Cell phone services company AT&T Wireless said Tuesday that it was still wrestling with technical glitches in a new software system that have plagued the company for more than three weeks.

Company spokesman Mark Siegel told Reuters on Tuesday that AT&T Wireless is working on software problems that delayed connections for some new customers and at various points cut off access to some 3 million records.

Siegel could not say how many new customers had been affected or when the issues would be resolved, but he did note that the company would offer credits to these customers.

"Its still not perfect but we have made good progress," said Siegel. The customer service software, which is used to keep track of client accounts, has been sporadically available while the company has worked on the glitches.

Siegel would not reveal the name of the supplier of the software in question, but Bear Stearns analyst Philip Cusick suggested that the problems were related to software from Siebel Systems.

Some analysts are concerned the problem could hurt the company during the holiday retail season.

"While we are not yet revising our forecasts for the company the ongoing concern over (connecting new customers) during the industry's best-selling season is a reason for concern," Legg Mason analyst Craig Mallitz said in a research note to clients.

http://news.com.com/2100-1039_3-5111...l?tag=nefd_top

Perhaps this explains some peoples problems porting numbers out of them?

The ATTWS problems are NOT due to the portability... It was strictly down to the CRM software they deployed. To be honest, ATTWS was in DIRE need to deploy a single CRM system across all their network regions.

ATTWS still has about a year worth of ticked off customer pain to go through to get things smoothed out.

If I was an ATTWS customer (I am) I would try to do as much as possible via their web front end system to manage, pay or monitor useage on your account.

BTW: Verizon has similar problems when they deployed their CRM system 4 years ago or so.

All of the systems related to the CRM system (billing and such) are affected.

FWIW, I got my AT&T GSM bill on time this week. No issues. Mine automatically debits my credit card.

Web based customer service stuff hasn't gone done for me once in the last 2 months... I've used it about 10 times with no issues. According to our folks who deal with ATT the CRM to web front end system didnt go down as much as the cust service front end did.

Web front end currently...

"3G Message


We are experiencing system difficulties retrieving your account information. Please try again later.

Message 3554"

Hehehehe... I just got in fine... I'm in a 949 assigned area code... BTW: I was a new account and not a port from TDMA->GSM (if this makes a difference in how the CRM system looks you up)

ATTWS does use Siebel for their CRM system. A different vendor for their billing system.

$#%$@ ATT ands Siebel.

Even live CS reps can't do anything still (11/30) as "our systems are still down".

I have several phones with them. Apparently they use a new and different billing system for GSM than with their older accounts, and it works none too well.

I had bought a Blackberry from them and then returned it and they were very nice about it. But their systems didn't process the return the first time and took an awful long time, to their disadvantage financially. Still, I found them pleasent to deal with even though their IT is going through major problems.