With Answers Like These…

We have seen Verizon Wireless in preparation for opening up its cellular network. But no word from AT&T along these lines. But then when customers get answers like this –

Reader Christian has an iPhone that is activated on a pre-paid GoPhone plan with AT&T. The EDGE service has stopped working properly for quite a few GoPhone-style iPhone users in California and Christian isn’t having much luck with AT&T’s customer service:

Since Saturday many iPhones in California and several other states, that are on GoPhone plans, can not access their name servers on the EDGE network any more. This causes all network related services to fail in normal operation. If the browser is fed with IP addresses instead of website names it will access the sites, but this is not a viable workaround. Like hundreds of other iPhone GoPhone users I have reported the issue repeatedly and gotten the runaround.

With inabilities like to to serve their customer base, it might be no wonder that AT&T has not announced they are opening their network. With customer service becoming more and more important to the cellular carriers as the market saturates; incidents like this will drive customers to companies like Verizon. 2008 could be a critical year and the possibility is that Verizon could eclipse AT&T in total number of customers.

Linky.