AT&T Screws Up iPhone 4 Launch

Tell me if you’ve heard this story before? Almost two years ago AT&T screwed up the iPhone 3G launch when millions of customers overloaded their servers while trying to activate their new iPhones via iTunes. Then last year they screwed us by not offering tethering or MMS right away in the US. Now this year both AT&T stores along with Apple Stores were completely offline for hours as iTunes couldn’t connect to AT&T servers for authentication.

Now two years later we have a similar problem. As Apple and AT&T online stores started taking pre orders late last night for the new iPhone 4, customers found themselves completely shut out and even after hours upon hours would only see the following message.

Numerous tech blogs and commenters reported wide spread issues with everyone seeing basically the same message. Some commenters offered tips on what worked for them. Some tried different browsers, some tried going directly through AT&T’s website which also completely went down. At about 1:45PM CT I tried using the brand new Apple Retail App on the iPhone which eventually let me reserve a phone to pick up on June 24th, but wouldn’t allow me to actually pre-order it for delivery. It also sent me a confirmation email that I am confirmed to pick up the new iPhone 4 on June 24th with stores opening at 7AM.

After taking a look at numerous other blogs and tech sites I’m almost positive it’s an AT&T problem and not necessarily Apple’s fault. Any other product on the Apple Store can be purchased without incident, but as soon as you enter your phone number, zip code and last four digits of your social security number it says it’s connecting to AT&T servers to verify your information and check upgrade eligibility and this is where the problem lies… it just keeps hanging on that page and usually returns a “Your request could not be processed” or “Your session has timed out.”

It’s been maddening for millions of people trying to get their hands on this device for launch day. Although it’s not the end of the world and far worse things are going on in the world it’s still very frustrating when you want to give a company money and they won’t take it. My buddy in Huntsville, AL even went directly to the local Apple Store and was told the only thing they could do is have him try on the computers there which of course didn’t work. He said there were lines of people around the store trying to no avail. He did hear numerous Apple employees saying things like… “This is so embarrassing.”

What I don’t get is how AT&T wasn’t ready for this? They’ve had a year to prepare, get their infrastructure in place, test it, have Apple test it. I can’t imagine Steve Jobs and Apple are too happy about this and think it’s finally time Apple opens up the iPhone to Verizon, T-Mobile and others. At least this would take a load off of AT&T’s network and spread the data. Remember since the launch of the first iPhone AT&T supports more data than all of the other US carriers combined. That’s definitely no excuse for this crap and they definitely should have been better prepared. I know there are hardware/network issues with other carriers and things would need to be changed for it to work, but maybe, just maybe this is the straw the broke the camels back. Let’s hope anyways.

Let me know about your experience trying to buy the new iPhone 4 today in the comments below. Also, please share any tips or tricks if you got it to work.