In the supermarket business, the supplier is given access to the stock management system for his PLUs in his client's system so that the onus is on the supplier to replenish stock as and when needed...There are penalties for not doing a replenishment in time...

I'm sure that AT&T may have ordered that less as they didn't think they'll manage to sell it but I'm also sure Nokia have some sort of link with them using which it is plain apparent that your phones are "Sold Out"... In the tech industry this is even more obvious due to twitter which informs you faster than the system will update (~12hrs between updates) so what is Nokia doing to remedy it?

As usual they will go through 5-6 different communication channels and by the time their "democratic" process of decision-making comes to a decision it would be 1-2 weeks down the road...