Fake Steve Calls for AT&T Customer Network Protest, AT&T Calls It "Irresponsible"

Hot on the heels of a rant about AT&T and the state of American industry, Fake Steve Jobs is calling on AT&T customers to try and bring the company's mobile network down for an hour. AT&T issued a response Tuesday calling the move a "totally irresponsible."

In the guise of the idea originating with (Fake) Apple's engineers, Fake Steve Jobs suggested that customers find data-intensive apps to run for one hour, beginning at 12:00 PM PDT on December 18th, 2010.

"Our engineers are friggin livid," FSJ wrote in a blog entry called 'Operation Chokehold'. "And, because they're engineers, which means they’re basically evil little pricks, they've come up with a plan to teach AT&T a lesson."

To that end, he encouraged readers to organize in his comments, and many have done just that discussing data-intensive apps and strategies to saturate the company's network.

AT&T, needless to say, is not taking kindly to the idea. In a statement issued to Cult of Mac, the company said:

"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."

The biggest reason for dissent on Operation Chokehold is the potential for emergency calls to be blocked, above and beyond the practical reality that only AT&T's customers are likely to be harmed by a successful event.