keeping their phone system working.
Ouch. I’d suggest they should be embarrassed, but any company that uses the Death Star as it’s logo has no shame.
They owned the handsets, they owned the copper, they owned everything. They dictated what you could or could not use with the phone, whether it was an answering machine, or a hush-a-phone - and until 1976 you had to rent a protective coupler to ‘prevent the network from harm’
Well, Judge Harold Green might have wondered what he accomplished by splitting up AT&T and creating the RBOCs. SBC re-branded as AT&T and is buying up all the old AT&T children.
I have the suspicion (no confirmation) that the reason the only applications available for the iPhone are web applications is because AT&T is attempting to ‘prevent the network from harm.’ Fine and well, an application is different than a hush-a-phone. Still, it falls a little flat, knowing that third party apps are written for the Sidekick, Blackberry, and Symbian based phones. Or anything that can run Java.
Tonight a friend of mine purchased an iPhone. He’s a corporate account as a small business owner. Essentially a corporation of one. He’s individually responsible for the account. The phone failed automated activation and linked him to a FAQ he hadn’t seen before which said that corporate accounts could not activate. In the small print at the bottom of the page was a phone number to call to activate manually.
So he called.
And the number failed. The voicemail system and phone queue fed back an error.
“they play this excess hold time error and then xfer to the error
they say please hold. then it borks”
This is AT&T. The phone company. And they can’t handle keeping their phone system working.
Ouch. I’d suggest they should be embarrassed, but any company that uses the Death Star as it’s logo has no shame.
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