[Outages] Cingular/ATT Wireless data network problems

[John Todd]

We utilize the Cingular/ATT wireless network (GPRS) for various IT 
purposes and for delivery of some of our customer data.  For the last 
8 days, we have seen various failures in the Cingular data network 
with inability to complete requests to any destinations using HTTP 
(we have not tried other protocols.)  It seems to be sporadic, with 
about a 50% failure rate on any particular request.  We have tried to 
many destinations, both our own and other locations which have shown 
no issues in the past.  Our problems have been with devices or 
networks in the San Francisco Bay/Silicon Valley area.  We have 
performed the same tests 20 miles apart in this region to ensure 
different towers, with the same results.

Calls to Cingular customer support lead to long hold times followed 
by requests for us to reboot our cell phones, and there seems to be 
no comprehension of the failure mode by the support group.

Is anyone else using Cingular/ATT that has experienced problems with 
HTTP gateway service?  While I can't pin this on a "network" failure, 
it does appear that the application (HTTP or WAP) failures are 
causing operational problems for us, and I would like to determine if 
this is a localized or regional issue, or if this is a wider scale 
problem with application gateways or our equipment type.

JT