Tag Archives: wireless

Can You Hear Me Now?

Posted on 12 November 2004 | Leave a comment

The New York Times has a piece (you have to pee in a cup, show your passport and pee in a cup again to read it) about how Verizon Wireless are running ads specifically to target AT&T Wireless customers following the AT&T Wireless – Cingular merger. I havent seen the ads, and I cant really tell from the copy on the graphic carried on the Times web site, but it doesnt appear there are any mentions of needing to buy new phones to access both networks, take advantage of rollover minutes and so on.

According to the article, the copy focuses on the problems AT&T Wireless had last year when number portability became a reality. Thats not the best move on Verizon Wireless part. Thats old history and whoever suffered through it was moving away from AT&T Wireless, and its old history anyway. Customers wont have really known about it unless their telecom dorks like me. Hearing about the fact you wont get to take advantage of one of the better contract options Cingular have available without going through a pain-in-the-ass, expensive migration is where customers need to know theyre going to feel real pain and frustration. This is where the customer starts to think Well, if Cingular are going to make me BUY a new phone and move all of my information over, I might as well consider all of my options.

Not too many days after the merger closed we were in an AT&T Wireless store because Barry is in the market for a new phone. The sales clerk kept trying to sell him on certain models and didnt mention ANYTHING about the impact of the merger. Finally I had to speak up and ask, If he buys a phone here today will he be able to get rollover minutes.

The answer was a very sheepish, No. The guys on the retail front are really botching this up, because theyre not telling customers about these issues, and presumably not telling them at any point before the sale is made. Youre going to have a lot of very pissed off people who may or may not be under a service contract, but who are going to leap to other wireless carriers the first chance they have.

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Confusion Over Mobile Phone Service in Iraq

Posted on 2 November 2004 | Leave a comment

Some of you may recall not long after the victory over the Hussein government MCI won a no-bid contract to provide mobile telephone infrastructure (which was subcontracted to Ericsson of Sweden) and services in and around Baghdad (and perhaps elsewhere in the country). Considering WorldCom, the company that was to become MCI, was operating under a cloud of Chapter 11 and massive accounting and tax fraud at the time, many people took serious issue with this contract award. It was like awarding a contract to Snively Whiplash.

According to Stars and Stripes there has been some serious confusion over the mobile phone service that MCI didn’t provide bills for the wireless services they were providing to US government and users. Some users appear to have used the phones willy-nilly, but this really isnt clear to me. Considering the state of the fixed infrastructure in Iraq wireless phone service was the only close-to-reliable option for communications. There is mention in the article that some in the US contingent only know are getting reliable fixed line service. So, surprise surprise when MCI finally shows up with a bill for over $2 million, including one user or handset with a bill for $10,000. For this the State Department have shut the service down for the time being and are encouraging everyone to use their landlines.

Now a bill of that size for phone services provided to an operation the size of the US government in Iraq is really not to be unexpected. The fact that it took so long for the bill to come in is perhaps validation that awarding the contract to MCI was a very bad choice.

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Cingular + AT&T Wireless

Posted on 27 October 2004 | 1 Comment

So, the merger closed yesterday. As of yet there are no big changes evident in my service. My phone still shows “AT&T Wireless” as my service provider. I had actually expected that to change almost immediately, because already in the past few months my phone has been telling me I was roaming on the Cingular network more and more. Somehow I had envisioned effectively a switch being flipped and all of a sudden I would be able to take advantage of the coverage of both networks. Evidently not because the Cingular signal is much stronger than the AT&T Wireless signal at my office, and I’m showing a middling AT&T Wireless signal instead of the full-on Cingular signal I’ve gotten from time to time.

Also, this tidbit from the Cingular web site caught me a bit by surprise:

Plans are already underway to make Rollover Minutes available to you. Please check back on November 10, 2004 for an update. Our goal is to have this feature available to you by this holiday season. To get a plan with Rollover, you will need to change to a Cingular Nation Plan $39.99 or higher. You will also need to get a new Cingular GSM phone.

I thought to myself why should I need to change my phone if I already have a GSM phone? Elsewhere on the Cingular site:

Q: Why do I need to get a new wireless phone when I want to get Cingulars current rate plans or services?

A: Cingular’s rate plans and services require unique software in your wireless phone to function properly. Unfortunately, AT&T Wireless phones are not equipped to support many of the benefits of Cingular’s voice and data services. Therefore, to take advantage of the latest services Cingular offers, a new handset is required.

This kinda sucks. I’ve had my Nokia 6820 for about 6 months now. That’s a bit early to be getting a new phone, and since the Treo 650 doesn’t have WiFi (or use graffiti, which I still prefer) there’s not really a phone out there right now I like better. The Cingular site is replete with instructions to “Check back on 10 November for more information,” so maybe they’re just hopping to not impact the presidential election or something. I’m also not entirely sure I buy it. Rollover Minutes is a BILLING plan, eh. How can the software in your phone impact your billing? I would think those issues would reside somewhere in the billing element of the OSS, no?

Who knows– my hope is that when final word comes as to what will be required that firmware upgrades will be a possibility.

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How Many Bars Do YOU Have?

Posted on 9 October 2004 | Leave a comment

This morning the Washington Post had this piece on the low-key nature of the AT&T Wireless – Cingular merger. While the piece was a relatively fluffy one (as one comes to expect from the business section of the Post) it did touch on the very interesting issue of branding for the soon-to-be-former AT&T Wireless and their former corporate parent AT&T.

A lot has been going on with these two companies in the last six months or so. AT&T is effectively on the auction block being ready to be bought by Bell South or some other poor bastard, announcing a withdrawal from the consumer market while at the same time putting on an advertising blitz during the Olympics built largely around their consumer VoIP service. And if that, in and of itself were not confusing enough…

AT&T Wireless, which is a completely separate company from AT&T, mind you, had their own advertising blitz during the Olympics. One will recall the “How many bars?” ad with swimmer Michael Phelps. That ad push came on the back of months and months of bad coverage in the press that AT&T claim actually hurt their reputation for having licensed the AT&T Wireless brand to the company AT&T Wireless. Should I just start referring to these companies by their stock ticker symbols (T and AWE) to cut down on the confusion?

It seems Cingular are going to take a slow migration plan with the brand. I actually think this is a mistake. Considering the troubles AT&T Wireless have had I really think this branding exercise should be done like removing a Band-Aid: tear it right off. Cingular should bring in the blokes from Cisco who re-brand the companies their acquire and just completely redo the AT&T Wireless retail locations. They should make a big push to the current AT&T Wireless customers and get all of the service contract plans and features they can into their hands immediately (like roll-over minutes). The new company should use this as an opportunity to tell customers the problems of the past are behind them and engage in some top-notch systems consolidation exercises to truly deliver on that promise.

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The Pending AT&T Wireless – Cingular Merger

Posted on 28 September 2004 | Leave a comment

Today the New York Times ran this piece (registration and urine sample required) on the upcoming merger of Cingular and AT&T Wireless. The article touches on the operational issues that are going to come from combining the two operartions, including a brief mention of impending restructuring and layoffs within both organisations.

Conisdering the considerable troubles that have taken place at AT&T Wireless I think it might be more likely that the AT&T Wireless folks would see deeper cuts on their side of the fence. Also more likely the case because Cingular is the company making the acquisition.

The NYT article makes note of disparate corporate cultures being a hurdle that will need to be overcome as well. This piece from Seattle Post Intelligencer last week says a lot about the business culture at AT&T Wireless, particularly the change in culture from the McCaw Cellular days to the changes as AT&T placed their own management within a very freewheeling, energetic and entrepeneurial organisation. While I’m sure some who look back at the McCaw days are painting a rosier picture than was reality because of the filter that is nostalgia (“Ah, my glory days in the American Communist Party!”). But having myself seen the AT&T culture up close during my days in the Concert joint venutre I can only imagine how the imposition of AT&T’s culture would have played out in those early days. For a bit of background, AT&T’s corporate culture is extremely process-driven, more heirarchical than the Catholic Church and the average American high school social structure combined and a stubborness bordering an psychosis. Nostalgia aside, that absorbtion could not have been fun for those who came from McCaw, but probably put it on the right course to be acquired by the likes of Cingular. While I have less first-hand insight into the corporate culture at Cingular, it may be safe to assume the cultures of SBC and Bell South, both being Regional Bell companies, is a closer match to AT&T’s culture than anything that could remotely be called “freewheeling” or “entrepeneurial.”

Now, if only the management of Cingular can undo so many of the mis-steps AT&T Wireless management have made in the past year or so.

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Death by a Thousand Cuts…

Posted on 16 May 2004 | Leave a comment

This entry on MSNBC came to my attention this morning. It has to do with all of the extra fees and service charges that are baked in to the average bill for telecommunications services. The article relates to items included in bills that sound largely like government taxes and fees but are really not much more than dressed-up add-ons from the phone companies themselves, or fees associated with mandated services and compliance requirements that phone companies don’t want to add to their quoted monthly rates. All sorts of carriers and services are covered in the article, included wireless and fixed-line operators, and POTS is indicted right along with services such as DSL and mobile charges. Culprits for the fees include mandated requirements such as E911 for fixed line, local loop unbunblding for DSL and E911 requirements for POTS.

A quick look at my own charges and fees reveals a whopping $8.11 in “taxes, fees and surcharges” from AT&T Wireless for my mobile phone and $8.49 in similar fees from Verizon for my fixed line phone service. Among those are the following:

AT&T Wirless

  • 911 surcharge: $0.75
  • Universal Connectivity Charge: $2.02
  • Federal Tax: $2.34
  • Local Utility Tax: $3.00

 
Verizon

  • Relay Center Surcharge: $0.16
  • Public Rights-of-Way Usage Feee: $0.60
  • 911 Fee: $2.00
  • Federal Universal Service Fee (Long-distance): $1.14
  • Federal Taxes: $1.89
  • Virginia Taxes: $2.70

A good, brief description of the fees on my local phone bill can be found here. It’s good to know I’m still paying that 3 percent to fund the Spanish-American War. Remember the Maine and all that!

The Universal Service Fee, in its various forms, is mandated by thte Telecommunications Act of 1996 as a surcharge to provide subsidies for telephone and data services to low-income users and hard-to-reach locations. This is sometimes referred to as the “Gore Tax” because it was pushed so heavily by Al Gore back in the days of the “information superhighway” rehtoric of the first Clinton Administration.

A quick look at my cable Internet bill reveals a deceptivly simple single price for my service. Perhaps I should say this is a score for the cale industry, but my suspicion is that my bill is deceptively simple because the only service I do purchase from them is the Internet connection. If memory serves a bill for cable TV service tends to be repleat with rights-of-way, public access and other fun fees.

What’s my point in all of this– do I even have one? Well, I do– sort of. First, we consumers are really to blame for the additional fees and hidden charges on our bills on two fronts. One, we totally fixate on the advertised rate as opposed to the price we’re actually going to be charged. There’s nothing stopping consumers from asking service providers about taxes, fees and surcharges and holding them accountable to those quoted prices, either by voting with our dollars or filing complaints with the FCC or Better Business Bureau. Speaking from experience, telecommunications companies really do hop-to when you file a complaint with the FCC.

Secondly, we consumers demand of our legislators a very strong “stick it to the man” approach to new services and mandates we place on the industry. Little do we realise at the end of the day that “The Man” is us. That said, things like E911, number portability and universal service subsidies are probably not BAD things. We as consumers should just not be so surprised that when we demand them we should only rightly end up paying for them.

Where the fault lies with the carriers, I think, is in their reluctance to be honest about this. This likely goes back to the consumer fixation on advertised rates for service, but in a competitive market “no hidden charges” can be a strong selling point.Look at the success of CarMax or even Virgin Mobile, both companies that have made simple, straightforward pricing a real differentiator. Will our telcos ever break out of their monopolistic, legalistic mindset and make an effort to adapt to the needs and expectations of their customers?

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Do you… uh… Bluetooth?

Posted on 19 April 2004 | Leave a comment

I came accross this article on Techdirt about the practice of “Toothing.” I’m still not sure I buy it, and I’m not entirely convinced it’s not a hoax of some kind.

In a nutshell the act of toothing is (allegedly) using the short-range connectivity technology known as Bluetooth to text those who might be near you on a commuter train for random sexual encounters in the restroom. This is evidently a new activity to lighten the daily commute of British travellers.

There are a couple of reasons I’m not convinced. First, as soon as I heard about this myself and some friends tried to find the method to send text messages to one another via Bluetooth with no success. Now, granted we didn’t have the manuals at hand and were only working with phones from two vendors (Nokia and SonyEriccson), but I find it hard to believe that technically adept folks such as ourselves couldn’t give this a go. Since then I have not been able to find out how to text via Bluetooth in the manual for my Nokie or for me old SonyEriccson. Secondly, having been on many a commuter train in Britain, I’ve seen a fair number that I’m pretty sure had no restrooms at all. The ones that did have restrooms make you wish they didn’t. So, I doubt any nookie is going to take place in there.

One cool thing I CAN do with my Nokia 8620 is send images via Bluetooth to those around me via Bluetooth. Considering it’s a camera phone this could certainly open up some very naughty possibilities for those so inclined.

Not me of course. No… never…

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