I was at the Depeche Mode show at Madison Square Garden last night along with ~18,000 others, many of whom were also sporting various flavors and revisions of iPhones.
I settled into my seat and was going to tweet about the opening band Peter Bjorn and John (who were actually pretty good). No go as Tweetie wouldn’t load. Then I tried checking with Foursquare, and again, nothing. Then perhaps email? Nope. Nada. Safari? No love.
For the last attempt, I thought about SMS thinking that it might be able to punch through all the noise. One sms managed to get through to me, but I couldn’t send so no reply. Ugh.
For the record, I use an iPhone 3GS and had 5 bars of service and 3G. So, in a nutshell, I was data enabled but every app returned the same “you’re not connected to the internet” error. Fantastic stuff.
Then comes the best part, my wife who uses a non-3G Blackberry was sitting with me and could email, sms, and browse the web. However meager and frustrating the browsing experience is on the Blackberry, at least she could do it.
Now the final two pieces of the puzzle, I waited until the end of the second song assuming that most people would actually be watching/enjoying the show and not trying to use their devices. Shockingly enough, every app worked like a champ – instant load and access. I quickly went through my little backlog and went back to enjoying the show.
Finally, once the show ended and we were exiting, I tried Tweetie, Safari and Mail again, and again had no success despite 5 bars and 3G.
So, unless AT&T had two temporary network outages – right before and after the show – I can only conclude that there were too many users at once for the network which is pathetic considering where were. For those who don’t know, bear in mind that MSG is in the Penn Station / Herald Square area of NYC which always has tons of users.
Awesome stuff AT&T, thanks.
As for Depeche Mode, they were awesome, as always.
Finally, we have inconclusive & anecdotal proof that AT&T can’t handle all these iPhones #att #fail
August 4, 2009 By Leave a Comment
