Continuing to maintain its reputation for coverage and service, AT&T today officially announced its recommendations for optimal iPhone usage. They intend to spend $75 million advertising what they call "Complete iPhone Happiness."
According to the carrier, iPhone users can "find happiness" by using the Apple device only in situations which do not vary from what they call "typical behavior." In the fine print attached to the press release, AT&T defines "typical behavior" as only placing calls to other AT&T phones while both caller and recipient are standing within 20 feet of an AT&T communications tower. They also noted that calls should be kept to less than a minute to avoid "unfortunate interruptions" such as a dropped call.
For maximal happiness, the carrier "strongly recommends" iPhone users avoid behavior such as: sending or receiving SMS or voicemail messages in a time-sensitive situation, using more than 100 KB of data in a day, using the telephony features of the iPhone, or complaining about AT&T.
Among other "discouraged behavior" are uses such as turning the iPhone on, expecting incoming calls to not go straight to voicemail, and relying on the iPhone's "bars" as an indicator of service.
In other news, AT&T today announced that they will be substantially upping their "more bars in more places" advertising campaign to compensate for their decision not to expand on their national network of communications towers until 2017. AT&T currently maintains 82 towers around the United States, providing what they refer to as "unparalleled service" to America's 250 largest cities. (In a note on that press release, AT&T noted that rural users could "go %!$# themselves." This too appears to be part of their "happiness" campaign.)
Too funny. It probably does touch on a lot of raw nerves of people who don't like AT&T, for whatever reason.