When I got my iPhone yesterday, it took about 5 minutes to get activated, although I’ve seen reports of some iPhones that still haven’t been activated. My theory is people on the East coast who got their iPhones early and connected them right away had no trouble with activation. People in other time zones or who attempted to activate later started overloading the servers with the higher volumes as more and more people started trying to activate their iPhones.
I'm on the east coast, and I intentionally waited in line early so I could be one of the first to activate. I sort of assumed these problems would surface with the number of people trying to activate simultaneously. I actually had a problem while at AT&T. I'm assuming it was the clerk's fault, but I was first in line, and she acted nervous and confused. She asked me what plan I wanted, and I said I thought I was supposed to select that through iTunes. She called for a manager, and 2 seconds later, the systems crashed. Took me 45 minutes to walk out the door. Once I got home, everything was smooth sailing, and I'm very happy with my purchase.