As I mentioned earlier, I was at the Sugar Bowl in New Orleans, an event that was sponsored in part by AT&T. Early in the game they ran an ad on the JumboTron; it was the one where Luke Wilson tries to download a copy of himself on the Verizon network and on AT&T at the same time.
Suddenly, it struck me that now might be a good time to take a photo on my iPhone and upload it onto Facebook. I'd never really bothered doing the mobile upload thing before, but this seemed like as good occasion as any.
I took out my phone, and this is what I saw.
In case the what's going on here isn't immediately clear, let me spell it out for you:
1. I'm at an even't sponsored by AT&T.
2. My phone is exclusive to AT&T's network.
3. I have just seen an ad touting the superiority of AT&T's network over Verizon.
4. I have no service on my phone.
This wasn't a case of too many people trying to use the system at the same time and calls not getting through, which I realize tends to happen at sporting events. I flat out wasn't getting reception.
As the game went on, my phone finally picked up a signal, but still didn't have 3G service, or EDGE coverage for that matter. (EDGE is the high speed data service that AT&T uses where 3G coverage is not available.)
You'd think that an AT&T sponsored event is the one place in America that you'd be guaranteed complete service. Instead, I got the exact opposite.
My advice to AT&T: Instead of wasting your money suing Verizon, or making ads that argue Verizon's ads are only technically correct but are misleading anyways... fix your damn network.
ATT flat-out sucks. The iphone is cool, but it's not worth being on a shitty network that stops working as soon as you're 5 feet from the beaten path.
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