Ashburn AT&T Store Leaves Dozens iPhone-less
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For over 75 people lined up at the AT&T store in Ashburn, Virginia -- a major technology center and nearby to companies such as AOL -- excitement quickly turned to anger as dozens who waited over five hours were left without an iPhone due to the store's paltry stock of just 14 phones.
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AT&amp;T Corp. announced Thursday that it is cutting at least 7,500 more jobs and slashing the value of its assets by $11.4 billion, drastic moves prompted by the company&#39;s plan to retreat from the traditional consumer telephone business.
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AT&T is finally putting an end to the odd practice of sending its iPhone customers extremely detailed bills, sometimes numbering in the hundreds of pages.
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AT&T Inc. sold almost all its  initial stock of Apple Inc.&#39;s iPhone within hours of the device  going on sale, an AT&T spokesman said on Saturday.
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Cingular Wireless on Tuesday closed  its $41 billion cash purchase of AT&T Wireless Services Inc.  AWE.N, creating the biggest U.S. mobile service with more  than 46 million customers.
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(InfoWorld) - After standing in line for hours on Friday to buy the new Apple iPhone, some users were forced to wait even longer to activate the phones, while others found the store shelves empty and will have to wait another week for their phones to arrive in the mail. On Monday, staff at an AT&T store in Boston said they had run out of iPhones on Friday night while a line of customers still snaked out the door. People at the back of the line purchased their phones through "direct fulfillment" and will receive their phones through the mail in three to seven days, the store said. AT&T declined to release sales figures but said that virtually all of its stores have sold out of iPhones. Over the weekend, AT&T referred disappointed customers to the Apple Web site but now says it plans to begin selling iPhones through its online store as well, said AT&T spokesman Michael Coe. He did not give a date. AT&T downplayed the reported activation delays. "The vast majority of iPhone customers have completed the activation process in just a few minutes as planned," Coe said. "Only a very small number of customers who purchased an iPhone this weekend are experiencing issues with activation, and all our energies are focused on clearing up these difficulties just as quickly as possible." Apple did not return calls for comment. Some analysts blamed the delays on heavy user traffic. "AT&T's servers were slow due to the mass number of sign-ups in the first few hours with credit checks. This may have delayed some purchasing of iPhones," said Shaw Wu, an analyst at American Technology Research, in his Monday report to investors. Other customers experienced delays when they tried to switch to AT&T from other carriers, he said. Still, Wu upgraded his stock estimate for the company and predicted that the iPhone would become the fastest-selling product in Apple's history. Within three years, Apple could become one of the top smartphone vendors, changing the competitive landscape of that industry. Even customers who took their iPhones home on Friday faced potential delays in activating them. Users who registered their phones on the iTunes Web site saw a warning that the process could take between 24 and 48 hours, said Craig Henry, a 32-year-old IT administrator at a law firm in Massachusetts. Henry's wait lasted for three hours when he received an e-mail confirmation that his phone was activated. However, he soon faced another challenge when he tried to transfer his address book to the iPhone. "The hardest part for me was transferring my phone numbers because I was on Verizon and didn't have the software to keep the numbers on my PC. So I spent an hour typing in about 150 numbers," he said. He also had to get accustomed to the touchscreen interface, which relies completely on finger drags, flicks, and pinches instead of using hard keys. "It takes a little bit of getting used to. But the typing works fine; I was sending text messages all day on Saturday," Henry said. "When you're in the contacts sheet, you run your finger across the screen -- kind of like flicking a marble -- and it scrolls really fast, or you can drag it and scroll slowly." Many users were concerned about iPhone battery life, an issue that Apple tried to address on June 18 by upgrading the original battery before the product even launched. Still, Henry visited an Apple store on Saturday to buy a second charger so that he could power his iPhone both in his home and his office. Despite the hurdles of learning to use his new gadget, Henry said he suffered no buyer's remorse. "I was out on Saturday night, and everybody knew I had it and wanted to touch it," Henry said. "They made a little fun of me for waiting in line so long, but I don't think the wait was too bad. When people see it, they're amazed by it."
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Cingular Wireless on Tuesday closed its &#36;41 billion cash purchase of AT&T Wireless Services Inc. , creating the biggest U.S. mobile service with more than 46 million customers.
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AT&amp;T&#39;s wireless data networks in the Southeast and Midwest U.S. are down, causing BlackBerry and iPhone users to be without data services.The EDGE (Enhanced Data Rates for GSM Evolution) and UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System) services in those regions began having problems around 6:30 a.m. EST this morning, said Mark Siegel, an AT&amp;T spokesman. Voice calling has not been affected, but people trying to use wireless data services might have &quot;difficulty,&quot; he said.Several users of a BlackBerry newsgroup have reported being unable to receive data to their handsets. A systems administrator in Kansas reports that BlackBerry devices there are displaying a message that says &quot;data connection refused.&quot;AT&amp;T is still looking into what exactly caused the failure, but technicians have found a solution to the problem and expect the service to be restored by around 3:30 p.m. EST, Siegel said.The iPhone runs on the EDGE network, so users of the phones, as well as any other mobile device that receives data from either of the networks, will have problems using data services.In early 2007, Research In Motion implemented a software upgrade that caused its systems to crash, resulting in a BlackBerry service outage that started in the evening and lasted through the night. This time, the problem appears to be with AT&amp;T&#39;s network and not with RIM&#39;s infrastructure.
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A survey of Apple and AT&T stores finds they're not all the same when it comes to stocking and reserving the much-hyped gadget.
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AT&amp;T Corp. on Thursday said it is reducing one fifth of its workforce this year and will record a non-cash charge of approximately $11.
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AT&amp;T Corp. said it will cut 7,400 more jobs this year and write down $11.4 billion of assets as the phone company retreats from the residential business it once dominated.
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In retrospect, Apple should have made a disclaimer before the iPhone went on sale Friday at 6pm: If you want an iPhone, don't go to an AT&T store. Hoping to avoid massive crowds, many iPhone buyers ventured to smaller AT&T stores, like the one in Asburn, Virginia. But it turns out the real stock was located at Apple's own stores, and standing in line was not a requirement.
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The new measures are due to AT&T's retreat from selling services to consumers, the company said today.
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AT&T is taking extra steps to prepare for an expected onslaught of business due to the iPhone, including the hiring of about 2,000 temporary employees and enhancing security.
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Electronics superstore drops T-Mobile wireless service to make room.
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NEW YORK - AT&T Corp. is cutting at least 7,500 more jobs and slashing the book value of its assets by $11.4 billion, drastic moves prompted by the company's plan to retreat from the traditional consumer telephone business following a lost court battle...
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Â·  Dozens camp out to be first in line for iPhoneÂ·  Stakes could not be higher for computer giant