“‘As far as I can tell, there’s been no impact at all,’ wrote Dan Lyons in The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs at 12:19 p.m. ‘My iPhone is working just the same as ever,'” Elmer-DeWitt reports.
“It was Lyons, writing as Fake Steve Jobs, who on Monday had encouraged iPhone owners to overwhelm AT&T’s network by turning on a data-intensive app and running it for an hour. Operation Chokehold, as he dubbed it, was intended as a protest against AT&T’s threatened imposition of data usage fees,” Elmer-DeWitt reports. “By Wednesday, after the FCC’s chief of homeland security bureau issued a stern warning, Lyons began to have second thoughts.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Unsurprisingly, Dan “Royal Asshole” Lyons fails again.
What a blowhard.
I was supposed to do that with my phone?
Well I sure wasted 5 minutes….
Publicity stunt. Lyons is one of Them.
AT&T;will have to charge for usage – like everyone else does everywhere else in the world…
The network is designed as a shared resource. Those who use more of that resource should pay for it – else everyone else is paying for their usage…
Fake…
“The network is designed as a shared resource. Those who use more of that resource should pay for it – else everyone else is paying for their usage…”
Tah Dahhhh
I shouldn’t be penalized (can’t get on) because of the usage habits of others. Use it more, pay more. Simple.
O2 UK – unlimited data plan, no issues whatsoever.
What a bunch of idiots.
“As far as I can tell, there’s been no impact at all”
Now, you need to try the opposite test. Have nobody use their network for an hour and see if there’s a difference… Then you can tell if the network is working as good as ever, or as crappy as ever…
This is the exact same Daniel Lyons who authored that infamous 2005 Forbes article, which called bloggers a “lynch mob”. I guess he was just trying to make sure his earlier article was accurate.
@ byronic – “AT&T will have to charge for usage – like everyone else does everywhere else in the world”… and by “everyone else” you’re apparently excluding O2 UK, along with the other carriers who don’t actually charge for usage. If you’re trying to make an argument for tiered pricing, you might want to start by checking your facts. Just a thought.
MW: audience
If AT&T;’s network is as bad as some say, what if your were in the normal area of dropped calls and fluctuating bars? How could your tell the dif? Maybe you might have thought the chokehold was a success and that that will teach AT&T;!
Of course the real issue is that the Fake Steve, doesn’t command the same response as the Real Steve and definitely, or say a Rush Limbaugh crowd that has been known to melt servers or cripple US Captiol phone switchboards! Wonder what would have happen to AT&T;network if he so commanded?
Not everyone thinks AT&T;’s service is bad. I don’t. But then again I don’t live in San Fran or NY. Still, AT&T;has been more reliable, faster and better customer service than Verizon for me. And I didn’t have to buy a phone crippled by Verizon so I’d have to pay them to do things the phone could do as manufactured. That alone will keep me from considering Verizon for a loooong time.
Your mileage may vary…
It only works if enough people KNOW about it. Regardless My phone seems to work just fine with the telemarketers and other people I don’t know calling it just fine. Just more grist for my Kill File with a silent ringtone. It can sit over there and vibrate itself silly for all I care. And here I was just sitting around unaware of such a “protest”.
Good name for a Lyon Bast–d
Yawn.
Must have been a fake Operation Chokehold.
No surprise here. Now, if STEPHEN COLBERT organized something like this, ATT’s network would utterly collapse. Be afraid, be very afraid of the Colbert Nation!!
FCC should fine him!
@byronic
You said:
“AT&T;will have to charge for usage – like everyone else does everywhere else in the world…
The network is designed as a shared resource. Those who use more of that resource should pay for it – else everyone else is paying for their usage…”
That seems to be in conflict with the so called unlimited data plan that AT&T;charges for.
Now, you need to try the opposite test. Have nobody use their network for an hour and see if there’s a difference… Then you can tell if the network is working as good as ever, or as crappy as ever…
From basic quantum physics, measuring a phenomena changes that very phenomena.
Or in this case, no one will be using the AT&T;network, except everyone who is connected to that network to see how fast it is.
So, when the exclusivity deal ends & you can use the iPhone on other networks, will AT&T;service automatically improve when all the complainers jump ship for other carriers?
@Chuck,
I think you meant to say, “Be afraid, be very afraid of the Cubert Nation!!”
Why can I not imagine ATT charging LESS than $30/month for data for “light” users? After all, if we’re charging for use, and “unlimited” is $30, only the top 5% or so of data users should have to pay $30 – right?
That’s why ATT hasn’t tiered their service yet. For the people who aren’t part of the 5% of the customers they claim is slamming their network, they’d have to charge less – or explain to the FCC why they don’t have to charge less – to the other 95%. For now they’re just content to bitch about it and rattle their sabers.
Every provider must provide the content they sell. The information, the bandwidth, the time … whatever it is they are selling. When it comes to bandwidth, there can only be so much to go around, so much to be used before either new users are blocked or all users simply .. slow …. down.
If the provider has more bandwidth available than its users are using, they can easily brag “unlimited usage”. If you don’t, you can choose to pay to add more or to limit your users. If you are adding more, the money has to come from somewhere. Two choices might be to boost the fees for those who want to use is in the top … 5%?, 10%? … or to add a penalty for those who use more than “X” bandwidth in a month. The former looks better to providers in that they get the money regardless of the customer’s usage, they get it from perhaps a quarter of all customers, and they can label the plan “unlimited usage”.
As MacAdvocate said, they’d have to charge less for those who plan to use less … but my expectation would be that ATT would simply charge $45 (or more) for the “unlimited” and leave the $30 in place for the rest. If they cut the majority even to $25 they would have to boost the higher tier pricing well over $50 … perhaps to $100? … just to break even. A hard sell.
Did this guy really think people turned OFF their iPhone useage? It’s hard to get a choke hold by turning on your iPhone at a specified date and time, when you are using it anyway. The guy has no clue.
Even if this was real, only monkeys would participate.