iPhone 4S Pre-Order: AT&T, Sprint Websites Crash Under Rush of Traffic
It looks like fans turned out in droves to Sprint's and AT&T's websites Friday morning as pre-orders for the new iPhone 4S from Apple, Inc. became available online. Within hours of making pre-orders live, both Sprint's and AT&T's websites experienced difficulties.
Perhaps Sprint and AT&T underestimated public excitement about the new iPhone 4S, or perhaps just too many consumers logged on at once to get a hold of the hot new product - either way, early Friday morning both cellular retailers were overloaded with traffic from iPhone seekers.
The other major U.S. cellular carrier that also launched pre-sales after midnight Friday but that did not experience traffic overload was Verizon.
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One Twitter user wondered if consumers were just not that into Verizon.
"Is it a good sign that Verizon was the only site that didn't crash last night for i4S preorders? Or is everyone hitting ATT and Sprint?" speculated KietChieng.
Others took to Twitter to shake their proverbial heads at Sprint's handling of what some view as the biggest thing to hit the company in years.
SagaciousT wrote, "We wait 4 years for iPhone to come to @Sprint & they don't even prep site to not crash from all the people trying to give them money?!" He added the hashtag "#FAIL" to underscore his disappointment.
Joshua Massre expressed what everyone might have been thinking hours before pre-orders even began, "Will the Apple, AT&T, Verizon and Sprint websites crash? I'm thinking yes."
In addition to chatter about AT&T's and Sprint's servers being overwhelmed with traffic, Twitter users searching for information on the iPhone 4s, available for pre-order in the U.S. and the U.K., pushed the term "iPhone 4S Pre-Orders" onto the social network's Trend list Friday morning.
Most queries and comments for "iPhone 4S Pre-Orders" on Twitter appeared to be re-tweets of announcements on pre-orders, retailers selling the iPhone 4S and disappointment from fans who would not be able to purchase the much-coveted smartphone.
The iPhone 4s, to be in users' hands Oct. 14, is available for pre-order by Sprint, AT&T, Verizon, and from T-Mobile and Vodafone in the U.K.
