In areas where the data is heavy, but not heavy enough to take out the towers, this could clog their fiber links potentially causing throughput issues with other carriers or ISPs as well.

Here’s a suggestion for AT&T, don’t FORCE all iPhone users to have an unlimited data plan and offer some lower cost, sensible plans (not something ridiculous like just 30MB). Encourage and reward people for helping you out. If you want unlimited data, your price stays the same and it’s really unlimited. If you use less, you pay less.

That’s the message that I want to send to AT&T, and this protest idea won’t send that message.

I’m just saying that there are many ways to get a message to a company that don’t involve sabotage nor leaving.

Who ever made this up, is a total dumbass. Get a life.

If yo take the towers ‘down’, people who need to use it can’t. Imagine you need to phone 911 and you can’t, because some idiot thinks it’s a good idea to screw around with cell towers. Dumbass.

People are massively ignorant if they think any network should be able to support every user sucking it dry. If you truly want that, expect MUCH higher bills. The only way service providers can possibly make a profit is to oversubscribe the system. I’m not defending AT&T’s network. It can obviously use some work. This is just the most idiotic idea ever.

If my primary interest was 3G service, I would have bought a phone on a provider that offered 3G service in my area. It is as simple as that.

If these idiots who continuously have a problem with their service then leave AT&T and go to whatever provider actually WORKS for you, rather than complain and attempt to take down a network that you were stupid enough to sign-up on.

I’m all for protests but some of you chowderheads need to realize a knee-jerk reaction like this might feel effective (in that 7 year old tantrum way) but will likely work against everyone.

I merely meant that this is as pointless as that gas strike. No one is going to do it cause it’s purely lacking all common sense.

Essentially AT&T needs to be shamed (for so many reasons) and Apple needs the incentive to move away from them as a sole provider. This may make that happen sooner than later.

i heart At&T … they sell my favorite phone

By the way it is illegal to attempt to bring down any line of communications, Fake Steve is an idiot looking to land in some hot water real fast.

The only thing this does is make certain that there will be a clamp for iphone users (most every carrier now has a 5GB cap, its surprising the iphone didnt have such a cap)

If it handles normal to heavy load fine and only goes down under a concerted effort to disrupt, then the word fragile is entirely nonsensical in this context. The iPhone brought a nearly 5000x increase in data traffic on ATT and sure there are problems, but VZW was down in most of four states the other day without that much data traffic. ATT has more smartphones, especially more data hungry smartphones than any other carrier.

I can tell you that I will be one pissed off puppy if a bunch of complainers with nothing better to do crash the damn network and I can’t make a friggin call or send an email.

The point of this flash mob isn’t to bring down the network, it’s to bring to light the weakness of the network. If the network does go down on Friday, the people who participate in this idea won’t be blameless, but neither will the company that built such fragile infrastructure.

Either way, this is all very interesting.

Fake Steve, do us all a favor, go ahead and run your iPhone continuously and download huge amount of data so that AT&T can say you are trying to damage their network and cancel you. Then go to Verizon and see what kind of data service you get.

..I’m giving my money to Sprint.

FS often attempts to put into words what he believes Real Steve is thinking, in the most preposterous way.

Calm down every body.

There is a story on PC World ( http://tinyurl.com/yae8pvp ) that the iPhone’s dodgy radios are to blame for much of the black eye that AT&T is getting. Dropped call rates in high use markets like NYC are said to be almost non-existent for other ATT 3G users:

According to Paul Carter, president of Global Wireless Solutions, the results of its extensive, nationwide testing of the different wireless networks show that AT&T’s network, contrary to user claims, is vastly superior to competing networks. “AT&T’s data throughput is 40 to 50 percent higher than the competition, including Verizon.”

The implication is that the AT&T network is phenomenal…unless you use an iPhone. Roger Entner, senior vice president of telecommunications research at Nielsen, claims that the iPhone has engineering flaws with the chipset connecting to the AT&T wireless towers, resulting in inferior voice and data reliability.

Like @SFguy, I think Fake Steve, even if posting this tongue in cheek is setting himself up for legal problems.

Fake Steve needs a new job… or something to keep him occupied.

Dumb, dumb, dumb.

I have a friend who got so frustrated with his sporadically working refrigerator that he he punched the fridge… and naturally broke his hand. He was in a cast for two months, and needed physical therapy to be able to write normally again. I always thought this was the stupidest, most counterproductive display of outrage I’d ever heard of. But Fake Steve Jobs is suddenly in the running…

brilliant idea. (or not)

Just one of the many points on this issue floating through my head; let’s say this is successful and the network gets overloaded and crashes/becomes unusable. What of some AT&T subscriber has an emergency and needs to dial 911 but can’t because the network is down?

Also, I doubt if any other network would really be doing any better under the strain of the influx of all the data hungry iPhone users. Let’s not forget that we as iPhone users have increased the load on the AT&T network by an unprecidented high figure (which I’m failing to recall right now). Let’s be reasonable people!

That’s like me telling somebody that’s burning to death that they are on fire…

NOT!…are you mad?! This isn’t like the gas price crisis where all the green thumbs can go a day without driving to dent the wallets of gas co. CEOs (didn’t work mind you)…this most of our only ways of communication, and if we crash that, or even stall it, who knows how long ATT will take to fix it…

So count me out…