iPhone To Blame For AT&T’s Network Woes?
Posted 12/14/2009 at 7:45am
| by J.R. Bookwalter

Super-stardom isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, as Apple has discovered with its immensely popular iPhone since it debuted in 2007. If it’s not the target of ill-gotten patent lawsuits, it’s taking heat for just about everything else. Now,
a New York Times article is suggesting that the device is responsible for all of AT&T’s problems as well.
The piece in Sunday’s New York Times suggests that the iPhone is the cause of many of AT&T’s network failures, this despite the fact that AT&T recently fell dead last in Consumer Reports’ annual cell phone satisfaction survey,
according to MacRumors. Writer Randall Stross even goes so far as to claim that independent data suggests that AT&T may have “the superior network nationwide.”
Be that as it may, AT&T has yet to publicly lay any blame on the iPhone, which has been a huge boost to their smartphone business since its debut. The company has acknowledged service problems in some major U.S. cities and claim they are working on it, complete with
a free iPhone app dedicated to reporting such problems.
The New York Times article, however, lays the blame mostly on the iPhone: “Roger Entner, senior vice president for telecommunications research at Nielsen, said the iPhone's ‘air interface,’ the electronics in the phone that connect it to the cell towers, had shortcomings that ‘affect both voice and data.’ He said that in the eyes of the consumer, ‘the iPhone has the nimbus of infallibility, ergo, it's AT&T's fault.’ AT&T does not publicly defend itself because it will not criticize Apple under any circumstances, he said.”
But
Daring Fireball’s John Gruber is quick to point out that the problems seem to be limited only to AT&T’s home turf: “If it’s the iPhone’s fault, not AT&T’s, why aren’t iPhone users around the world having the same problem as those here in the U.S.?”