iPhonefreak width="190"

Yesterday, I wrote about Fake Steve Jobs’ digital revolt, Operation Chokehold, which is planned for this Friday. Now thanks to CultofMac, we know what AT&T thinks of the event. An AT&T spokesperson called the event “totally irresponsible”, and continued:

We understand that fakesteve.net is primarily a satirical forum, but there is nothing amusing about advocating that customers attempt to deliberately degrade service on a network that provides critical communications services for more than 80 million customers. We know that the vast majority of customers will see this action for what it is: an irresponsible and pointless scheme to draw attention to a blog.

While I don’t doubt that this whole thing is partially a (brilliant) publicity stunt for Fake Steve Jobs, he’s also speaking to some legitimate complaints by iPhone users about AT&T’s craptastic network. Apparently, AT&T isn’t too worried about the whole thing, and they also point to critics of the event who say that it could end up disrupting emergency service.

Ultimately, I’m of two minds about this whole thing. On the one hand, it’ll be fascinating to see if AT&T addresses some of FSJ’s concerns if Chokehold gets big enough. On the other, it’s also degrading service for many innocent AT&T customers — basically, making a bad situation even worse.

FSJ isn’t a hack, and he offers some great Apple criticism (which is much needed sometimes, when attacking the iFanboy Hive Mind). Perhaps he is going a bit too far here, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t excited to see how Operation Chokehold turns out.

[Source: CultofMac]