AT&T The Missing Carrier at Apple Blossom Festival

The Apple Blossom Festival is an annual spring event here in Winchester, VA. We just experienced this year’s rite of spring these past few days. The entire town shuts down for 3 or 4 days for parties, parades, parties, events, parties, celebrities, parties, and well, parties. The downtown walking mall is turned into a giant midway with food booths, hawkers, and the like. Thousands of folks come into town to celebrate and this year was no different. Each of the last several years I’ve seen more and more folks using smartphones to snap photos and text those they are trying to find and this year was no different.

As I wandered around the midway I saw T-Mobile, Sprint, and Verizon represented with various marketing efforts, but surprisingly no AT&T. After Friday night’s excursion I thought I might have missed them, but a repeat of the journey on Saturday yielded the same result.

The good news is that it seemed like all carriers have upgraded their networks (or brought in portable towers) so that folks could actually use the devices. I didn’t attend last year due to family business, but the previous year(s) it was tough to get a a signal with so many folks clogging up the bandwidth.

Anyway, here are a few shots from this year’s Apple Blossom Festival and you can see more at this Flickr feed if you’re interested.