AT&T Wireless Makes Good To Customers Affected By Systems Glitch
Last week I mentioned that AT&T Wireless had major difficulties with a provisioning system upgrade starting November 1, and that they could not activate a subset of new GSM customers. This week, AT&T Wireless has offered a rebate to affected customers. While the rebate should make good with the affected customers, it's clear that AT&T Wireless didn't observe an North American wireless industry rule: DON'T MESS WITH YOUR SYSTEMS NOV-DEC. This rule-of-thumb exists because a huge number of new subscribers apply for wireless service during the shopping season, and that itself puts a burden on systems. Engineering staff need to be free and available to put out any fires that spark up, not tied down to lower-priority projects that could just as well be done in January. So why did this fluke happen? Probably because the FCC deadline for WLNP was Nov. 24, and carriers all scrambled to have specific systems in place by that date. Verizon and Sprint launched PTT, AT&T Wireless launched EDGE (and there is ample evidence that Verizon is having major hiccups with PTT scalability, too). While LNP is a long-term good thing for consumers and telecom, I stick by what I said in April, the timing of WLNP could have been better...so could the timing of the AT&T Wireless system upgrade.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
