Will Fake Steve Jobs have to eat his words about AT&T?

In what has to be one of the best Fake Steve Jobs posts Dan Lyons pretty well rips AT&T a new one as being a slime bucket of the telecommunications world by suggesting that iPhone users should cut back on their usage to make life easier for AT&T.

However this beautifully crafted vitriol may have to be rethought according to a post by Randal Stross in the New York Times today. Like most people Stross was more than willing to pile his iPhone’s woes onto AT&T because after all Apple can do no wrong so therefor is just has to be AT&T who are to blame.

Right?

Well, maybe not.

When I set about looking for independent data, however, to confirm the superior performance of Verizon’s network, I was astonished to discover that I had managed to get things exactly wrong. Despite the well-publicized problems in New York and San Francisco, AT&T seems to have the superior network nationwide.

And the iPhone itself may not be so great after all. Its design is contributing to performance problems.

Roger Entner, senior vice president for telecommunications research at Nielsen, said the iPhone’s “air interface,” the electronics in the phone that connect it to the cell towers, had shortcomings that “affect both voice and data.” He said that in the eyes of the consumer, “the iPhone has the nimbus of infallibility, ergo, it’s AT&T’s fault.” AT&T does not publicly defend itself because it will not criticize Apple under any circumstances, he said. AT&T and Apple both declined to comment on Mr. Entner’s assessments.

Stross goes on to mention several other companies who have data as well that shows that AT&T’s service far from being at the bottom of the pile is actually head and shoulders above their competitors. It may turn out that all the problems that everyone is screaming to high heavens about have nothing to do with the network they are being run on but may in fact reside with the iPhone itself.

If this is indeed the case it kind of gives new credence to the report from Strand Consult that iPhone users are suffering from a delusional form of the famous Stockholm Syndrome.

Regardless it doesn’t change the fact the the Fake Steve Jobs post is a classic and still makes me laugh my ass off.