Rob Follis, top PR bloke, Apple obsessive and iPhone owner, has started a blog called O2 sucks http://o2sucks.wordpress.com/2009/07/03/a-near-neighbour-buys-an-iphone-gets-missed-calls-dropped-calls-and-more/ which catalogues his frustration with the network. I have had an iPhone for several months now and I have been very underwhelmed by its performance.
At home on my wireless network, the iPhone is an amazing device which works brilliantly. Yet whenever I leave home and try to look at web pages or use Twitter I invariably end up getting very frustrated with the phone running very slowly and dropping sites and calls. Last night at Blur’s Hyde Park gig it simply gave up and was networkless for hours. Now this might be network overload – there were probably a lot of iPhone owners in the park and I seem to remember The Guar’s Jemima Kiss highlighting a similar problem at Glastonbury, but it reflects very badly on O2. My Voda/Nokia combi worked fine though.
The one thing that does spring to mind is whether this is entirely O2’s fault. Might it simply be that the iPhone’s 3G chip isn’t up to it and this is compounded by O2’s fairly iffy coverage. There I have said it.
Sputnika - Ashley Norris on new media and gadgets 