CApreppie

Who knows if these stats are true or how they are spinning it...

Of course, they didn't say how much was a lot of usage. I know I don't really fall into that group.

Either way, their network still sux. Just shifting blame...

dtsm

Read the last paragraph of this article - especially if you're in NYC:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/10/te....html?_r=1&hpw

ADGrant

Or you could do what I do and just call AT&T's excellent customer service and ask them to provide me with the unlock code which they have done for the phones I have purchased from them (I have never bought an iPhone). Like a previous poster I have been very happy with AT&T customer service (unlike my experiences with Verizon). The AT&T network is not as good as Verizon's but it is much better than T-Mobile's in my experience (I carry a personal AT&T phone and a corporate T-Mobile Blackberry). I suspect that a lot of problems with AT&T are really problems with the iPhone.

jackal

I forget what AT&T's official policy for providing unlock codes is (can't remember if it's 90 days in or after the full two-year contract is up), but regardless, there is no way to legitimately SIM unlock an iPhone.

I even called on a very high-level contact at AT&T who looked into it and came back with the answer that it is absolutely impossible. There is no internal-to-AT&T mechanism to unlock an iPhone (at least without resorting to the less legitimate methods).

ADGrant

If you have been a customer of AT&T for at least 90 days they will unlock any phone other than the iPhone. Even if you bought it last week and just started a new two year contract.

I am not sure why the iPhone is the lone exception to this rule. I suspect it has more to do with Apple's need to control everything than it does with AT&T needing to recover there subsidy. I also suspect that many of the complaints about AT&T's network are also iPhone related. My 3G Bold 9700 has great call quality and does seem not drop calls in my Manhattan apartment.

Paint Horse

So what? If AT&T could not support the iPhone, then they should not be offering it for sale.

Further, I do not see how receiving viocemail messages until two to three days after they are left to a Motorola V3, a Motorola V9, and a Pantech phone are in any way related to the iPhone.

mbreuer

I believe the network gets overloaded and fails to notify the subscriber of new voice mail. Visual voice mail for the iphone is probably not helping things, either.

My suggestion for the beleaguered - get google voice and use that for voicemail

Paint Horse

I have no sympathy for AT&T or its previous incarnation as SBC. The old Ma Bell people have spent the entire time since the breakup attempting to reassemble the old monolith in its previous form where they had total control of the wireline last mile to every customer premise. In doing so they have spent all of their time and money on lawyers and lobbyist. Now they wakeup to discover they have total control of a dinosaur. The end result being they have never spent the amount of time or money they needed to on the wireline or wireless infrastructure. It is now coming back to them in the form of customer dissatisfaction. They did it to themselves.

cj001f

I had Google Voice for my iPhone.

Then ATT blocked the app for jailbroken phones

mbreuer

Ouch.

You can at least still forward voicemail to google and retrieve via web & email/sms... or did they find a way to block that as well?

FWIW, TMO has been pretty good about such things.... can't think of anything they've intentionally blocked.

jackal

I don't know how related visual voicemail and the regular voicemail notification is.

From what I can gather, visual voicemail works by the AT&T system sending a coded SMS to the phone, which tells it to use the cellular data connection to download the actual voicemail audio clip. (I discovered this when I had to temporarily put my iPhone's SIM card in a regular GSM phone while my iPhone was in for service, and every time I received a voicemail, I'd receive a strange text, unreadable text message.)

My understanding is that regular GSM phones' voicemail notification icons are triggered by something sent over the cell signal's control channel. So, I don't think there's much of a relation between the iPhone's VVM and regular VM.

Of course, SMSes are sent over control channels, too, but I don't see too many people reporting problems with sending/receiving text messages on either kind of device, so I don't think there's any interference between the two.

mbreuer

I'm thinking that they're using the same servers for regular and visual vm and they're overloaded.

ADGrant

I have personally never experiance voicemail problems on any phone with AT&T (I have never used an iPhone though). I would love it if AT&T stopped selling the iPhone but it is not going to happen. The iPhone is bad for their reputation but it keeps their subscriber numbers up. I am not the only person who thinks the iPhone's problems are caused by Apple and not AT&T. According to a PC World reveiw"

"Although what distinguishes smartphones from cell phones is data access, smartphones still must function as phones and handle voice calls. Except for the iPhone, all have good voice and speaker quality. The iPhone stands apart: Even rabid fans complain about its poor voice quality and frequent dropped calls. It's tempting to blame AT&T for that, except that the BlackBerrys don't suffer these issues on AT&T's network"

ADGrant

FWIW The Blackberry Google Voice app works great on AT&T.

Paint Horse

An interesting observation. Nevertheless the check I wrote every month for 19 years always said AT&T or Cingular or whatever other names they once used. They receive the money, they need to fix the problem instead of spending my dollars on inane anti-verizon commercials.