Can this innocent looking device ruin your next golf vacation? Unfortunately, the answer is yes.

I don’t like to use the word “sucks.” It sounds immature and unprofessional. But as a very frequent global traveler who has needs phone and data connectivity, has written on consumer protection issues for travelers, and has lugged every permutation of laptop, netbook, Blackberry and now iPhone around the world for 15 years, I can safely say the iPhone sucks.

Here are three main reasons why the iPhone sucks so much:

A, T and T.

Not that Apple is innocent in all of this, they have plenty of problems of their own, which I will address later, but the biggest issue, which is totally Apple’s fault, is their refusal to let customers who buy the iPhone use anyone but AT&T. They know this, they get besieged with complaints about it, business articles have described how the companies’ joint monopolistic practices have threatened to tarnish Apple’s seemingly untarnishable reputation and cult following, yet they do nothing about it. It’s not smart business either: in other countries where Apple started with a sole vendor then opened the market, iPhone sales skyrocketed, and they would here too – the single biggest reason I hear for people not getting an iPhone is because then they would have to use AT&T. To add insult to injury, even as the media speculated that they might open more choices, Apple recently introduced two major new products, the iPad and the iPhone 4, and again, stuck it to consumers via AT&T.

So what’s the problem, and what does this have to do with golf travel?

Golf travel is like any other kind of travel: you are going someplace away from home, and presumably want to stay in touch. It’s hard to that when both the phone and its data service don’t work very well.

Before I get into the gory details, and lose the Apple apologist in the audience, and there are plenty, let me just say this: Apple enjoys  cult like following, and if you are a fan, you will likely not want to believe the company’s flagship product doesn’t work well, so here are two pieces of evidence to consider.

First, get on any long haul flight in business or first class, especially an international flight, which is typically the province of serious road warrior business people. Before takeoff look around as they are all busy texting and emailing. I would be surprised if you see an iPhone in the house. I recently flew business to and from Beijing, and the large business class cabin seemed to be exclusively the province of Blackberries, Treos and new Droid/Google phones. Why? Because the people who actually need their devices to work know. Tweens at the mall, on the other hand, don’t lose contracts over missed emails, and love the iPhone’s neat music apps.

Second: call AT&T wireless customer support, just for fun. Before you get dispatched to someone in India trained to duck your problem and not help you, you will be presented with an automated menu of options. One is specifically for iPhone problems. Considering that AT&T also is the carrier for numerous other devices, this is very suspicious. Lots of people with Blackberries use AT&T, but there is no “Press 5 to get help with problems with your Blackberry.” Just for iPhone. Go figure.

Domestically, the biggest problem is that the phone often doesn’t work. I’m not talking about the recent poor rating Consumer Reports gave the new iPhone, or the software, antenna and other issues with the new model. I have the iPhone 3G, and have for over a year, and it has never worked well. It’s no new glitch, though apparently there are plenty of those.

You’ve all seen the Verizon commercials and 3G maps, and while exaggerated, there is a grain of truth. AT&T just doesn’t have great national coverage. But it is worse than that. Even where they do have strong coverage, it often doesn’t work. Having plenty of bars and not being able to call is even more frustrating than having no bars and not being able to call. Believe me, because it happens too often. In rural areas, like where my house is, there is no signal, because AT&T hasn’t gotten around to covering it yet, while Verizon and T Mobil both work. In mid-market cities that are big enough to warrant coverage but do not actually have a lot of people, AT&T works great, so if your golf travels take you mainly to Hartford, CT or Boise, ID you are in luck.

But let’s say your travels take you to a big city, someplace exotic like New York, Seattle or Denver. Good luck. There are too many iPhone (and now iPad) users and too little bandwidth. I was recently in the Denver airport on a layover. Denver is one of the highest tech cities in the country. I had full signal strength, all my bars of 3G, but the phone could not access the data network for over an hour while I sat there. All those nifty applications that would help me change my plans if a flight got cancelled are useless without connectivity and AT&T cannot provide that reliably. So lacking data I called my wife. My call dropped four times in ten minutes, with full signal. What else can you do? Nothing. I had similar experiences in ultra high-tech Seattle and New York City. My best friend and longtime golfing partner lives in San Francisco and we speak frequently, me at home, he on his iPhone. It is rare for use to have an entire conversation without his phone dropping the call. I mean it happens all the time, just up the road form Silicon Valley, bars or no bars. He just accepts it as part of the iPhone deal that the call will drop. And it does.

I called AT&T and they admitted that in “some cities, like New York,” they don’t have enough bandwidth. Hello? Some city? New York is the nation’s largest? If you can’t make your phone work there, you can’t make it work anywhere.

And while AT&T is absolutely besieged with customer complaints (Google it, you’ll see), they keep adding usage through the sale of untold thousands of iPhone 4s and iPads making the problem worse by the day. From their point of view, the nice thing about this business practice is they don’t really give a sh*t about their customers. They get your contract and their money, charge a fee to leave when you become unhappy with their failure to provide what you pay a lot each month for, and take a “so what are you going to do about it?” attitude. Based on my repeated conversations and billing and service issues, it is crystal clear they don’t care much for their customers, if my experiences are any example.

I’m old enough to remember when AT&T was still a monopoly, the only phone company in town, and they never ever missed an opportunity to stick it to the American consumer. Even when MCI and Sprint loomed on the horizon to break their stranglehold, they never thought it would happen and refused to realize that customer service was part of a free market business. When the government had to break them up they were supposed to learn a lesson and compete on both price and service, just like a real company. But now that they have a monopoly again, they are living up to the adage that those who fail to remember history are doomed to repeat it, and right now the doomed ones are AT&T iPhone customers who expect to make calls, get emails and surf the web. Of course all of this will come home to roost, and AT&T will eventually suffer for the crappy way they treat their customers, but as in the past, they are blind to this eventuality. I am not the only person I know desperately waiting for my contract to end so I can leave and never go back.

“If the phone is so bad, why does it sell so well?” you might fairly ask. And why do I have one? First, Apple has a large core group of cult like buyers who will literally purchase almost anything they make, But the real appeal is the applications for the iPhone, and I admit, I was seduced enough by them to trade in my Blackberry, a mistake I regret every day. The applications are really cool, and there are so many of them, and many are useful – when they work. I have used the GPS and Googled addresses to reach hard to find golf clubs. I’ve also been frustrated when I cannot access the network and can’t even call the club to ask directions. At the end of the day, I’d rather have no applications and a phone and email that work.

Basically the iPhone is an excellent choice for listening to music, carrying your pictures and watching videos, but then again, so is the iPod, and without a high monthly fee for service you amy or may not get.

Bu that is only half the story. In the US, the iPhone is bad. Overseas, it is totally unacceptable, and in my very informed opinion, a total scam. I think AT&T intentionally defrauds consumers on a regular basis, running a Mafia-like protection racket so heinous that I am surprised the government has not shut them down. I will elaborate in my next post, but the bottom line is that you should simply never, ever use a data equipped iPhone outside the US. Nor should you believe anything, no matter how sincere sounding, an AT&T representative tells you. They have lied to me repeatedly, and I think, intentionally. More on that soon…