• GigaOm, Tuesday, March 17, 2009 11:15 AM

AT&T is in denial about its mobile network problems, says GigaOm's Om Malik, who says the lack of backhaul bandwidth was so disappointing, he was forced to trade in his iPhone for a T-Mobile 8900 BlackBerry and "a plain old phone from Verizon." Nevertheless, the telecom giant keeps denying that its having bandwidth problems, most recently in a New York Times article that was published on the same weekend that iPhone-toters were up-in-arms about network problems at South By Southwest in Austin, Texas.

AT&T ultimately fixed the SXSW problem by switching on 850 MHz band on eight cell towers in the downtown Austin area. Meanwhile, AT&T Mobility CEO Ralph de la Vega recently told Engadget that it was going to make the same arrangements in San Francisco and New York.

"The move to fix the bandwidth issue is a clear sign that AT&T knows it has network problems," says Malik. "It is time for the company to step up and acknowledge that this is indeed the case, and make a clear and coherent statement on how it is fixing it. By not doing so, it is clearly selling 3G phones (iPhone and BlackBerry Bold) under false pretenses. I think this is where the new FCC should step up to the plate and force their hand!"

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