Operation Chokehold
What brought AT&T to its knees?
December 28, 2009: 8:38 AM ETA rash of online fraud in New York may have done what Operation Chokehold couldn't
Source: AT&T Wireless
Why did AT&T Wireless (T) halt online sales of Apple (AAPL) iPhones in New York City the weekend after Christmas? None of the answers AT&T has given so far make much sense.
The new policy was first reported to The Consumerist's Laura Northrup by a reader in Brooklyn. In a blog entry posted Sunday afternoon, Northrup suggested that AT&T had found a novel solution to the city's data congestion problems: it had simply stopped selling iPhones to online customers in the metropolitan area. "The phone is not offered to you," a sales rep told Northrup, "because New York is not ready for the iPhone."
In an update later that day, Northrup posted AT&T Public Relations' inscrutable official statement on the matter: "We periodically modify our promotions and distribution channels." That didn't help.
The mystery deepened Sunday evening.
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AT&T survives Operation Chokehold
Ma Bell's wireless network is still standing after Friday's grassroots iPhone attack
The appointed hour -- Friday, from 12 noon to 1 p.m. PST -- came and went and AT&T's (T) 3G cellular network had not been brought to its knees, despite the best efforts of thousands of Apple (AAPL) iPhone users.
"As far as I can tell, there's been no impact at all," wrote Dan Lyons in The Secret Diary of MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Dec 18, 2009 4:24 PM ET -
Can the kids bring AT&T to its knees?
A smartphone protest begun as blogger's joke catches fire in the high schools of America
The most interesting thing about Operation Chokehold -- a grassroots denial of service attack against AT&T's (T) data network scheduled for Friday at 12 noon PST (3 p.m. EST) -- may be who has signed on to take part.
You can see their shining faces on Facebook's official Operation Chokehold page, which by Friday morning had attracted MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Dec 17, 2009 8:34 AM ET
