AT&T: Blaming the customer since early 2007

To the usual litany of complaints — lousy customer service, dropped calls, delayed messages, thin coverage — you can now add one more: AT&T is guilty of almost unbelievable gall. Struggling with the success it’s been forced to endure as the sole carrier of Apple’s iPhone, the telephone giant is now actually thinking up ways to get customers to use its maxed-out network less. Among the possibilities: Bait-and-switch heavy data users off the unlimited plans they signed up for. This after years of promises, so far largely unrealized, that the company would build out its data network to handle demand. From today’s New York Times:

“What we are seeing in the U.S. today in terms of smartphone penetration, 3G data, nobody else is seeing in the rest of the planet,” Ralph de la Vega, president and chief executive for mobility and consumer markets at AT&T, told analysts at a conference in New York. “The amount of growth and data that we are seeing in wireless data is unprecedented.”

Immediately after which, the sound of stunned silence ringing in his ears, de la Vega pointed left, yelled “Hey, look over there!” and ran offstage to the right.

AT&T to Urge Wireless Customers To Use Less Data – NYTimes.com.