Tiger Woods Dumps AT&T?

AT&T announced it is ending it's relationship with Tiger Woods:

AT&T Cuts Ties to Woods

Of course, the real question is whether all the bad press AT&T has been getting lately made Tiger nervous so he decided to distance himself from the company.

Happy New Year!

AT&T Can't Grab the Future and Wants to Run From the Past

The PR timing couldn't be better. AT&T can't provide decent service to New York City, so now it wants to abandon land lines in small towns.

AT&T Wants to Kill Land Lines

The article states that Congresses goal of 100 percent broadband access can't be met if big corporations aren't helped out. Helped out in this case mean's abandoning rural grandparents who can't afford $100 a month cable bill and simply want to be able to talk to their kids and police in an emergency.

Why on Earth do American corporations need assistance to do what is incredibly profitable. Providing broadband at huge monthly bills? Why is it that every other technologically advanced nation has 100 percent broadband, normally at cheaper rates, and big corporations like AT&T have to go to the government hat in hand for "help." This when they can't even provide proper service in the biggest city in the USA when they have an exclusive right to the iPhone and charge a fortune for the honor?

If AT&T isn't interested in maintaining land lines, they should spin off that part of their company and let someone else charge for POTS (plain old telephone service). I'm sure there are other company's that can make a handsome profit running that declining, but still profitable utility. But what does AT&T want? They want to continue to charge an aging customer base while neglecting service. They want to gradually cut off the less profitable areas, were people need the service the most, and keep the cash cows on life support while bumbling into broadband. Oh, and they want the right to tell grandma she has to switch to cable because they're shutting down her phone line.

Someone in government really needs to rap AT&T on the knuckles on this one.

Is the AT&T the Most Hated Company on Earth?

AT&T's latest efforts at shooting itself in an already wounded foot is generating a lot of negative press, which is not much of a surprise. Here's just a few examples from today:

CNN CALLS AT&T MOSTED HATED CELL PHONE PROVIDER

AT&T's Bad Reputation

AT&T Mysteriously Has No Brain

Time to speed dial Luke Wilson?

AT&T Phones Available Again in New York?

Reports are coming in that AT&T phones are available again for sale to New Yorkers.

NYTimes

Amazingly, there is no official statement from AT&T trying to explain what happened and what is going on. This is unbelievable for a major corporation. Something is seriously wrong with the management that a day after such a PR nightmare they have no official response.

It would appear that they don't want to admit to the real reason for cutting off on-line sales to New York, which is starting too look like a simple money grab. Reports are there were discounts available on-line that they didn't want New Yorkers to take advantage of over the Holidays so they forced them to go into the stores and pay more. That's sounds like the greedy AT&T we all know. Why get a dollar from your customer for tens cents of service when you can get a dollar and a penny?

The other possibility, that AT&T stopped making sales because it was worried its already overloaded network would get even more overloaded, seems less likely. I mean, AT&T shows little interest in really solving it's New York problems, and a brief sales slow down wouldn't mean much, especially if you can still buy the phones in retail outlets.

Regardless of the real reason, it's unbelievable that a publicly traded company of this size has no crisis management team in place to deal with these kinds of things when they hit the media. We already learned that with Operation Chokehold and the negative response to the floating of tiered pricing, but this has to be the worst example. 24 hours after a widely publicized news crisis and there's no official response? This moves beyond some idiot flacks and really speaks badly of senior corporate management. This company is headless.

Fake Steve Jobs on AT&T's Latest Bumble

Fake Steve Jobs, who started Operation Chokehold, comments on the latest strange and embarrassing news coming out of AT&T:

AT&T is Running Off the Rails

No big surprise that AT&T idiot flacks are trying to suppress news rather than organize a thoughtful response. Like the rest of AT&T, these people simply react to problems, rather than fix them.

AT&T PR NUCLEAR BOMB DISASTER!

This is unbelievable BREAKING NEWS. AT&T has stopped selling iPhones on line in the New York area and it's idiot flacks are scrambling to make sure the world knows they don't know what they are doing or why they're doing it. Here's a link with the full story:

WE CAN'T GRAB OUR ASS, SO WE'LL JUST FART LOUDLY

Here's the original unbelievable item:

New York Isn't Ready for the iPhone

Much more to come. Stay tuned.

Operation Chokehold had no effect on AT&T? Right. And Pearl Harbor had no effect on the USA.