...but you can choose your business partners.

I wonder if AT&T is feeling the heat.

The best thing to happen to the company in years – exclusivity on a consumer market phenomenon – is breaking the back of it’s ability to deliver on service promises.

First the network problems and the complaints about service coverage. Then the 2GB data plan limit following shortly after the iPad release, effectively decreasing its experience value. Then the botched support on the iPhone 4 release, including inability to fulfill demand for the phones, inability to process orders, inadvertently cancelled orders and unintentionally shared private consumer information.

You have to wonder is AT&T isn’t considering asking Apple to introduce another provider (a competitor), just to prevent a complete service failure. Too much demand is a good problem to have, unless your business is a network-based service, and that demand is both abundant to the point of damaging the experience and comes at a pre-negotiated rate.

I also wonder if Apple feels like it has lost control, and a once-in-a-generation opportunity is being limited by a partner of their choosing.

Most complex services need networks of business partners and intermediaries to manage delivery. Whether it’s iPhone service or the fulfillment of online retail purchases to your home, most businesses put a portion of their customer promises in the hands of someone else to fulfill.

I don’t know specifics on where issues lay between Apple and AT&T, but I have to believe Apple is not seeing their vision of quality & consistency fulfilled by their exclusive partner.

While the selection process is critical (and it is possible that this is where Apple failed) the day-to-day management is much more important. Conflicts are certain to arise over objectives, performance, costs and rewards.

The easiest way to resolve these conflicts is the mundane stuff that most innovators don’t want to suffer through – establishment of expectations, measurement & review of performance – these are key activities businesses should must employ when using another party to be their face to the customer, or even a part of promise fulfillment.

If these are insufficient, sometimes the service owner has to engage more – helping the intermediary provide service the way they expect through standards & training on what it means to serve the customer in their intended. In extreme cases, they may even have to front service enabling technology to make the relationship work (or in Apple’s case, prevent it from failing).

It probably seems unfair that Apple may soon get to the point where it has to invest its own resources in the development of AT&T service capabilities, perhaps even going so far as to own a part of the network

But fairness doesn’t matter when you’re talking about the detrimental impact to the brand that stands on its flagship product that right now is dangerously close to falling far short of its ability to deliver on its substantial promise.