corporate behavior, and network scale
@GotThumbs, I disagree to some extent. It sounds like AT&T was playing the US Corporate game. This takes the form of having either subcontractors or subordinates who are told to meet some impossible task (impossible without cutting corners), then when cutting corners has consequences, act just shocked, SHOCKED!, that that would ever happen under their watch. In this case, tell subcontractors "X and Y *must* be done in time Z", then stick fingers in ears when told "This can't be done in time Z." The contractors get it done n time Z by cutting corners.
A few store chains have had systematic problems with either sleazy sales tactics (Best Buy), or bosses fudging hours off employees time cards (Walmart). Again, for the sleazy sales tactics "corporate" would tell store managers they *must* sell say Y magazine subscriptions, or $X worth of electronics, or so on, but set this limit unrealistically high. Then when they can't meet that limit, they resort to the sleazy sales tactics since otherwise they'd be fired. If they get called out for it, well, they then corporate claims they never advocated that kind of behavior. Time card thing is similar, corporate tells stores they must run with $X labor (which is less than the minimum needed to run the store), then are shocked when they find out the bosses were messing with cards. Of course in cases like these the bosses who actually follow the rules don't meet sales or cost controls and get fired, the ones who "fudge" things stay on, unless they make it onto the 5'oclock news (at which point of course corporate acts surprised this kind of thing could ever happen, and probably fires them.)
That said, for those saying these figures sound shockingly high... Verizon's network is (by geographic area) the largest on the planet., and I remember reading they had 80,000 cell sites about 10 years ago (when their network had about 1/3rd-1/2 the coverage area it has now.) AT&T claims 256,000 sites (they cover a smaller coverage area, but for whatever reason keep having to cram in more and more cell sites compared to Verizon, even though both have large amounts of spectrum...) I mean, the death rate should be zero, but I think even if you did things like AT&T (give subcontractors a deadline that makes them freeball it, then act all shocked), rolling out a new network in a third-world country would on average result in zero deaths, because you aren't dealing with 256,000 cell sites.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
