Worst PR Of The Day: AT&T (T)

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
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AT&T (NASDAQ:T) has had trouble with its network, reported due to the huge amount of activity by Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) iPhone customers. Today, the phone company’s PR firm, Fleishman-Hillard, put out a release saying that independent research showed AT&T had better connection speeds than Verizon Wireless in “six out of nine locations”.

Fleishman-Hillard then went on to highlight AT&T’s 3G disaster in New York City and San Francisco:

“AT&T has suffered in New York and San Francisco from better than average iPhone penetration. In these two cities, AT&T has been too successful in selling the iPhone, to the point where the network has been severely strained. While only two markets, these issues have had a large effect on customer perception due to their high-profile nature.”

It is good of them to keep those problems top of mind among the media.

PS. Fleishman-Hillard wanted it to be clear that the research was from PiperJaffray and not a traditional press release, although that is hair-splitting since the note went to people in the press.

Douglas A. McIntyre

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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