'Steve Jobs' repeals AT&T iPhone prank

Fake Steve Jobs has retracted the online AT&T joke that somehow morphed into a legitimate protest against the telco's wireless network. But it may be too late. In a Wednesday post to his blog, The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs, Dan Lyons (aka Fake Steve) acknowledged that Operation Chokehold is "just a joke that has spun out of …

[Steve Hodson]

Some words, here!

Sounds like someone might have been threatened with legal action....

[Anonymous Coward]

Now if only...

We could do the same to O2 for their craptastic 3G network which is up and down like a whores drawers.

[sdustbin]

Naa, it's down so often people wouldn't notice...

Naa, it's down so often people wouldn't notice...

(particularly Wimbledon Station... Full 3g Signal.... yet every data request and app times out... tried it at numerous times during the day.... v. annoying....)

[Blain Hamon]

What, what?

"provides critical communications services for more than 80 million customers"

You're kidding me. People actually consider AT&T fit for purpose while they've got a 1 in 3 phone disconnect rate in New York?

[Richard 102]

80 million customers

Considering that AT&T was bought by SBC, which provides local phone service in 13 states (including such high-population areas like California, Texas, and Chicago), that might be 80 million phone lines with 911 service, if you count business lines and government lines.

[Si 1]

Erm...

If it only takes 2,000 customers to degrade the service of 8 million customers then there is a serious problem with capacity on the AT&T network. Perhaps they should look at fixing that?

[Robert E A Harvey]

Quite.

The networks started offering data as another way to sell the same cow, and have made promises they cannot keep.

[Paul RND*1000]

Good luck with that

Why on earth would they fix it when they can pay a fraction of the cost of fixing it to have the less-famous Wilson brother throw postcards around a giant map of the USA in an attempt to demonstrate that their 3G coverage isn't lame?

I notice in those ads they neglect to state whether they're talking solely about their 3G coverage, or are throwing EDGE in as well to make it look better. So they cover nearly the entire population with "a network", it would kind of suck to find out after you've signed the 2 year contract that the nearest actual 3G coverage is very far from you.

[Anonymous Coward]

crap network

how crap is that network?

here in austria i get on average between 2 and 2.5mbps (actual, real throughput - the network is meant to be HSDPA 7.2mbps) at all times almost everywhere regardless of demand or time of day. why doesn't AT&T just build a proper network???

to be honest i have never ever in my life seen any degradation in network performance even during european champions league time when thousands of people are streaming video. why all the excuses? the network in the US is simply useless by the looks of it.

how much does the average iPhone user pay per month in the USA? I pay €19 a month for all calls, all SMS, and 3GB of data a month (calls and texts to all EU nations by the way), and i would never accept these kind of problems even when paying this amount.

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot...

...to mention that its free to receive a call or text message too.

[R Callan]

Titular title

The only thing resembling a joke regarding Fake "Steve" a.k.a. Dan Lyings a.k.a. Dan Lyons is Lyons himself. If he was to follow the advice in the BG's song "I Started a Joke" , either physically or metaphorically, then he would do the world a service ---- finally.

[Anonymous Coward]

fine with me

I just finished disconnecting my AT&T services, changing wireless providers and home landline to cable voip. So go ahead and crash AT&T on Friday. I changed services to save bucks, AT&T sucks (dollars from your wallet).

[Jack Ketch]

iFight Club

Anyone else reminded of Project Mayhem? I wonder if the Space Monkeys will be going after Fake Steve's balls....

[DrXym]

If the service is so crap...

... how about just ditching the service? Cancel your plan and find a better one.

[Linbox]

RE: DrXym

There is only one network provider in the USA. If you want a jesus phone, you can only have it on AT&T.

[Gulfie]

Actually, no...

2000 are selfish, 20 are anti, the rest just want to carru on using their phones as God, sorry, Steve, intended. Not sure how you can extrapolate to 99% of AT&T iPhone users from a group of 2000 who want to do something and a group of 20 who feel strongly enough the other way.

[Scho]

@AC 07:19

Yeah but if everything is blocked by the firewall who cares how fast you can download you smug sod! :o)

[An-D]

Doh

Austria, not Australia... The 'al' makes all the difference

Paris cos she would have made the same mistake

[Anonymous Coward]

al makes all the difference

You may be interested to know that the vienna boys choir is on after the hippo races every Tuesday night.

[Real Ale is Best]

@Scho

That would be Australia with the all encompassing firewall, not AC's Austria.

[BeefStirFry]

Won't take much...

Won't take much to take down O2... If anyone else wants to join in, lets do the same thing at 12pm GMT on Friday.... Then AT&T will have about 5 hours to prepare for the same thing...

[Jacqui Smith's DVD Collection!]

T-Mobile

Great idea, this needs to be done to T-mobile!

[No, I will not fix your computer]

Is this the plot from The life of Brian?

He's not the Messiah, he's a very naughty boy!

I'm not the Messiah.......

........only the true Messiah would deny his divinity.

[Andus McCoatover]

Surely, all AT&T has to do...

Is nothing.

Voice calls will still get through, having far, far less throughput. They'll use the 2G network as a fallback, anyway. No need to worry about 'pregnant mothers' or emergency calls.

[Anonymous Coward]

Game on...

"attempt to deliberately degrade service on a network that provides critical communications services for more than 80 million customers" - yeh, right. You mean, a crumbling network that can't support 80 million customers and doesn't want them to be able to voice their dissatisfaction at how bad it is.

[-tim]

How the mighty have fallen

Years ago the AT&T long distance network was built to deal with all the calls during Mother's Day.

[Jess--]

The title is required, and must contain letters and/or digits

these days they should build a network that can handle all the traffic at midnight on new years eve

[JRallo]

How to know when you have a bad network?

When 2K people can bring down the network that supports 80M by simply using up all of the bandwidth they can use.

[Anonymous Coward]

Or rather...

By using the FULL BANDWIDTH THEY ARE PAYING FOR!!!

[PirateSlayer]

Project Mayhem

Project Mayhem begins...

Rules:

You don't ask questions.

You don't ask questions.

No excuses.

No lies.

Don't trust Fake Steve.

[James Thomas]

What a pussy!

As if AT&T are going to care if they all turn their iPhones off.

This sort of thing is the only way to actually get their attention. Get them bad press and they might actually start to care.

[Anonymous Coward]

go for it.

at&t is a company. it is your moral duty to fuck them in every way possible. they fuck their customers every day. time for some payback.

[Anonymous Coward]

Austria?

You mean they can build an excellent phone network that spans a whole 82000 sq km? Wow, that's amazing. Do you think they could scale it up to cover 120000 sq km? Because that's the size of just one state in the US -- and not one of the biggest ones, either. Oh, and with more people per square kilometer, too.

So yeah, just get DT or whoever built your network to bring some stuff over, I'm sure they could deploy a top-notch national wireless network in no time flat. If they did, I'd switch -- AT&T sucks! But until you get our awesome Austria-Net up and running, I gotta go with somebody.