Perhaps a ring of stolen credit cards were used to purchase these, and they were shipped to New York? That's more believable than the reason this story puts for

Perhaps a ring of stolen credit cards were used to purchase these, and they were shipped to New York? That's more believable than the reason this story puts forth. I can't imagine AT&T's failure to sell them online to New Yorkers will help much if their towers are overly congested. I would imagine most people either buy iPhones from Apple or an AT&T store. Anyone who didn't find one online but knew they wanted one would get one from another channel. And if there are people who are actually unsure of what phone they want and browse around online to figure it out and who would have chosen an iPhone were it there, those people will probably end up on some other data-consuming phone as well which doesn't really solve AT&T's problem. I really just can't picture this conversation: Exec 1: Hey, our service sucks in NYC because too many people are using data. What can we do? Exec 2: We could stop selling the iPhone to New Yorkers on our website. That should solve the whole problem. Exec 1: Brilliant! (Execs toast their Guinnesses)