Cheshire Cat Photo Blog(...said the Cat: 'we're all mad here....')

Customers of AT&T’s 3G wireless service in San Francisco on Friday evening had difficulties making calls, sending and receiving text messages, and accessing data.

Didn’t we just talk about this stuff?

At about 4 PM on Friday afternoon, AT&T experienced a “hardware issue” in San Francisco that disrupted its 3G wireless network within the city, according to AT&T spokesman, Mark Siegel, and reported by CNET. The hardware issue, which was not further described, was fixed by around 6:15 PM Pacific Time, and the 3G network has been working ever since, according to Siegel and reported by CNET.

(I am just glad that I no longer work in some of the areas that I used to, or I might have had to DEAL with it, depending on the “hardware” involved! )

AT&T’s older and slower 2.5G EDGE or GSM technologies were unaffected, and the devices of most customers could switch to the slower networks to make calls and transmit and receive data. Still, many customers noticed problems with 3G service and reported the problems on Twitter. Some customers said that they were unable to access voice, data, or SMS messages at all.

The CNET article reviews some of the points made in earlier discussions, notes the AT&T and Verizon lawsuits (both dropped) against each other (why enrich the lawyers? ), and correctly summarizes AT&T’s dilemma:

“It must continue to market the iPhone and all its bandwidth-hungry applications in order to continue growing its subscriber base, but it also needs to curb data usage until its network can handle the additional load.”

All in all, AT&T appears to be navigating “between Scylla and Charybdis,” seemingly having failed to plan for the success that it is now experiencing and reminding all of us to “be careful what we wish for.”

-Bill at

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