Just the other day, AT&T announced that it was able to work with Sling Media in order to optimize Sling player for AT&T’s 3G network. That’s good news for consumers and all, but it appears as though AT&T might have been doing a little posturing to make itself look like the good guy. After all, Sling users were disappointed about the lack of a Sling player on the iPhone when the application had been avaiable on BlackBerry for some time – and on AT&T’s network, no less.

A recent AT&T earnings call consisted of a lot of talk talk talk but one slide stands out: it essentially admits that 3G in San Francisco and New York sucked ween AKA were both far below their official performance objective.

Although I can’t figure out what the actual “Performance Objective” truly is based on this slide, those lines do seem to be going up. While anyone can make up a statistic, for AT&T to come out and say “we suck in those areas” is big news. Good on you, lads.

This page just went live over on AT&T’s site. While it doesn’t give a whole lot of specifics, it does confirm that we’ll be seeing no less than three Android handset hit AT&T’s shelves sometime in the first six months of this year.

Gotta hand it to Bloomberg for this riveting one-sentence article written by two people.

“AT&T Inc. is ending its sponsorship agreement with golfer Tiger Woods, company spokesman Michael Coe said in an e-mailed statement.”

I don’t recall seeing Woods in any TV or print commercials for AT&T but he definitely had a few big, fat AT&T logos on his golf bag. The company still has Luke Wilson and the iPhone, so sleep easy, friends.

I’ve been using the AT&T Navigator app for iPhone for a couple of months now. This is a free app, but it requires a $10/month subscription from AT&T (or $70 for an annual subscription). I’m not going to belabor the GPS functions too much in this review: it’s almost the year 2010, and the global positioning system has been used to provide turn-by-turn directions for long enough now that any GPS device or application being reviewed should do that basic job. Instead, I’m going to examine how useful a GPS function is on your mobile phone, talk about some of what’s nice (and not-so-nice) about the AT&T Navigator, and look at the value proposition of a $10/month subscription in light of Google’s free turn-by-turn driving directions on the Verizon Droid.

Remember that crazy lookin’ Motorola-made Android handset that leaked out a few days ago? The one that appeared to have a flip-out keyboard on a big ol’ hinge? It’s real – and it’s heading for AT&T.

It’s he said/she said time, where maybe like Fake Steve is the She and maybe like AT&T is the he. So like Fake Steve was all like “Let’s send nasty texts about AT&T! And then we’ll mess with them on Friday.” And then AT&T is all like “No way! Nobody does that to me!” Hilarity ensues!

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!

The Gruber does it again. In a point by point analysis of Randall Stross’ article about AT&T not really sucking and actually being great, he points out a few valuable concepts. First, if the iPhone sucks so much on AT&T’s network, why hasn’t AT&T made Apple fix it? Unless AT&T is so afraid of Steve Jobs’ hit squad that it refuses to point out that it needs better hardware, I think this is all AT&T.

All you punks out there watching Internet video and downloading monkey porn had better stop! There’s a current 5 gigabyte cap on data right now but soon, friends, AT&T is going to close up that “unlimited” plan and hopes to educate the consumer on proper data use.

The nation’s “fastest” (and often most frustrating) 3G network (i.e. AT&T) is adding another netbook to its lineup of 3G portable devices, the Samsung Go. So what exactly is said Go? Well, according to Sammy, it’s “a compact and lightweight netbook with instant access to broadband speeds powered by the nation’s fastest 3G network and the Microsoft Windows 7 Starter Edition operating system.”

It isn’t the first, and I assume it’s not going to be the last either.

Apple and AT&T are facing a new putative class action from an iPhone user who alleges that the companies misrepresented the phone’s MMS (multimedia messaging service) capabilities.

Clyde Bernard Franklin filed the complaint (case 1:2009cv00704) in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Alabama on behalf of all Alabama residents last Wednesday.

Well it looks like my not-even-a-month-old new cell phone number is already out in the wild somehow. I received this unsolicited text message from a 718-area phone number, which Nicholas tells me is Brooklyn or Queens, New York (I’m in Boston).

AT&T announced today that they are teaming up with Terrestar to release a smartphone with satellite capabilities. Previously, satellite phones were limited to just voice calls, or the occasional tethering (that didn’t work very well).

Welcome to the future, everyone! As we mentioned earlier this morning, AT&T is rolling out MMS for the iPhone today. If you’re one of those folks who couldn’t be bothered to sit in iTunes and click the “Update” button for hours on end, go check now. We just got hit by an onslaught of reports saying that it had gone live and, sure enough, we just got our update.

A bit of an update to that whole AT&T-linked senators story from the other day. Well, our complaining must have worked because the senators will no longer try to block Net Neutrality. USA!

Nicholas “Net Neutrality” Deleon here with truly shocking news: six Republican senators have tacked on an amendment to an appropriations bill that would block the FCC’s attempt to make Net Neutrality a reality. So remember, kids: when you think of a free and open Internet, don’t think of the GOP. It’s not your friend here.