AT&T Iphone Free Wifi Fiasco: What’s It Mean?

Man, it has to be embarrassing when a company so colossally screws up the message. This is what happened this morning when it came out that AT&T was going to offer free wireless access to all Iphone users at the more than 17,000 AT&T wifi hotspots across the country.

Excitement mounted at sites like Iphone Alley and Gear Diary. The only problem was…

It wasn’t true. AT&T made a big mistake. According to CNET:

For the second time in less than six months, AT&T mistakenly published a notice on its Web site indicating that Apple iPhone users would get free access to the wireless operator’s more than 17,000 Wi-Fi hot spots around the country.

The notice was on the AT&T website for an hour before it was removed. AT&T issued the statement:

“We have not made any announcement regarding free Wi-Fi and iPhone. The Web page was posted in error and is being removed.”

OK, here’s the big question: Why did this happen? Again?! (it happened in May, too). Somebody at AT&T obviously typed this announcement and posted it. These things don’t appear on their own. So, that means that somewhere in the deep, dark crevices of AT&T, we either have rouge employees who are practicing wishful thinking or trying to embarrass the company or we have real intentions within AT&T to offer free wifi and somebody just jumped the gun before they were ready to make the official announcement.

Which is it?

One thing is clear: this makes AT&T look REALLY bad. You just don’t pull these kinds of stunts.

Like what you read?

If so, please join over 28,000 people who receive our exclusive weekly newsletter and computer tips, and get FREE COPIES of 5 eBooks we created, as our gift to you for subscribing. Just enter your name and email below:

Tim
Rouge employees? I think you mean “rogue”, although they must certainly be red-faced.
betancur
I bought an iPhone at eBay and opened access to internet through my wireless router and COMCAST Internet Modem and worked several weeks with no SIM card on it. Last month I transferred the AT&T cell phone SIM card to it for 3 weeks until I received a bill from AT&T for $106 dollars for internet services plus the normal monthly bill for cell phone.
I asked AT&T to reverse the charge on the grounds of not having used their phone infrastructure to access internet and that I had already paid the said service to COMCAST. In other words I was paying doble for every Kb I downloaded to my iPhone. AT&T did not accept my reasons to reverse the charges.
Now I use the iPhone with no SIM Card, and no phone service, and perfectly access internet at no extra cost, using, of course, my COMCAST Router and Modem thru WiFi, Safari and its HTML email.
I wonder if I can fill a claim at a Federal Agency for the money I had to pay AT&T.