Fake Steve is rustling some feathers this week with his Operation Chokehold, a planned bit of corporate disobedience against AT&T. He’s telling iPhone users to go nuts with the data on Friday, December 18, just to show AT&T’s CEO De La Vega, the man who suggested education would encourage users not to use his network so much, what uneducated users really can do to his preciously twee airwaves.
The call to action:
Subject: Operation Chokehold
On Friday, December 18, at noon Pacific time, we will attempt to overwhelm the AT&T data network and bring it to its knees. The goal is to have every iPhone user (or as many as we can) turn on a data intensive app and run that app for one solid hour. Send the message to AT&T that we are sick of their substandard network and sick of their abusive comments. THe idea is we’ll create a digital flash mob. We’re calling it in Operation Chokehold. Join us and speak truth to power!
I would do it, obviously, but I’m overseas right now and if I turned on data I could buy De La Vega a new yacht with the roaming charges.
Now I’m all for a bit of fun, obviously, but isn’t it ironic that this is what passes for political action these days? Our forefathers went to union meetings, we use Pandora all day. Oh well. At least AT&T can’t hire the Pinkertons to bust our heads.
Dear iPhone user,
You will be breaking the EULA per line #4658 if you decide to participate into this flash mob. This flash mob will also raise the national security level to RED and you could be tried as a terrorist disrupting the peace.
We love your business so please don’t do this.
Sincerely,
De La Vega
hopefully luke wilson is there so we can choke the ‘green gas out of him’ AT&T needs help – daddy apple to the rescue: http://bit.ly/att-is-calling-their-big-daddy-apple-for-help
If he is there hopefully the mob will scare him into running away….burn some of that fat off.
Boyfriend has packed on the pounds since his Bottle Rocket days. Ya gotta watch out for your heart, Luke!
you love our business but you say we could be tried as a terrorist? yeah, that makes me like you SO much more. thanks for the threat
Pics or it didn’t happen!!!!!
Haven’t you heard? According to the NY Times, the problem is the iPhone. Not the network. AT&T actually beats Verizon when it comes to coverage.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/13/business/13digi.html?_r=1
I’ll believe that when my laptop 3g card provides the same level of service as Verizon. Right now it’s awful.
NY Times… haha haha haha
Except the esteemed “reporter” for the new york times forgot the fact that the iPhone works just fine in other countries.
Damn your logical argument that gets in the way of my blind hatred toward Apple!
Oh I can help with THAT. I think APPLE is equally responsible for not choosing a network more responsibly for their iPhone. AND, since AT&T has insisted that the problem is not with their service, it’s the phone, how many people have gone to Apple and bought a new phone? I almost did! I think there should be a class action suit by EVERYONE who did buy another phone against BOTH of them.
Not only does AT&T epic fail on network coverage, the maps that Verizon has shown in their TV ads actually show ATT 3G coverage in areas where ATT doesn’t own the towers in addition to their own towers, and in those locations, ATT throttles your network speed.
lol that first guys looks like a mix of sadam hussein and charles manson
Just goes to show how much the iPhone and ATT suck. Maybe Apple should help witht he problem like RIM (Blackberry) does, with network efficiency and optimization.
The iPhone is the MySpace of smartphones.
You are confused… you mean android is the myspace of smart-phones…. iPhone is more of the Facebook of smart-phones to use your analogy. Sleeker more controlled and simple.
I would say the Android would be the slashdot or Tom’s Hardware of smartphones.
I would say none of these metaphors fit the bill
Netposer
Yup, the name fits.
Good arguement, except RIM isn’t a carrier, and is well known for their outages, because they apparently don’t know how to build failover systems.
When the network crashes, we should all submit problem reports on AT&T’s app.
Shouldn’t the method be:
Track the user agent and continuously load large graphics in Safari?
This is stupid, you’re going to punish a whole lot of people who use their phone for business by choking the network.
You know what’s a better sign? Everyone just LEAVE ATT and don’t give them any more money if you aren’t happy.
Besides, ANY network if everyone got on would bring it to it’s knees. I would be very curious as to how Verizon could have handled the mass number of iPhone users 2yrs ago.
Agreed. What do you say to the person or people who might need to use their AT&T phone at that time for an emergency call?
umm… are you both idiots? This is all about DATA, NOT VOICE! Internet, not phone… email, not voicemail… get the picture?
What happened to civility? Sheesh. Are you always this rude?
Well, he did make his point :)
There are people who rely on AT&T for emergency calls?
Voice & data network are separate. And most people don’t have 3G phones, so they won’t notice a thing. But they’ll get enough calls to show them whose boss.
The same thing will happen to them during Fail Friday as would happen to them any other time they relied on ATT for emergency calls – they’ll die. It’s called “Darwinism.”
Love this.
Let’s do it and destroy AT&T for a while.
Then I’ll continue to pay them because I love my Iphone.
Damn it!
What would happen if all the CDMA/GSM (Storm/Storm2/Tour) blackberry users on Verizon switched their network from 1XEV to GSM under Network options would this help cripple them as well?
How is it that everyone forgets about us blackberry and HTC users. We have the same cruddy 3g service the Iphone users do. So how about a few tears for us too.
I just upgraded to the 9700 and have already turned off 3g. Was loosing calls left and right. So for all those that say its the phone not the network. Fine a blackberry bold walk around making calls with 3g on for a day. Then Flip it back to edge for a day. IT IS THE NETWORK….specificaly the much maligned 3g network.
Yeah.. umm… I use T-Mobile and have no problems with my 3g coverage or network. More to the point, this is a revolt against ATT for what they are planning to do…
Agreed. These kids should stop crying, ditch ATT, and pay that stupid contract cancellation fee with the money they save at T-Mobile.
What money, you say? The money I save every month with the fact that I pay $84 a month for unlimited data, minutes, text, pictures, EVERYTHING, which is about $40 less than you ATT suckers.
And my iPhone works flawlessly.
Idiots.
Flawlessly? Are you able to connect over 3G? Or just Edge?
Am I the only iphone user who doesn’t have anything to complain about? Granted, I live in the DC Metro area and I get GREAT coverage. I just don’t see what all the fuss is about. I do agree that putting a cap on data for what is supposed to be an “unlimited” plan is unacceptable. But is scarfing up the bandwidth for one hour on one day really “sticking it to the man?” I don’t think so.
The capping an “unlimited” plan is totally unacceptable, as well as false advertising.
But really, any cap at all is unacceptable. I could see having metered usage in place of unlimited plans, but not at the rates that AT&T would charge. It costs less to send data over a wireless network than over wires, contrary to the all-too-convenient popular belief.
“It costs less to send data over a wireless network than over wires, contrary to the all-too-convenient popular belief.”
Simply wrong. Don’t know where you got that idea. I’ll admit that in particular cases it might be cheaper, for example when you don’t have an existing wired network, but practically whenever possible it is preferable to use a wired network.
I work in I.T. and the redwall_hp claim is correct. You apparently think he’s talking about what ATT *charges* rather than what the costs to ATT are.
In the past 12 months, ATT has *reduced* capital expenditures (that translates to “network build-out”) by 30% while increasing gross revenues by 80%. You don’t suppose that has any effect on your 3G service, do you?
So the plan is, in response to the poor network quality and the suggestion that ATT will have to ‘discourage’ ‘excessive’ data usage by iPhone users, to have iPhone users… excessively use data?
As enjoyable as it might be to ‘stick it to the man’, I really have to wonder what this is going to accomplish. They already know that there’s a problem (even if their ideas of how to solve it are poorly received) and it’s pretty easy to see them drawing the conclusion that the users are, in fact, the problem. Since, in this case, they will be…
Glad I don’t have an iPhone. I see backlash hitting both the users (who are stuck with ATT for a while no matter what) and the company (who is certain to overreact to a juvenile prank, even if nothing crashes) hard and fast after Friday. This feels like organizing a riot to me, and I can’t imagine how it’s going to do anything but get the fire hoses turned on those participating in it.
Sometimes organizing riots or the like are necessary. Perhaps you’ve heard of the American Revolution? Or the signing of the Magna Carta?
I hesitate to compare a simple DDoS attack to such great events, but my point is that often the greater good is more important than avoiding the consequences that AT&T will surely dish out. (We can only hope that the FCC will react negatively towards AT&T’s behavior.) The wireless industry needs a wake-up call, and someone has to deliver it. I’m only surprised that something along these lines hasn’t happened yet.
I won’t bother to comment on the farce of comparing any kind of political revolution to the actions proposed against ATT except to say that your hesitation is well founded. I wouldn’t suggest that strong action is never the answer to a problem, but it has to be done in expectation of a response. And the response here is not well thought out.
The ‘greater good’ here is what, exactly? ATT will, legally and without interference from anyone (the FCC certainly does not care if you get data service at all on your iPhone), propose caps on their service (as they have already done) and find other ways to discourage (read: change people) for usage of their service that they deem ‘excessive’ and other companies will happily accept the influx of customers who leave ATT in disgust, assuming that they can leave behind their iPhones.
Because the exclusivity between Apple and ATT isn’t going away until the contract is up, and after that moving the device to T-Mobile is a near-certainty, with a strong possibility of making a CDMA version that Sprint or Verizon would pick up. Note that these things will happen regardless of the DDoS attack that’s planned on ATT; it just makes good financial sense to do so. Once that happens, ATT will have to find a way to make money off of non-iPhone users, the most draconian of the data restrictions/charges will probably be removed, and life will go on. And none of this chain of events will go any faster, regardless of this or any other action.
So I’d ask again; what is the point? What could be accomplished here? Assume the best case scenario: ATT’s data network goes down is hugely public fashion and everyone in the country agrees that they just didn’t have the hardware to handle a massive network spike. Then what?
The “greater good” is that the wireless companies outright “own” radio spectrum that they shouldn’t, and that they certainly shouldn’t have the right to limit your usage and/or terminate you for “excessive usage.” If you use excessive water, you’re billed fairly for it. The city doesn’t “incentivize” you to use less by charging you more than the agreed-upon rate; the city won’t cut off your water service.
Internet access is an essential utility, and should be treated as such. It shouldn’t even be in the hands of a private company. (Neither should many things that were privatized under the Bush administration.)
If it takes a DDoS attack to push AT&T into behavior that the FCC will find egregious enough to kill them, so be it.
This at least answers the question. You’re under the impression that a user-organized DDoS on ATT’s data network will have the long term effect of… government regulation on internet access? And this is a good thing?
While you might be able to make the argument that Internet access is a utility (and therefore should be regulated as other utilities are), I doubt that anyone would extend that to suggest that ‘unlimited access to cellular wireless Internet’ falls under the same definition. Assuming that getting the FCC involved is a good thing (which I can hardly imagine it would be), do you think that they can force ATT’s service up to acceptable levels? Or would it be better to simply shut them down, in favor of… another private company who would magically be able to provide better service? (Hint: other companies exist now) Or perhaps a government run cellular company would be better?
And either way, you won’t have acceptable levels of service on your iPhone until the exclusivity contract runs out, at which point the market will make a pretty good determination on its own which company can provide the best service on your particular device. It’s agreed by nearly everyone (ATT included) that their performance has been sub-par. Assuming you could get the government involved, is there really something they could do to fix it? Or would they be more likely to just tell you to switch carriers?
And all that is being charitable to the notion that there’s anything here for the FCC to care about. Even if they agreed with you about the nature for Internet access as a whole, I doubt they’d have a problem with restricting it on mobile devices, or with ‘billing fairly’ for usage, which can certainly mean charging people per kilobyte and eliminating unlimited plans to being with. And you can be certain that your service agreement with ATT allows them to change anything, at any time, for any reason. They just have to give you notice and waive the disconnect change if they do.
The FCC doesn’t care if you use an iPhone. They don’t care if all of your apps work, or where they work, or how much you have to pay to get them to work as much as you want them to. The only real good things that could happen here for ATT iPhone users is either ATT improving their network (something this action might even make less likely to happen) or the iPhone being made available on other networks, allowing the users to see if the grass really is greener elsewhere. This prank isn’t going to make either one happen any faster.
redwall_hp and anyone else sharing his opinion – I can only suggest you grow up and stop believing you are ‘entitled’ to such and such services. ATT leases the spectrum and uses it to provide cellular communication services, and can charge whatever the hell they see fit. If you are unhappy with the terms and services provided by ATT, there’s enough competition in the market and no one is forcing you to stick with them.
And as Raumornie said, there’s a very distinct difference between getting an unlimited supply of water, which is the most basic need for survival, and an unlimited broadband cellular connection to the internet, which is a pure luxury and no more.
And a final word about the actual topic at hand – I seriously doubt that choking ATT’s data network for an ENTIRE HOUR (*read with sarcastic tone*) would make much of a difference in anyone’s mind. Chances are they’ll treat it as a minor harrasment, and life will go on just as before.
” If you are unhappy with the terms and services provided by ATT, there’s enough competition in the market and no one is forcing you to stick with them.” Maybe for Europa that is, but for the US you’re just bound to one carrier. This is monopoly in it’s purest form. They control the market, they charge whatever they want, and if you’re not happy with it, there is no other iPhone option. Until the exclusivity contract runs out this will persist. Nevertheless people are angry right now, and they want a change, and the easiest (and providing the most short-term pleasure) is just using their phone how they were promised they could.
“While you might be able to make the argument that Internet access is a utility …”
The Finnish government has not only made that argument, they have legislated it.
The USA is somewhere around 26th in the world for high-speed Internet access, bhind Latvia and marginally ahead of Slovenia. Lack of regulation, and lack of competition, is the direct cause. The only competition among cell carriers is between T-Mobile and AT&T; and even that is seriously limited, because US cell providers are permitted to enter into monopoly agreements with cell phone manufacturers (see AT&T & Apple’s “sweetheart deal” vis-a-vis the iPhone) and lock the phones so that, even in the edge case where the phone is physically capable of working on a different network, the customer has to be able and willing to unlock the phone first.
Until interoperability and *real* competition is mandated by law in the USA, we will remain, at best, a Third World country on the airwaves and Internet.
@Icesnake
Wow. Where do I begin? How about with the rest of the sentence you started to quote? The one that finishes “…I doubt that anyone would extend that to suggest that ‘unlimited access to cellular wireless Internet’ falls under the same definition.”? Or did you read that far?
Even if I accepted that Finland should be the model for our national policy, they certainly did not mandate that you should be able to have unlimited access to wireless broadband at any particular speed on any particular carrier on any particular device. The facts about where the US is in broadband adoption rates have nothing to do with the ability of a single cellular carrier to provide consistent service to anyone and the fact that you fail to mention the largest carrier in the US (Verizon) or Sprint (who is… well, they’re a cellular company) means that you’re neglecting the competition of CDMA vs. GSM. You may have already decided where you stand in terms of technology, but that’s not because the competition isn’t there.
And arguing against device exclusivity in general is just silly. If it weren’t for the fact that this device is now the most popular one out there, the issue would be moot. No one gets bent out of shape over the fact that one of those carriers you claim doesn’t exist has a ‘monopoly’ on a specific model of Blackberry. Or Android phone. Or anything else. Don’t bother to generalize it; you want unlimited, reliable access on your iPhone and you’re dissatisfied with the only carrier that has it. But not so dissatisfied to drop them.
And when you’re whining about getting poor connections on your iPhone and using the term ‘Third World country’, you can be assured that your comments transcend hyperbole and fall into the realm of a spoiled tantrum. Get over it, or at least know that when you stomp and kick your feet long enough, things might just get worse instead of better.
I agree with you redwall_hp. I mean, people have to pay for crappy service because they want a good phone that is available only through American Thugs and Thieves. They can’t leave it because with the contract cancellation fees will probably ruin the near perfect credit it took to get the phone in the first place (or the loss in high fees). Although I’m surprised that the event won’t last longer. I would then say for users to play plug in their iphone and either play a long playlist on youtube or text your friends all at once.
iPhone users have been getting a bad rap…
If iPhone users go through with this and there are no reports of any major outages happening with the network, then at&t’s customers will know for sure that this ’3% of iphone users are overloading the network’ is utter crap….
which I sincerely think it is….they just need a scapegoat for poor network performance.
People don’t “have to” do anything. They choose to sign up with AT&T because they want an iPhone. They choose to stay with AT&T because they don’t want to pay the contract cancellation fee (or because they don’t want to give up their iPhone). There’s no “have to” in the equation anywhere.
YUP ’cause AT&T is such a bigger deal than the magna carta or rev. war. Seriously. Let’s do this crap but stop making such a big deal about it!
Besides-I doubt that ATT will do ANYTHING once we subdue them.
Yes, this is good example of why usage must be metered. If service is unlimited, people will do stupid things with it. If ATT’s network is overloaded, they need to meter so access can be prioritized by willingness to pay.
The way to fight this is with your wallet – do as others have done, give up the iphone until it operates on a decent network.
What decent network? Until you have either an unlimited data plan that costs under $20/month, or a fairly metered plan, there is no “decent network.”
you’re nuts, dude. Who’s going to pay for the thousands of towers, circuits, equipment, electricity and the salaries to maintain and support them.
believe it or not, there is a reason you pay per month for service… i don’t work for free and surely you don’t either.. you people are totally unrealistic about how you view this whole issue.. fact is, NO north American carrier is prepared to handle the volume of iphone users and their data. LEAST of all, T-mobile… you may think t-mobile is hot now, but let’s see how hot it is with 200 million more subscribers watching youtube all day…
You wouldn’t need towers with a mesh-radio network. Every phone becomes a tower, a node in a self-healing network that automatically chooses the best and fastest data route. Any increase in load on a network is offset by the additional possible pathways for the signal to propagate between the base stations. The zigbee phone is coming!
O2 network in UK is chokeheld every day without such co-ordinated exercise.
There goes my Friday conference call!
the fake steve jobs is ripping me off like microsoft rips off the real steve jobs ;)
http://wless.in/attddos
let’s do it, every Friday. I pay for the ATT service anyway, and the phone too
Actually, being from Denmark, I can testify that the network is lacking her as well. They say it is due to some malfunction in the iPhone, as it works on every other phone.
All you will accomplish, is getting AT&T to raise the price of their data plans. Your iPhones already clog the netwotk and slow down other phones with data plans, like mine. So please, don’t be so selfish and blind as to think you’re actually going to achieve something good buy encouraging a dirty corporation to increase prices.
Raising prices is not going to help AT&T and I think their economists know this. If you raise the contract priceby $15/month then it becomes that much cheaper to break your contract and choose another carrier.
Yes, this is a stupid idea.
But much more importantly, why has no one called Biggs out on his improper use of the word “twee”? Why exactly does he consider AT&T’s network “affectedly sentimental”?
Get a Zack Morris Phone.
+1
I don’t care if Consumer Reports says AT&T’s network is better. AT&T has the absolute worst customer service I’ve ever experienced in my 44 years, and will never, ever, ever get another dollar from me. I’m waiting for iPhone to become available on another network. Til then, I can live without it.
I’m pissed off at my bank. Let’s all go to the bank during one day and withdraw our money!
As much as AT&T needs to fix this, all this will do is prove AT&T’s point that iPhone users are responsible for the networking problems and you WILL end up with tiered data plans and AT&T will jump off the net neutrality bandwagon and everyone will get hosed. You will be sending a message but it will be the wrong one.
I know I’m the minority amongst commenters here, but I have a Windows Phone on ATT and use a lot of data + voice. I don’t have any problems with voice / data on ATT or when I use my phone on NTT in Tokyo or Orange in UK.
I doubt it’s because I’m using a Windows Phone – so I wonder if maybe there’s some specific allocation of “pipes” specific for iPhone users? Not sure, just trying to figure out what all the fuss is about.
In my opinion this “Chokehold” concept is a bad idea. Why do this? It shows poor taste and bad manners on anyone that participates in this, in my opinion. From reading the comments it’s obvious there are a lot of varied opinions on this “Chokehold” concept. If you are unhappy with AT&T then you should just go to another carrier.
This is vandalism, and TechCrunch is publishing incitement to vandalism and is an accessory in this crime.
It’s wrong.
Bunch of entitlement-happy freaks.
Yes, how dare people feel entitled to get the service they paid for? Bunch of freeloaders if you ask me.
You’d think that with the insane margins of some of the other AT&T services, notably, SMS messages, that they might have been able to allocate a bit to infrastructure improvement. (Consider that text messages cost on average $5,000 per megabyte.)
I don’t have a problem with the service I receive from AT&T, and I’m not looking forward to a bunch of people turning it into my problem.
I think we each have a bit of an activist in us, something that drives us to participate in demonstrations or protests just to be a part of something that generates a significant effect. I hope people can keep that in check this time.
Guess I’ll have to reschedule my heart attack for some other time.
This is very interesting, so many people vehemently for or against AT&T. We’ll see where it goes.
Didn’t Arrington tell you yet? Real men don’t do pranks. REAL MEN SUE.
“Because Trolls get to dig up stuff.”
to be real… im getting really fucking tired of dropped calls and no fucking signal in the middle of town.
“Now I’m all for a bit of fun, obviously, but isn’t it ironic that this is what passes for political action these days? Our forefathers went to union meetings, we use Pandora all day.”
First of all, I don’t see any real “irony” in your comparison. And any attempt to comparing this to the protests of our colonial forefathers is outlandish. Second, if you knew your history, you’d realize our forefathers did much more than organize “union meetings”, and committed acts of protests that were relatively much more radical and extreme.
Does it make sense? Take a stand. I think it does.
I’d say this would disrupt my AT&T service but it is already crap to begin with out here near DC.
Its so strange that technology and social media enables us to unite for a common cause, and this is what we do with it…
If you don’t like the 3G coverage and think it sucks just pay the termination fee, switch to Verizon or Tmobile and get a phone that doesn’t have recalls out the ass. I was fed up with the sorry AT&T service, being TRIPLE BILLED each month and those damn recalls and day long updates to the IPhone that I went to the store threw the phone at them and told them to cancel and shove it. The Commercials lie, when it was Cingular they had the Largest 3g network but when AT&T took over and sold 80% of its towers to Verizon and Sprint it became the smallest. Don’t forget Cingular bought out AT&T just over 5 years ago to keep AT&T from going bankrupt. Look at the facts people, you can’t clog a data wireless data network without affecting other carrier’s customers. You want to argue the facts with me go ahead, I was up until a few short months ago a Technical Support Manager and Field Technician with Cingular then AT&T. So stop plotting on sticking it to the man and stick it to them the right way cancel your service and contract, get a new carrier and phone and stop thinking you have the power to stop something. If you don’t agree with something we have a government agency that handles complaints about major companies and you don’t have to be a conformist and have to have a sorry ass phone made by Apple or Microsoft. Hell both companies were founded by Bill Gates, that’s why the products suck. If you absolutely have to have the next biggest and best thing in cellphones then you need to step back and look at where we were 15-25 years ago. I know most Iphone users werent even born then but all we had then were old CDMA phones and really sorry service, didn’t have data packages on the phones either. So final point, If your not happy with what you got change it or go without.
This is a plain and simple DoS attack in a day light, normally hackers can’t be found who did this – in this case the top man responsible for this can be arrested right-away… easy…
Can I just add a comment to the scenario, specifically about the fact that you could all switch to an android device which kicks your iPhone to the curb? Yeah, that’s right, an OS that actually does EVERYTHING it is supposed to do, is tested extensively before it is released and will soon have more apps than the iPhone with its ever growing market, and actually allows its use on ANY handset as long as you want to develop it for that phone. Wow, what a concept, something that actually works when it is released. I work for Verizon in a call center and I can say with certainty, that we get less calls about the Droid devices than almost any other phones simply because they don’t break. GIN phones (non data devices) we generally get fewer calls about, but there’s nothing to call about on those phones. The Storm was a joke. the Storm 2 was decent, but its still a blackberry. Update your operating system for god sakes Blackberry, everyone else is kicking your ass. At least palm made a change for the better, why can’t you follow suit?
You’re all a bunch of assholes. From the fanboys to the DoS proponents. Assholes, all.
Speaking of a__holes, it’s better than being sheep like those who just stand by idly while corporations finish them off. At least this is amusing action toward new responses to pitiful customer service. And I’m worth it.