CES: AT&T's EDGE network reaches capacity and flails at CES

It wasn't a whiteout, a brownout but a rather, a geek out that plagued those of us with AT&T service on iPhones or AT&T service in general. While our bars indicated full service, getting server access error messages in Safari was much more common than you would think, especially a convention full of guys on their cellphones. But with more than 100,000 folks concentrated in a relatively small area.... Service outside of the area, however, was more than fine and faster than I've experienced. SMS texting, as usual, was the reliable means of communication. What's more, voicemails I got were delayed by 12 hours or more and I wasn't the only AT&T person with these issues. Way to go AT&T.

[mojomom]

At CES I was carrying both a Blackberry Pearl and iPhone, both running on AT&T. My Blackberry worked fine the whole time, while my iPhone showed "no service" within the convention center. I pulled both devices out side by side so it was a pretty good experiment to conduct while standing in line at Starbucks. Do you know why the iPhones were particularly plagued? I am trying to remember if the Blackberry has a second mode that iPhone doesn't.

[mojomom]

Follow up on my previous comment: in my case at least, it may have been a problem with my own iPhone rather than the whole network. The problem started in Las Vegas (after coming out of "airplane mode" it couldn't connect to the network) but persisted when I returned home. So I restarted my iPhone and it found the AT&T Network again.

[keithpr]

Apple made a mistake going with AT&T over Verizon. Just this week, hundreds of iPhone users on the prepaid plan are without their EDGE service. AT&T also deleted unlimited text messaging from many customers accounts; they claim their servers had a bug.

An EDGE outage affected these same customers in early December for as long as a week.