Carrier hiccups giving buyers grief on iPhone 5 launch day

By Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla

We've been through iPhone launches before so one would think that Canadian carriers would have figured out how to compensate for the demand of new signups.

Walking through the downtown core today we saw that a Telus store had closed its doors to customers because of a nationwide outage that hit at 7:30 in the morning and that hasn't yet been resolved. The Telus outage seems to have affected their website with users being unable to access their accounts. The issue was resolved late in the afternoon.

Telus acknowledged the issue later in the day with the following statement- 

Due to extremely high demand, we had systems challenges throughout the day, but we’re very happy to report they’ve been resolved – we’d like to thank our customers, who have been unbelievably patient, and we’re excited to get them up and running on their new iPhones.

Similar issues were reported with Rogers with various users complaining on Twitter that they couldn't get their devices activated because their servers are down so the sales can't go through.

At the Apple Store in the Eaton Centre, a long line of iPhone 5 buyers patiently waited for these issues to be resolved. Apple isn't selling unlocked iPhone 5's this year in stores on launch, so everyone who lined up was signing up for a three-year activation. Anyone interested in unlocked iPhone 5's can still order online on Apple's website.

The activation problem usually stems from carriers from all over the country slamming their servers in order to activate new accounts.

I experienced this firsthand as a Rogers customer when the iPhone 3G launched and also when the iPhone 3GS launched. The worst part for people in the line is the poor communication and uncertainty since no one seems to know what is going on and when it will be resolved.