Seems the launch of the iPhone has been plagued by problems caused by AT&T. I’ll bet Steve Jobs isn’t too happy after a relatively smooth distribution in the US. People are reporting having difficulty in activating their shinny new phones on to the AT&T network.

Many owners are reporting one of the following two errors:

We’re sorry, AT&T has determined that your current account cannot be used with the iPhone.

or

Your activation requires additional time to complete.

Apparently you can still use the phone to transfer music and pictures, but hey, most iPhone users will already own a standard iPod with their music library’s already installed and won’t be impressed. First thing I’d be wanting to do is call through my contacts and boast about my new gadget.

Customers are being told by AT&T support that there are issues and that they should retry activation every 30 minutes or so. Quite how a company the size of AT&T could botch such an important launch is amazing. Or maybe not? Either way I guess Apple won’t be best pleased.

You can read more over at the Macrumors Forum.

Hopefully the UK launch will go a lot smoother, but then our own providers have been equally inept at times in the past.