From GadgetLab: How AT&T Stumbled Through the iPhone 3GS Launch

Per­son­ally, I haven’t had trou­ble with AT&T’s han­dling of the 3GS launch. Days prior to the device hit­ting the mar­ket, the com­pany announced that I would be eli­gi­ble for the fully sub­si­dized rate for the iPhone, sav­ing me $200 to break my old con­tract as my plan had out­lined when I agreed to it less than a year ago. I bought the phone, it was acti­vated in sec­onds — not min­utes, and hardly hours — and I was call­ing on it as I left the Apple store on Sat­ur­day, launch week­end.

Still, a lot of folks were peeved. My own dad has endured two multi-hour ses­sions in line to buy the phone, only to be told that AT&T says his con­tract won’t let him upgrade. But he’s an iPhone 1st gen user. That means he’s fin­ished his two year con­tract on the first phone, which he pur­chased unsub­si­dized two years ago. The rea­son his two year con­tract is still in play, says AT&T? Because he moved and changed phone num­bers, and there­fore restarted his con­tract. Need­less to say, many super­vi­sors have been informed. And dad’s prac­tic­ing patience.

The biggest chal­lenge for AT&T is that their per­for­mance on launch week­end doesn’t include key fea­tures the phone now sup­ports around the world: Teth­er­ing and MMS mes­sag­ing. AT&T says both fea­tures will come soon — later this sum­mer is the word — and more impor­tantly, they say it’s not their fault, that the net­work is up and run­ning and could sup­port these ser­vices imme­di­ately. What­ever. That doesn’t serve me right now. Oh, and don’t for­get the devs — WWDC this year appears to have been some­thing of an anti-AT&T party.

From Wired Gad­get Lab

Still, it’s unlikely Apple is going to find a new dance part­ner in the U.S. Together, Apple and AT&T have sold more than 6 mil­lion iPhone 3G units to date, accord­ing to AT&T. With that much at stake, it’s unlikely the two will call it quits after com­ing so far. Our advice? It’s time for a lit­tle heart to heart. When stuff gets rocky, a com­mon method is to look back and dis­cuss the sit­u­a­tion to avoid repeat­ing mis­takes. The fol­low­ing is our analy­sis of what went wrong with the iPhone launch and why (accord­ing to AT&T; Apple has not answered our requests for expla­na­tion), cou­pled with sug­ges­tions for how exe­cu­tion could have been better.