It appears that O2 had no idea the iPhone 3G would be this popular in the UK, because someone there didn’t add any extra bandwidth or redundancy servers to their store. So when the hordes descended this morning, prompted by a text message to existing O2 subscribers and people who’d pre-registered on the O2 site, guess what happened? This:
I contacted O2 to ask them to explain what their response was, so here it is:
Due to extremely high levels of demand, the O2 online shop is
temporarily unavailable. We are working to restore the service as
quickly as possible. Customers who are unable to place an order online
can still go into store from 8.02am on 11 July, although we urge people
to get down there early as demand is expected to be very high.
No kidding. Meanwhile, a source inside O2 tells me they had 200,000 pre-registration via the O2 site after the Steve Jobs Keynote.