If your iPhone is a little slow you can probably blame fellow users are staging a protest Friday to send a message to AT&T that they're not going to be happy if the company start charging usage fees for those who use the internet and email functions of their devices more.

The protest was actually a lark by the blogger known as Fake Steve Jobs, who was musing in a wouldn't-it-be-funny way that iPhone users could send a serious message to AT&T today about its CEO's suggestion that high-bandwidth users were choking its network. But the lark turned serious as many iPhone users, particularly in this Mac-crazed town, decided to go head with the protest and use as much of the device's internet-rich features (browser, email, apps) as possible in an attempt to slow AT&T's network to a crawl and send the company a message.

The bitterness is in response to network chief Ralph de la Vega's comments last week that the company was looking at ways to discourage bandwidth hogs who comprise a sliver of its customers but who use most of its data capacity, mostly via iPhones. His comments, and the network's admission that iPhone usage was straining its capacity in big markets such as New York and San Francisco, set off a shit storm among iPhone users already mad about AT&T spotty and often slow network.

As Fake Steve Jobs put it, the company has earned “billions of dollars in revenue from these new customers, but instead of plowing that money into building out their network, they've held the money back and applied it to earnings — lining their own pockets and looking after their investors instead of looking after customers.”

AT&T has responded, stating, “We understand that fakesteve.net is primarily a satirical forum, but there is nothing amusing about advocating that customers attempt to deliberately degrade service on a network that provides critical communications services for more than 80 million customers. We know that the vast majority of customers will see this action for what it is: an irresponsible and pointless scheme to draw attention to a blog.”

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