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Level 1

0 points

Here is why the activations are delayed.....ATT nor APPL to blame.

i work for att. i got an iphone last night as well and mine activated instantly...but i live in oklahoma, fewer people, fewer activations, fewer problems. okay whenever a new cellular phone is activated it is programmed through a computer and then sent to a piece of hardware called a "switch." think of a switch as a turnstall at a fair or a revolving door at a hotel. only one actication can go through the switch at a time, any other activations behind it are waiting in line like people at a ticket counter. activations aren't the only things that have to go through the switch. anytime you call in to your cell provider and make an account change such as adding/removing a feature, changing a rate plan, activating a new sim, anything like that, it goes through a switch.

sometimes, there are natural switch delays. it doesn't happen daily because in a matter of odds, thousands of people won't be making account changes simultaniously everyday. however, sometimes this happens and it creates a delay in the switch. when this happens, we alert our customers of the delay and advise them to wait a few hours, power cycle and try again. switch delays aren't a daily occourence, but not rare. now, lets talk about the iphones and switch delays.

the iphone is undoubtedly THE biggest thing to ever happen to a cellular industry. last night, hundreds of thousands of people purchased iphones at the EXACT same time, rushed home and tried to activate their phones asap. what happened was a massive bombarding of activations to switches that generally don't handle anything near last night's load. since the phones were sold at 6:00, everyone got home at about 7:00 and most likely overloaded the switches to the point of near exhaustion! it would be like 30,000 or so people throwing basketballs at one hoop and hoping to make it in! theoretically, larger metropolitan areas would have more problems due to more switch activity. granted our switches in new york city are heavy duty, but there are no switches in existance designed to handle that kind of load because with the exception of this weekend, there would never be that much activity!

is it apples fault? no, i think that their activation through itunes is ingenious. it keeps people from having to call into att and it was FAR less painless than in-store account set up! is it att's fault? no. they can't be blamed for overloaded switches due to iphones WILD success. our switches are adequate, it's just that this weekend was a rare-bird exception that would have dang-near blown out any switch. it was like christmas day X 100! i think that i got mine activated so soon because we got from the store to my house in about 20 minutes and completed the activation before the swarm began to get into full swing. so those of you who are still waiting, just hang in there! just think of your activation as being in line for a rollercoaster. you are 3/4 closer to the front than you were last night! having had over 24 hours to mess with this phone, i can assure you that it is well worth the wait. it's the most marvelous piece of technology i've ever had the pleasure of using.

i'm sorry to all of those who aren't active yet, but hang in there! your hour will come. i bet those switches are like hot stove-tops right now begging for a chance to breathe. it's like pouring liquid thorugh a funnel, pouring faster will just cause an overflow, gravitiy has to take it's course! it's not att's fault, it's just the hundreds of thousands of activations fighting for the chance to make that first call! hang in there.

24 imac Mac OS X (10.4.10)

Posted on Jul 1, 2007 1:34 AM

155 replies

AlfonsoC

Level 1

0 points

Jul 1, 2007 6:30 PM in response to NotSoAverageJoe

Same situation here. I could not agree more with you, this is At&t's fault. Plus what the heck I care if is weekend and the business center crap group is closed??? shouldnt it be open for about thousands of people that would enconunter the problem? Didnt they think about this before? Is at&t kidding us? or it is just that all the money they get from our activation fees ($36 x let's say half a million phones...$18 million only with activating phones!!!) cannot be used to hire more people or pay for extra hours to their employees??? Apple man! ask AT&T to be responsible because whatever service they provide for ur IBRICK will affect your image!

I vote for Steve Jobs to kick kick At&T's *** and get them out of the bed! Kmon help us out yo!

Jul 1, 2007 6:30 PM in response to probablyelectric

Thank you.

Jul 1, 2007 6:32 PM in response to Michele Spiezia

I understand the delay...... why keep my phone
locked. I feel if you went through the process and
are waiting for them to activate than PLEASE let us
at least access the rest of the phone features for
now. It would make me wait patiently.

Dual 2.5 G5 Mac OS X (10.4.1)

Hi Michele, that is a question that I cannot answer. That would be a technical question for Apple to answer for you.
Good luck!

Jul 1, 2007 6:55 PM in response to anitas anger

Apparently both ATT and Apple need to send activation signals to the SIM to activate/unlock the iphone.

Regardless, I think it was a HUGE mistake of Apples to prevent access to non-phone related functions (i.e. everything else with the exception of making/receiving calls/SMS messages & voicemail) until activation.

It would have appeased those of us waiting for activation for hours and days (instead we get to enjoy the "slide for emergency" function ... I've got a huge blister on my finger).

Even when my Treo is de-activated I can watch videos on it etc.

Jul 1, 2007 6:56 PM in response to anitas anger

If you read the forums, you'll see that there is a way to get your phone activated. Basically, you have to cancel your previous activation and then do it again.

I got mine at 6:30 Friday, and after waiting 28 hours, called AT&T. They cancelled the first activation and I initiated the process a second time.

I got activated immediately.

Try it.

Jul 1, 2007 7:07 PM in response to keynesiandreamer

There was a 64 page document distributed to the att store employees--of course this document leaked onto the net some time ago. It has notes in that refer to an instructional video. It seems like there has been a lot of preparation for this event, but ATT employees are phones salespeople and not riot police. My local ATT store handled the situation well enough--they even had a separate line for people looking for customer support and repairs (people not interested in the iphone). I couldn't have asked for a better line waiting experience. Well... maybe if there were drinks and sandwiches.

I understand your pain, but there's only so much they could do. The iphone launch was elaborate already, so I'm not sure if they could have done more. The whole Orange and Blue nonsense is annoying indeed. :/

btw, I think it might be a bad idea to post the aforementioned document to this forum. If you want it, I'm sure it can be found at macrumors or something.

Macbook Mac OS X (10.4.10)

Jul 1, 2007 7:37 PM in response to Thomas Sanders

I just found out (after 48 joy-filled hours) that ATT Customer Service Rep "Leslie Johnson" (with an IQ slighter higher than a block of wood) changed the SIM Card Number (for reasons only know to her good self) on my account to some random other number. In the process it "disconnected" the real sim (i.e. is the sim in my iphone).

This explains why they are unable to activate my iphone. My only option is to go back to an ATT store tomorrow and get a new unactivated sim card - place it in my iphone and start the activation process again.

I'm deciding whether to go thru this again - or poke myself in the nads with a sharp object - deciding which is less painful.

I have a Treo too and the good thing about a Treo is that I can continue to watch videos and plays games and all sorts of great stuff (all non-phone related functions) even though its not activated for phone usage. What a radical idea!

This is where Apple screwed the pooch. Once my 2 years is up - it'll revert back to a versatile paperweight instead of being able to continue using the functionality.

Good Times ...

Jul 1, 2007 7:47 PM in response to anitas anger

extremely nice of you to take the time to explain!
i had no difficulty, but i have been with AT&T

Jul 1, 2007 7:55 PM in response to totsteeter

that's the whole point though. It's an untested activation system. No one has done it before, so they didn't really know what problems they would encounter, therefore, it makes it hard to warn people.

Jul 1, 2007 8:04 PM in response to licakmitaco

My best guess was that it has to be a business decision between AT&T and Apple for why you can't use any features before you get activated. Perhaps AT&T said, sure, we'll let them sign up through iTunes, and we'll give up this and that for you, but we don't want them to have any use of their phones until we get an agreement for two years.

Look at how many people were flooding the forum the past few days asking if they had to get a AT&T contract in order to use the iPhone. If you could use the phone without being activated, AT&T would have lost out on a lot of business, and they knew it.

Shi-lonG

Level 1

0 points

Jul 1, 2007 8:05 PM in response to jerseygoil

"Basically, you have to cancel your previous activation and then do it again."
Thanks to Ty Morton1 for this valuable tip.

Keep canceling and re-activating if your phone is not activated within 30 minutes. That's what my dad did as
well.

I heard that 1-877-419-4500 is a good number to call.

Jul 1, 2007 9:37 PM in response to Lovin' Life

Lovin' life...

I agree... it is NOT the switches. Switches are nothing more than specialized computers that operate at very high speeds. The problem is in AT&T's archaic accounting and provisioning systems. All carriers have process/policy checks in their provisioning software such that if all things do not check out, it gets put into a queue that just sits there until someone dispositions the request. I had a similar situation with both my cellular and my home land lines with AT&T. It took them months to correct a billing error. In the mean time, I kept getting notices that my home phone was going to be disconnected.

I also don't buy the argument that a company as large as AT&T cannot temporarily increase their capacity to handle an "event" such as this. I find it unthinkable that they did not increase capacity at all... particularly in large metro areas. If they did... it was not enough. If they didn't... then that is a callous disregard of their obligations to their partner Apple. It is also a huge PR black eye for them.

I can now understand why they wanted to limit sales to consumer accounts only and did not include businesses to start with. Can you imagine if they had layered all the business users on top of this mess? And while we are on the subject, I really do not understand why those of us that have personal financial responsibility and receive some level of discount through our employer's FAN, have to move out of the FAN to a separate personal account in order to have an iPhone. Again, this is AT&T trying to be greedy and it is also, again, their byzantine accounting/billing system.

Somehow, I think this is going to be studied by MBA students as a case study in future years. I also think those of us who deal with capacity and disaster recovery planning, will be looking at this as an example of how NOT to do things when you have a major "event" that you have time to plan for.

I'm just glad I decided to wait until all this insanity dies down.

Jul 1, 2007 10:10 PM in response to anitas anger

"is it att's fault? no. they can't be blamed for overloaded switches due to iphones WILD success."

Unless the activation problems actually stem from Apple itself, I don't see how this is not AT&T's fault. Even if they cannot make their activation "switching" process more robust, it's paramount that they inform customers about delays, and what causes delays. They had a LOT of time to prepare for this, and they simply weren't prepared.

Maybe they prepared by just hiring a lot of customer care reps for the weekend? I don't know. That seems like preparing for a flood by buying a lot of bodybags in advance.

If they refused to upgrade their infrastructure (which you would think would be a sound future investment), then they should have been more upfront about "why our infrastructure will seem crappy when you try to become our customer", because as it is, they are just getting a lot of bad PR. As for transferring from other carriers, that is, again, something people should have been notified about during activation.

There is no reason they should be getting bad PR from the iPhone release. This was AT&T's chance to shine. It's not like Apple called them up only a week ago and said "How would you like to be our carrier next week?", they had plenty of notice.

Did they concede to a dozen unreasonable Apple demands, like profit sharing on subscriptions, and no input on design or features....just for the privilege of being publicly humiliated? I think they dropped the ball.

I think Apple may be partly to blame, inasmuch as they probably had the last say one what appeared in the iTunes activation screens, and they could have thought to put information in there... but .. meh. This exclusivity may burn AT&T more than it helps them. They just got a couple million customers...many of whom are instantly dissatisifed.

FYI, my activation was quick and painless. Also, just because I was harsh in my assignment of blame, I'm not saying that everything in the world must work perfectly...but let's face it, this was not smooth, and the blame has to fall somewhere. Unless you want to blame the customers for buying them (not a smart sales tactic), it's either AT&T or Apple.

edznyc

Level 1

0 points

Jul 1, 2007 10:49 PM in response to writerboy

I disagree with you. Yeah, I have been
inconvenienced, but to ask for someone to be fired
over this! Losing a job because we have been without
a phone is really a sad commentary on our society.
We have become such babies! Now Now Now...I want it
now. We should be ashamed of how we are acting on
this board.

er, what are you saying? that we should just pay these service charges, expect bad or no service at all... and just accept it? yes, put in perspective, not having a phone activate is relatively small a problem considering the world's problems, but so's paying for insurance and not getting the coverage you bought... surely you'd be up in arms about that.

as for that someone getting fired... are you kidding me? if no one gets fired over this, THEN we truly live in a sad world. if this person or group of persons job is to make sure phone activations go through, expeditiously and smoothly, then, sorry my friend, but they've failed miserably -- with at&t and apple only compounding the problem by managing this disaster so poorly.

in my line of business, if i fail to launch a website for a client, that's paid good money for and has set business expectations to reach market... you better believe there will be **** to pay. and this is happening at a much larger scale than what i'm referring to.

read what you write before you post and play down situations. it's all relative.

edznyc

Level 1

0 points

Jul 1, 2007 10:59 PM in response to anitas anger

i'm sorry, but it's undeniably both apple and att's fault. to not preempt a larger than ever influx of activity via 10s of thousands on simultaneous activation requests is unfathomable... yet that seems to be what has happened. if something like a freak outtage happened, then perhaps it's more understandable. but that does not seem to be the case, or att reps would be using that excuse instead.

let's play on your bs excuse about how it would be silly for att to not upgrade hardware for a 'one time event'... how about working around the fact that their systems just will not be able to handle the load. this is where both apple and att are at fault. ever hear of a queue? set up servers to intercept activation requests, since it is handled via software (itunes) on the user end anyway, and feed the activation request through this queue... all the while updating the end user with their place in the queue and estimated wait time.

sure, i'd be po'd if i did my itunes activation thing and saw my self in a queue of 15000 people with an estimated wait time of 24hrs, but hey, i'd have that information up front and would have saved me 5 very long, yet unproductive calls to att reps and countless web searches and email checks... since that is about how long i waited anyway, but at least i'd know.

the LEAST they coulda done is something like that.

in the end, what happened, how it was/is managed, is utterly unforgiveable and bad business. whoever suggested waiving the activation fee, should be heard by these 2 companies, and acted upon.

Here is why the activations are delayed.....ATT nor APPL to blame.