Appletell | Apple, Mac, iPhone, iPod | News, Rumors, Reviews, How-Tos

“Operation Chokehold,” an event set up by the infamous blogger Fake Steve has one goal in mind: bring the AT&T network down in an extremely harsh way in order to prove to them that they need to expand it. According to Fake Steve himself, the plan is as follows:

On Friday, December 18, at noon Pacific time, we will attempt to overwhelm the AT&T data network and bring it to its knees. The goal is to have every iPhone user (or as many as we can) turn on a data intensive app and run that app for one solid hour. Send the message to AT&T that we are sick of their substandard network and sick of their abusive comments. The idea is we’ll create a digital flash mob. We’re calling it in Operation Chokehold. Join us and speak truth to power!

Now Fake Steve isn’t taking this lightly, either. When he says “data intensive app,” he means apps that stream even more data than those such as Pandora. For instance, I have a feeling we are going to be seeing a lot of Qik streams from the iPhone during this time period.

However, now that you have the background story, let’s jump to the current. Cult of Mac is now reporting that AT&T has responded to Fake Steve’s plan with the following:

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.

Acknowledging the plan exists may not have been a very smart move, as now it is only causing more press about the event. As an example, there is already a Facebook group for the cause that is brainstorming the best applications to use, as well as other mischievous plots of evil. It’s sort of interesting to see how seriously people (as well at AT&T apparently) are taking this. Will you get involved?