AT&T blows a chance at SXSW
By Michael W. Jones
One of the knocks on the iPhone is that the only available service is AT&T. With an opportunity to win over geekdom by providing great service at SXSW this week, AT&T dropped the ball.
There have been complaints of bad national coverage and dropped calls ever since the iPhone came out with AT&T as sole provider of cellular service. A lot of those complaints came from cellular geeks that understand mobile technology. The South by Southwest (SXSW) festival of technology in Austin was the perfect venue for the carrier to prove that its system was up to the task of providing coverage for the technology freaks in attendance, many of whom were carrying iPhones from exhibit to exhibit. At the end of the day (well, two days) AT&T has failed the geek test.
It was the talk of the show, apparently. The word was that AT&T service inside the Austin Convention center was atrocious, according to a CNET article. It seemed to be nearly impossible to call anyone with AT&T service inside the convention center itself. And, since these were the cream of the technical crop, it seemed that almost everyone had an iPhone.
In a bizarre turn of fate, AT&T did a marvelous job of providing Wi-Fi inside the cavernous convention center. Everyone inside the building seemed able to surf the internet, use Twitter and Plurk, and IM at will on their iPhones and iPod Touches all at once. Just as everyone agreed that the cell service was horrible, event attendees were completely impressed with AT&T’s Wi-Fi setup.
Certainly the people at SXSW, who are among the most inventive and technically capable people on Earth, found ways to communicate when they noticed that the AT&T cell phone network was not up to snuff. But think what a shot in the arm it would have been for AT&T if all of the technoids that attended SXSW this year would have gone home and told their friends that AT&T provided stellar cell phone coverage at SXSW. Instead, they’ll be telling their friends how bad the service was, giving Apple yet another reason to take their contract away from AT&T.
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March 15th, 2009
Actually, there is no “bizarre turn of fate” involved. All WiFi inside the convention center is and has always been provided by the Austin Convention Center and SXSW. AT&T has absolutely nothing to do with the WiFi at the event.
Pete