How AT&T is destroying the iPhone

AT&T is running a series of TV ads, aimed at folks thinking of buying the new Verizon-run iPhone, claiming that Verizon's phones don't let you talk on the phone and surf the Web at the same time. And it's true, they don't.

But funny thing. It's not entirely clear that AT&T's phone lets you talk or surf because you can't get a g-damn signal in parts of the largest cities in America, now including Washington, DC, our nation's capital.

I was a happy iPhone customer going back to the very first day they sold that very first phone, and a happy AT&T customer going back to the year 2000. So yes, I stood in line for hours with my friend Ari's wife Julie, just to get my hands on the iPhone that first day. I think I've earned the right to gripe.

Why so unhappy? Because at the two most important locations in my life - my neighborhood in DC and my hometown of Chicago - AT&T's iPhone reception is suddenly bordering on zero. The weird thing, it wasn't always this way. I mean, sure, AT&T's reception in the Chicago area was seriously crappy in parts, like down to one bar at times while inside, but if you sprinted strategically to the nearest window and kissed it every time you got a call, you'd likely be able to finish your call.

Not anymore.

What was once seriously mediocre service at my parents' place has now turned into 1 bar hell, even outside, and even when you drive around to other nearby suburbs - entire area is now, inexplicably, suddenly, a dead zone. When I talked to AT&T about it, with the help of Steve Jobs, who I'm pretty sure forwarded my email to him to the nice folks at AT&T (otherwise, how did they know to contact me?), I was told that the problem was trees. You see, my town has a lot of them, and being such a flat town, with trees and all, it's very hard for AT&T to get a signal to your home.

Sure. Because no other town in America is flat and has trees.

And, that explanation still didn't explain why service had degraded in my town over the past year - did the trees suddenly suffer an unnatural growth spurt from global warming? And why weren't the trees a problem - or that much of a problem, a year ago?

I will say that AT&T was kind enough to send me two of their amplifier towers to help me use my cell phone at my parents' place, since I quite literally was no longer able to make a single phone call, or use the iPhone's data network, in this rather populated part of the Chicago area (but those mini tower devices, I believe, only help you place calls, not receive them). But then I got back to DC and a funny thing happened. Just a few days ago, AT&T's iPhone network suddenly evaporated in one of the most popular neighborhoods in town, which just happens to be where Joe and I both live. It's gone. Sometimes. I used to get full coverage, 5 bars, all the time, inside and out, when I was in town. Suddenly last week, I started getting one bar, a lot, in my apartment, on the street, and today right outside Joe's place, a good 6 blocks from me. Never happened before. As of a week ago, happens all the time, now.

This is outside Joe's house yesterday:



And this is at my place the other day:



And I turned the phone off and on again, didn't help.

Then I remembered what my other friend Joe had recently told me - he's had the iPhone from the beginning as well, and suddenly his home in DC, in a different part of town, became an AT&T dead zone about four months ago, and has statyed that way. I remember thinking "isn't that odd," until last week when it happened to me.

Now, if the guy from AT&T was telling me the truth, and somehow the trees back home in Chicago grew exponentially in the last year, then how has that same degradation of service now happened in two different neighborhoods in Washington, DC that used to have excellent AT&T iphone coverage and now have next to none, depending on the moment of the day? And how does the coverage wax and wane - such as, right now, it's back to five bars again for the first time in a week? And how did my dad get 5 bars on his cheapo AT&T not-an-iPhone when I was getting one bar on my iPhone, in the same location - if in fact those darn trees were blocking the signal?

When I talked to some Apple employees in the Chicago area, they told me the problem was AT&T. The service sucks in the burbs, I was told, because AT&T simply can't handle the capacity of all the users they have. Not my problem. If AT&T doesn't have the capacity to sell any more iPhones, than it shouldn't be selling any more iPhones. What they're doing right now, if this is true, is setting themselves up for one hell of a class action law suit. I didn't pay for a phone that sometimes works.

The coverage back home in the Chicago area is still crappy, even with the towers AT&T gave me. The tower only covers half of my parents' place. As soon as I get outside, and drive anywhere in the multi-suburb area, I can't use my iPhone, there simly is no service. We're talking Chicago, folks. And now Washington, DC. And from reports I hear from friends, NYC as well. That would be the nation's capital, the largest city, and the third largest city. You don't really have "nationwide service" when you leave out Washington, DC, New York and Chicago.

I really don't want to switch to Verizon - I don't want a CDMA phone, and I want to be able to multi-task when I'm on the phone. Then again, I'd like to think I'm paying $80 a month for something more than a shiny coaster.