Operation Chokehold Fails To Destroy AT&T

Some users tried, although it was supposed to be a joke. Operation Chokehold was a joke by Fake Steve Jobs, designed to take down the AT&T network. Some saw issues, but not all over the country, and it's unclear if it was a result of AT&T famous "normal" network problems or the Operation itself.

Operation Chokehold was a joke by Fake Steve Jobs, who is actually writer Dan Lyons of Newsweek. The intent was for all AT&T users across the country to, at 12 noon on Friday, Dec. 18th, to use some data intensive app (like YouTube or NPR streaming radio or Pandora) to show AT&T just what users think of its network.

As I said, it was supposed to be a joke, but it grew into a real protest, with a Facebook page and all. That led to fears that it really could bring down the network, which, as both AT&T and the FCC said, would be "irresponsible" as it might prevent users from making emergency calls and the like. In fact, Jamie Barnett, chief of FCC's public safety and homeland security bureau, said in a statement:

"Threats of this nature are serious and we caution the public to use common sense and good judgment when accessing the Internet from their commercial mobile devices. To purposely try to disrupt or negatively impact a network with ill-intent is irresponsible and presents a significant public safety concern."

At any rate, if you followed the event on Facebook or Twitter, you could see people saying they were streaming video or whatever, trying to blow up AT&T's network. Did it work? Not really. AT&T might even use this as positive PR. Some people said they had issues, but most did not.

In the San Francisco Bay Area, which isn't the most iPhone friendly area by any means, I didn't seen any issues myself. Well, I didn't see any issues beyond what I normally see, anyway.

If the goal of the protest was to make AT&T aware of users' annoyance with their network, that certainly worked. The entire country, in fact, is aware of Operation Chokehold, so perhaps it accomplished its purpose. At the very least, AT&T backed away from threats of tiered wireless data plans. And we now know AT&T's network is stronger than many, myself included, thought.