Connect with us

Hardware

AT&T Changes the Seasonal Calendar and Promises MMS on 9/25

Published

on

When Apple released the new iPhone 3GS and the updated OS 3.0 software, there was much consternation about AT&T’s inability to provide one of the key new features that Apple was touting, MMS. Other carriers around the world had it ready on launch, but for those of us here in the good old USA, we were told by AT&T that it would roll out later this summer.

Well, now according to AT&T’s website, it will roll out September 25 in a software update. There’s lots of talk about how AT&T is working to make its network better and more capable of handling the traffice and yada, yada yada. Word is thought that AT&T is rolling out improvements in some larger urban areas (San Fransisco and New York), so here’s hoping they finally figured out that the rest of the world was on to their bait and switch routines.

No mention of the fact that AT&T has now changed the seasonal calendar so that summer extends beyond the autumnal equinox. But then I guess the only calendar they are looking at in the AT&T offices is the one that has that exclusivity deal moving closer to expiration. Also no word how this is going to affect pricing.

Now about that tethering thing? Oh, yeah, something about when hell freezes over, as I recall.

UPDATE: Apparently AT&T is putting out a full court press on this one. According to an AT&T rep who popped me an email about this post:

There’s no additional charge for MMS to customers with a text messaging bundle and no separate monthly charge to use if you don’t have a bundle.

And, regarding tethering, by its nature, this function could exponentially increase traffic on the network, and we need to ensure that some of our current upgrades are in place before we can deliver the expanded functionality with the excellent performance that customers expect.   We expect to offer tethering in the future.

5 Comments

5 Comments

  1. Travis Carnahan

    09/03/2009 at 1:58 pm

    Would be nice if they would upgrade the edge network in the middle of missouri so that we could actually use the data plan. I can sit at work with 5 bars of signal and not have any data move!

  2. Xavier

    09/03/2009 at 2:22 pm

    AT&T’s tubes are about to get really clogged w/ a bunch of MMS. I still think the #1 priority for AT&T should be to make it possible to make a call whenever you want…

  3. Kevin Purcell

    09/03/2009 at 4:30 pm

    Translation: We can’t handle the traffic because our network is sub par and so don’t hold your breath on the tethering. MMS is coming because we know that come next year we will be losing a ton of customers and we hope to stem the massive sucking sound away from AT&T once exclusivity ends.

  4. Ronald A. Dowty

    09/04/2009 at 7:36 am

    It’s about time.

  5. ben

    09/20/2009 at 10:35 am

    AT&T service has actually gotten worse in the last few weeks in NYC, if you can imagine that. i have tried to find reasons the poor quality could result from my phone (maybe i am in dead zones all the time, perhaps i dropped it without realizing it, etc) but the growing number of complaints from peers and coworkers has ruled this out.

    in my opinion the worst part about all of this is AT&T’s response to customers’ complaints. rather than acknowledge the problem and meet the issue head on by doing whatever they can to keep customer satisfaction steady, the company denies culpability and insists the problem is a device/user issue. after hours on the phone with att customer service, and 2 dropped calls during that conversation, att insisted i talk with tech support to troubleshoot my phone before they would consider granting me anything beyond a 60 dollar rebate (for 3+ months of horrendous service). it was finally *tech support(!!)* that approved additional money back for the terrible service, acknowledging that the only other thing they would have done would be to notify an engineer of the area experiencing bad service.

    to this tech support rep’s credit, she saved AT&T a customer that was more than ready to drop the carrier. after all, spending 150 dollars to terminate my contract for a cheaper/better phone/service was more appealing than spending over 1,000 dollars in the next year to remain with AT&T. after i purchased my phone a while ago i mused to myself (and incidentally wrote a letter to AT&T) that it’s the phone, not the carrier touting “fewest dropped calls”, that would make the iphone a success…and i think that remains true. but at some point even the iphone won’t save save a sinking ship, and AT&T better get their house in order, fast, or they will realize this very shortly after MMS drags service quality down even more.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.