Engadget has reported that AT&T has boosted the bandwidth on their UVerse internet service to a maximum of 10mbps down and 1.5mbps up. That’s not too shabby. It puts pretty much all of the cable internet companies to shame, but doesn’t quite hold up to Verizon’s best FIOS offering. It’s important that service providers bring the speed and quality (that is, don’t put in unstated bandwidth caps like Comcast does) so web 2.0 platforms (like the wonderous Appcelerator) can take off. Although the frameworks themselves don’t take up the bandwidth, the dynamic content they deliver certainly does demand higher speed connections. A perfect example of this is Apple’s new movie rental service and Netflix’s movie streaming service. It’s especially important in Netflix’s case, where the possibility of high-quality, HD movies streamed directly to a set-top box could make a movie buff drool (assuming service providers don’t put in bandwidth caps).
Archive for the 'ATT' Category
engadget reports that iphone dev team has released a free iphone unlock — not as user friendly as the iphonesimfree pay one, but a gui is coming soon. if you can’t wait to ditch at&t (i’m mulling the idea of jumping to tmobile, paying the 175 fee and selling the free phone on ebay to recoupe some losses over), then head over to this guide. there are others floating around (such as those on the macrumors.com forums) but imho, this one is the best.
If you are getting the dreaded “need more time to activate your iPhone” message, call AT&T’s activation center directly at 877-800-3701. Keep calling over and over and over until you get someone who will activate your iPhone over the phone (I went through at least 3 calls where I was lied to about various things like my previous provider not releasing my number, needing to wait, nothing they could do, my account didn’t exist, etc.). It was almost like AT&T was coming up with excuses to avoid activating my iPhone.
So I buy an iPhone today; I’m happy, even excited to have dropped a wad of cash on my shiney new gadget. I hurry home, get through the activation and am greeted with: “Your activation requires more time.” Ok, that’s cute — no useful information as to WHY or WHEN it’ll be resolved, just that it takes more time (riiiight). So I call AT&T wireless’ customer service dept, wait on hold for 15 minutes to get some lame excuse (”the reason it takes so long to activate an iPhone is because so many people are calling in to activate them” <– yea, so every activation is processed manually, that’s as bright as a star) and am put on hold for another 5 minutes. When the lady, whose name I couldn’t pronounced if you put a gun to my head, gets back, she gives me a random phone number: 480 055 9782 which is supposedly “iPhone activation support.” Great, I’m thinking, this number looks hokey (why wouldn’t they use a toll free number?), but I’ll give it a go to get some help. I call the number and it doesn’t work (dreaded “check the number and dial again” operator message). Leave it to AT&T to bumble what is probably their biggest product launch ever. What’s better is I’ll bet they’re already charging me for service, since they’re cool like that.
How I Roll