March 16, 2009, 3:20 pm ‘Call Failed’ Feature Revealed at SXSW Gathering By Jenna Wortham NY Times
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/16/call-failed-feature-revealed-at-sxsw-fest/?pagemode=print Mobile innovators are making the most out of the hordes of digerati in Austin. The interactive portion of South by Southwest — there is a music portion too — included announcements of custom versions of nightlife games and iPhone applications to dazzle tech-savvy attendees. It’s too bad most conference attendees can’t get a signal on their phones to try them out. For the majority of the five-day digital conference, AT&T subscribers have been dealing with sluggish service, dropped calls and outright outages. The problem has been a source of frustration for many conference attendees, many of whom have resorted to walking around Austin’s downtown convention center with their laptops cracked open to get their e-mail and Facebook and Twitter feeds. “It’s seems like it’s the Edge network that’s the problem,” said Ray Page, referring to AT&T’s wireless network. He is one of those lugging a laptop around as a replacement to his iPhone. “Wi-Fi has been working fine. It’s more of an AT&T issue.” My colleague Matt Richtel recently wrote about the technological glitches AT&T and other wireless carriers are having with their 3G, or third-generation, high-speed networks as the popularity of smartphones grows. Mark Siegel, a spokesman for AT&T, said the company increased capacity to cellular sites in Austin Sunday night in response to the prolonged outages. “There’s such high demand in Austin because there are so many people using their iPhones,” said Mark Siegel, an AT&T spokesman. “But we added capacity and the service should have improved.” But with roughly two days remaining in the conference, some say it was a missed opportunity by AT&T, who didn’t anticipate the incoming crush of iPhone owners to one of the most popular annual gatherings of technophiles. “AT&T is really screwing up,” said Summer Bedard, an interaction designer at Yahoo. Ms. Bedard said the utter lack of phone functionality has become a running joke on Twitter. “This new ‘Call Failed’ feature that AT&T launched at #sxsw works flawlessly!” wrote Kenyatta Cheese, a producer at Rocketboom. “That pretty much sums up my experience with AT&T here,” said Ms. Bedard. -- ================================ George Antunes, Political Science Dept University of Houston; Houston, TX 77204 Voice: 713-743-3923 Fax: 713-743-3927 Mail: antunes at uh dot edu *********************************** * POST TO [email protected] * *********************************** Medianews mailing list [email protected] http://lists.etskywarn.net/mailman/listinfo/medianews
