Greetings. There have apparently been widespread failures of AT&T's EDGE phone data network today, on the first business day following the iPhone activation blitz.

At least the Central and Western U.S. areas (including here in Los Angeles) reportedly have been (and apparently are still being) affected. Some users have seen sporadic periods of operation, followed by failures. In the case of my own EDGE (not an iPhone) unit, I finally had a brief period of full data operation a few minutes ago (after being down since this morning), but have now lost the network completely again.

In some cases, users' phones are able to "login" to the network but then cannot transfer data. In other cases, the login procedure is also failing.

AT&T claimed that they "beefed up" the EDGE network in preparation for the iPhone launch -- but perhaps they used ground beef. For those of us who depend on phone data connectivity, this is not a confidence-building development.

Thank you for using the new AT&T.

--Lauren--