Apple and AT&T's Loveless Celebrity Marriage

Wired takes an in depth look at the relationship between Apple and AT&T and how it has deteriorated.

Shortly after the iPhone was released in 2007, AT&T began to realize the iPhone customers were demanding data faster then they were building out their network. The company met with Apple asking them to take measures to avert the looming problem; however, Apple wasn't interested in restricting their device to help AT&T look good.

“They tried to have that conversation with us a number of times,” says someone from Apple who was in the meetings. “We consistently said ‘No, we are not going to mess up the consumer experience on the iPhone to make your network tenable.’ They’d always end up saying, ‘We’re going to have to escalate this to senior AT&T executives,’ and we always said, ‘Fine, we’ll escalate it to Steve and see who wins.’ I think history has demonstrated how that turned out.”


As foreseen AT&T's network did fail under the pressure resulting in thousands of frustrated customers. “AT&T went in thinking the deal was a true partnership: ‘We’re in this together, and we defend each other throughout.’ That wasn’t the way Apple did things at all,” says someone who worked on the project for AT&T. “We’d say, ‘Let’s resolve these issues together,’ and they’d say, ‘No, you resolve them. They’re not our problem. They’re your problem.’”

The article continues to describe sources of conflict between the companies. For example when Jobs heard that De la Vega made an announcement about tethering before a deal was in place he “was absolutely livid,” a witness says. “He paced around the room for five minutes talking about what an incredibly stupid company AT&T was and how frustrating it was to do business with them. Then, when he was done, he said, ‘I’m going to go call Ralph and yell at him.’”

The two companies have even fought about wardrobe with an AT&T representative suggesting to one of Jobs’ deputies that the Apple CEO wear a suit to meet with AT&T’s board of directors, he was told, “We’re Apple. We don’t wear suits. We don’t even own suits.”

Wired also talks about the difficulties Apple faces in switching to Verizon and when it might finally happen. The article is a highly recommended read.


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