AT&T says NY is “not ready for iPhone,” and that’s just goddamn friggin peachy

What the hell is wrong with AT&T? Now there are stories out saying they won’t sell iPhones to anyone in New York City. When a reporter called customer service to see if that could really be true, the customer service person said, “New York is not ready for the iPhone.”

New York. The biggest city in the United States, a place where I’m told many business and finance and media type people are living, cannot have the iPhone anymore? Does it say that somewhere in AT&T’s ads? Somehow I must have missed the little asterisk after the “We’ve got the fastest 3G network” phrase — the asterisk that takes you to a little disclaimer that says, “Except your phone won’t work for shit in the largest city in the United States.”

Update: Now there are other reports that AT&T is saying they’re doing this because of “fraudulent activity” in New York.

Honestly I’m just freaking out right now. Katie is here feeding me Ativans and I’m just chewing them up like breath mints and wishing I was Dr. David Banner and could turn into the Hulk and start throwing cars through the windows of the AT&T headquarters. Randall Stephenson can’t be reached.

In short: this is a huge company that’s going off the fucking rails. It’s bad enough they can’t run their own wireless network. Now they can’t even get their lines of bullshit straight either.

You can’t believe the other shit that’s going on behind the scenes, and the way they are trying to stifle reporting on their problems. One example and I’m not naming names — last week they bought up all the ad space on a very big tech blog, and blitzed the site with AT&T ads. And, perhaps coincidentally, a critical story (which we heard about because they have to call us too) somehow, by some miracle, never saw the light of print. Amazing.

You know, I was sort of feeling bad about Operation Chokehold. Now I’m thinking we didn’t go far enough. If anyone has ideas about what to do next, I’m all ears.


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