If you haven’t already heard, some disgruntled iPhone users are setting up a coup against AT&T to happen this Friday.
The anger stems back to a comment made by AT&T’s Ray de la Vega regarding the amount of broadband consumed by smartphone users. Supposedly around 40% of AT&T’s broadband is sucked up by just 3% of users (from an engadget post). Now AT&T wants to make up for this with usage meters and tiered pricing. So long “Unlimited” plans.
Earlier this week, an “Operation Chokehold” post was written by Daniel Lyons (a.k.a. Fake Steve) on the satirical blog Secret Diary of Steve Jobs. The “operation” calls for all iPhone users to run a data intensive app for an hour at noon Pacific time on Friday, December 18. The goal is to “overwhelm the AT&T data network and bring it to its knees” in hopes that it will “Send the message to AT&T that we are sick of their substandard network and sick of their abusive comments”.
Whether the post was a hoax or a real call to action, people are responding. Supporters are popping up all over the web. The Facebook event has 408 confirmed attendees and the Facebook page has 1,285 fans (as of 10:30 MST on 12/16). Below are some interesting graphs tracking recent tweets containing “operation chokehold” (from Twitter StreamGraphs and Twitter Venn).
On the other side of the spectrum, there are plenty of people who think this plan is ridiculous. Recent blog posts across the web are focusing on the skewed judgement behind “Operation Chokehold”. Erik Zeman points out that it is wrong and maybe even illegal to willingly participate in something that could prevent other paying customers from being able to use AT&T’s services. It could even result in lawsuits, or iPhone users being cut from AT&T.
I can’t help but wonder what AT&T is thinking. Its been a challenging few months, begining with Verizon’s “There’s a Map for That” ad, followed by AT&T’s mediocre response-threatened legal actions and ads which were criticized by many. Now they must decide the best way to approach this attack by their own customers.
It seems like there would be a better solution for disgruntled iPhone users to get their point across, like the iPhone app AT&T Mark the Spot which notifies AT&T when there is a disruption in a user’s coverage. If inducing change from AT&T is the goal, automated reports of legitimate coverage issues might be more effective than threats from a handful of irate users. Or a few intelligent iPhone users could figure out a third-party solution and present it to AT&T. According to this NY Times post, the iPhone may be more of the problem than AT&T’s coverage.
With out technology and social media, this “operation” would probably never be more than a thought. Its remarkable that we have reached a point on the convergence of society and technology where people can be motivated immediately, over the internet, to work together across the globe for a common belief. But its scary that the people being motivated may not be fully informed and the actions they are willing to take may not be the best solution.
Other companies can learn from AT&T’s mistakes. If clients are unsatisfied with your product or services, its important that you immediately communicate what you are doing to fix the issue. Not many companies are prepared to handle a social media coup.
In an interesting twist of fate, the Secret Diary of Steve Jobs mentioned in a post this morning that they are having issues posting new content to the blog, and readers are having issues viewing previous posts. Its weird how Karma works…
Thanks for your comment! Have you been to Camino?
Have a great weekend.
Adam
Nope, I’ve never been to Camino. But it sounds like they are doing thing right!