AT&T has another significant iPhone-related network congestion event

AT&T's Network Crumbles At Coachella [Broadband Reports]

I love my iPhone, I really do but I can feel the pain as another large gathering of iPhone users resulted in yet another meltdown of AT&T's wireless data network - this time at the Coachella music festival in California. The music festival drew thousands of attendees and even featured its own iPhone application. But when it came to AT&T's network, festival attendees were less than impressed. Broadband Reports indicates AT&T users waited up to 6 hours for text messages to send and receive and wireless data was near non-existent.

AT&T is currently Apple's exclusive wireless provider for the iPhone in the U.S. The company has experienced a myriad of network issues, including another high-profile network congestion problem at last year's South by Southwest conference in Austin, Texas. These issues often result from a lack of bandwidth on AT&T's network to support the data needs of iPhone customers, who typically consume larger amounts of wireless data than other customers.

As a result of these problems, a recent study by CFI Group indicated that half of iPhone users expressed dissatisfaction with AT&T's wireless network and wished to switch providers.

Comments

[Brian]

It's like that at any large gathering of people for all carriers. I live in Louisville and we have one of the world's largest fireworks displays every year to kick off the Kentucky Derby Festival. When the weather is good around 800,000 people cram themselves into downtown along the river. Same situation here last week. Texts and Data were extremely slow and MMS was impossible. I'm on Sprint and I had issues. Not as bad as my iPhone carrying friends, but everyone was hurting Saturday.

[Paul Templeton]

You suddenly have tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of people using just a few towers, there are bound to be log jams.
We have the same tie-ups here during Riverfest (also one of the biggest fireworks displays) which attracts hundreds of thousands.