May 14th, 2007
Six dang good reasons why you (probably) hate your cell phone provider
In the latest issue of Information Week, just out today, Elena Malykhina lists six reasons why you may hate your cellphone service.
I've been going down the list, and I gotta tellya: Elena is spot on with each reason.
Let's take it from the top:
Disabled features. Elena notes that Columbia University School of Law Prof. Tim Wu points some of these features as call timers, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, Advanced SMS, browsers, photo and sound file transfer, E-mail clients, and SIM card mobility. Yes, carriers work hard to get your business, but then what does that say that they disable features that would enable enhanced experiences? I think it is because they eventually want to debut their own features and nickel-and-dime you for them, rather than risk the success of third-party programs.
Phones "locked" to work on only one network. Once they have you, they have you. Sure doesn't speak well of any company that puts up electronic barriers to you leaving their lair.
"Walled garden" Internet access. Elena sees a deliberate inconsistency between the menu-driven wireless web content offered by most cell carriers, and the difficulty of accessing content from rival providers who haven't allied with that particular carriers. Sure, many advanced handset-based browserswill call up these rival sites, but not in versions optimized for mobile. Trying to view these sites often causes script-based lockups.
Unreliable service. Yup. Not only are there dead cell zones in my metro area (Portland, Oregon) but dead cell zones in my condo.
Incompatible products and services. Elena's referring to the fact that cell in the U.S. works with one of two basic standards: Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) used by Verizon Wireless, Sprint, and Alltel; and Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) used by AT&T and T-Mobile. "This compounds the problem of locked phones (see above), since a phone designed for one network may not work on another even if the carriers wanted that," Elena points out.
Cell phones generally can't be used as laptop modems even though it's technically feasible. This is most often accomplished by disabling the relevant Bluetooth technology that would let this happen. AT&T and SprintNextel will let you do this, but only for surcharged data plans. T-Mobile will let you do this, however.
Good on T-Mobile.
Loading ...Russell Shaw is an enterprise computing journalist, analyst and author based in Portland, Oregon. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
