O2 creaks and groans under the weight of UK iPhone interest
on Jul 7
Did you hear it this morning? The sound of 200,000 UK iPhone hopefuls getting an SMS simultaneously. It caused tremors around the Internet, and has certainly has thrown the operator’s website to the ground.
Everyone and their grandma’s dog have reported the issue O2, one of the UK’s main mobile operators, has suffered by now, but I’m amazed (yet oddly unsurprised) that an operator can be so unprepared for a traffic rush.
Based on this activity, it’s already obvious that the second coming of the iPhone will be more popular than the first. If the majority of these are new users adding themselves to the O2 network this Friday, we can only hope that O2’s mobile infrastructure is more resilient than its website!
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July 7th, 2008 at 3:22 pm
Haha, looks like o2 shot themselves in the foot!
But seriously, the iPhone 3G looks much more appetizing than the original. They just need to bring that pricepoint a little lower, and they’ll have me hooked. Saying this, the inclusion of all-you-can-eat 3G mobile internet has got me salivating at the mouth!
July 7th, 2008 at 3:37 pm
Certainly very silly of O2 to send out 200k texts in one go, specially so if they did not have 200k iPhones available. What amazes me even more is how they’ve managed to sell out when their site has been down/dysfunctional all day!
Managed to put my details through for the pre-order upgrade but doubting very much that they’ve got my name on one of the boxes. I wasn’t even offered a choice of white/black despite choosing the 16GB model.
Did anyone have better luck with the choice of colours for the 16GB?
July 7th, 2008 at 6:07 pm
Official word from O2 PR department when I asked was that white 16GB will not be available at the main launch, but they will follow in ‘coming weeks’.
July 7th, 2008 at 9:09 pm
Thanks for the info Ben, if that’s the case, I may as well forget about queuing on Fri.
Hoping the Apple Store may have the white one in stock at launch…
July 7th, 2008 at 9:47 pm
Interesting, thanks for the info Ben.
I don’t plan on queuing on Friday, though I might make my way to a shopping centre out of morbid curiosity.
July 11th, 2008 at 12:59 pm
Saw a few people queuing outside the O2 store in the Grafton Centre this morning, must admit I don’t quite understand this queuing for stuff like this.