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Why Everyone Should Hate Cellphone Carriers
The Byelorrusian Spamtrap writes "Wired Magazine's made its position clear on the state of play in America's cellular industry, delivering a long, satisfying screed on why all of us should stop complaining and do something about it. 'They own politicians - Sure, it's just phones. In a world where worse things happen all the time amid the muck and despair of human existence, having to pay for premium text is hardly worth worrying about, is it? You can (and should) opt out, and not sign on the dotted line to begin with. But today's cell towers might be tomorrow's Pony Express: they're TV stations, internet access, emergency 911 and news networks all rolled into one. WWAN could well end up supplanting copper sooner than anyone expects: do you want these companies in charge of it?'"
In a world where worse things happen all the time amid the muck and despair of human existence, having to pay for premium text is hardly worth worrying about, is it?
That depends. Are you paris hilton? If yes, then yes.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
[This comment paid for by the American Association of Mobile Telephone Operators]
Let me get this straight... polticians are corrupt, so we shouldn't buy cellphones? Am I reading that correctly? Politicians are corrupt... so in response... we punish ourselves by not using a very convenient technology. Are we really that apathetic? Is that what this country has come to?
HOW ABOUT PUNISH THE POLITCIANS!? I'm so sick of people repeatedly voting in incumbents, then whining about how things never change, and they're just all so corrupt. Vote for an independent, hell, write in yourself, but don't whine that you'd just be *wasting a vote*, and continue to support people who are not serving you! Then tell people they should live the life of a hermit to *stick it to the man*. It is NOT the corporations fault that they attempt to maximize profits. That is the job of a public company. Our government allowing them to do so through shady practices is a problem with the GOVERNMENT!
Since a lot of those same reasons can apply to ISPs and other companies in general, I propose we just hate all corporations whose profit margins are above 1 million annually. If we can assume that money corrupts, I think it's fair to say that any company in excess of $1,000,000.00 has doing something wrong to somebody on their way to that point. This blanket hatred will make it easier for me to keep track of what companies I do and don't like.
today's cell towers might be tomorrow's Pony Express
Probably not. While an exciting and deadly ride for its employees, the Pony Express was an abysmal failure as a business. It went bankrupt in just a matter of months as I recall. I see the cell phone companies neither providing exciting, deadly rides nor going out of business in a hurry.
I doubt carriers could suddenly gain control over all of these things, but it is something that needs to be avoided, however it may happen. The real reasons that would be a problem lie in their customer relations practices.
A billing error that can't be fixed at local stores, and the subscriber is forced to lead resolution of the issue while waiting on hold for 10 minutes every time an attempt is made, then arguing with customer "service" to convince them a problem exists. (AT&T)
Quality of tech support is laughable - I was told by a tech supervisor that data transfer on my phone was very expensive because the screen was large. Not just physically, but it had a high resolution too. (Cingular)
Salespeople lying directly to customers about plan availability when a similar plan with higher commission is available. (T-Mobile)
Seriously... how can you have a segment on "They have annoying commercials", and not even mention ATT/Cingular's "idk my bff [name]" commercials? They have the dubious honor of being some of the only commercials (Axe being the other one, for the curious) to make me feel like my iq was lowered just by watching it.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
Yeah, I think cell phone companies in America suck. What am I supposed to do about it? The author suggests not owning a phone at all. Well, I guess I would do that if I could get a land line. But wait, those are owned by the same companies. The only alternative is phone service through a cable/satellite company, but those companies are just as corrupt and dreadful as the cell phone companies (and in a lot of cases worse). Hell, the state of broadband in America is 100x worse than the state of cell phones, and there is literally nothing we can do about that. Cutting yourself off from the phone companies (a lesser evil) just bolsters cable/satellite companies (a greater evil). The only real solution is some sort of uprising. First senator that gets the ball rolling on fixing broadband (making it comparable to the rest of the world) gets my write-in vote for president.
While the general public is apathetic/oblivious of these issues, nothing will happen.
It seems to take about ten years for the general public to really get their heads around technical issues.
expandfairuse.org
Such futures can't be relied upon if innovation is permitted So, no company should invest heavily in innovation because that stifles progress. Check.
The remaining [author couldn't be bothered to count] reasons are similarly kvetching and dripping with angst.
Yeah, the cellular providers all totally suck ass, I must agree. However, what can we possibly do about it? Nothing, because the alternatives are worse than putting up with it.
Many/most of us require telephone communication. I for one can't simply go without telephone service, if I want to have a decent relationship with my wife and relatives, and if I want to be able to function in society and business and my job. When I finally ditched the landline back around 2002, I was paying about as much for a crappy landline from Qwest with no features as I did for a cellphone. Somehow I doubt this has changed much. I might be able to save a little money by getting a landline from Cox cable (since I already have internet service from them, after all), but then I'd miss out on the versatility that I and so many others have grown accustommed to with cellphones; it'd be a real pain to be out of contact while driving or shopping, in the lab where I work, etc. The few extra dollars per month for cell service is worth it to me.
Am I jealous that people in other countries get far better and freer cellular service than me, for much less money? Sure! But there just aren't any alternatives here.
Until something else comes along that offers a real alternative, I don't see the point in saying "we should do something about it", because we can't. Cellular service isn't like writing open-source software: it requires not just phones, but a network consisting of central offices, antenna towers, fiber-optic lines, and billions of dollars worth of equipment and infrastructure. The cellular providers are just following the Golden Rule: "he who has the gold makes the rules", and our stupid government isn't bothering to regulate them to prevent them from acting so poorly.
Maybe eventually some brilliant quantum physicist will come up with a way for us to all communicate using "subspace" or whatever, so with the proper equipment we can just establish point-to-point communications with whomever we please, with no need for any infrastructure or middle-man like these cellular providers, and no worries about having to share limited spectrum. But until then, or until some other alternative is found, or until our government steps in and regulates them (yeah right), we're stuck.
I fully expect that these companies will wind up "in charge" of it by fiat if nothing else. It's only a matter of time. Like the article said, these companies own Congress. Well, Congress makes laws that govern "interstate commerce" (which the courts have interpreted as shorthand for, basically, any damned thing they please), so Congress can, and will, do the equivalent of declaring them as being the sole carriers for this stuff if the competition keeps them from taking that role otherwise.
Didn't you get the memo about what fascism is really all about?
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
Some of the reasons that people hate cell phone companies have to do with the abusive service contracts which are difficult or impossible to get out of. One way to avoid this is to buy a GSM cell phone with a US SIM chip. This has a side advantage that you can easily use the phone overseas by buying a SIM chip for the country you're visiting. You buy prepaid cards for these phones. Calling is a little more expensive, but you don't have a contract to deal with. There is also much less information about you as a cell phone user, since the only way to track you back to your phone is through the company you bought it from.
In theory if more people used GSM phones and phone cards, there would be more competition since the cell providers can't lock you in to a contract. This is, by the way, the situation in Europe where GSM is the standard.
Has anyone considered that the excessively long voicemail introductions used by almost every cell carrier amount to conspired gouging? We pay airtime when we are leaving a voicemail, right? When you get voicemail on my cell you get my brief away message, followed by the phone company's useless 20-second blather. For example:
ring... ring... ring... (me):"Hello, I'm not here right now, please leave a message" (sprint): "To leave a voice message press 1, or just wait for the tone. To send a numeric page press 2 now. At the tone please leave a voice message. When you are finished recording, you may hang up, or press pound for more options"
Several gripes here.
1) 20 seconds of instructions doesn't sound like that much on its own. But if that pushes your phone call to roll one minute longer it's a minute of possible airtime charge the phone company gets. You start paying the minute the call is answered, even leaving voicemail.
2) A typical voicemail message is probably 2 minutes or less. The phone company's instructional message here is taking up a significant portion of that airtime.
3) These instructions are ridiculous and seem to be there only to draw out the duration of the call. They couldn't be phrased more verbosely. Oh, I can hang up when the message is done? I didn't know that. I can press pound for more options? How about you tell me about those AFTER I've left a message.
4) The features are really ridiculous, too, and I suspect some 1% even use them. Send a numeric page? Why the hell should I do that? Cellphones have caller ID already. Send a FAX?? Please Slashdotters tell me who has sent a FAX over a cellphone. Do you have to make the modem sounds with your voice? If anyone DOES use these features they probably don't need the help message to remember what button to press to initiate their cellphone fax.
5) There is no option to turn these messages off. They probably also require you to add your own greeting. Resulting in a totally redundant 30-second prelude to leaving any voicemail.
6) Every mobile company I know of has these messages, some worse than others. Is this an unspoken or conspired arrangement between the mobile carriers? Sprint doesn't necessarily make money when someone has to listen to their God-awful pre-message, but they might. They certainly will make money when my Sprint phone is waiting on Verizon's equally obnoxious introduction, or T-mobile's, etc...
7) The worst part of this, in my perspective, isn't that I might pay, if I totally screw up, 50c or 5 bucks some month because a few extra minutes were incurred waiting to leave my friends voicemail - or dropping coffee on the bus trying to press 1 to bypass the spiel. The worst part is I leave a moderate amount of voicemail messages, and this amounts to Minutes, Hours, or God knows, even Days of my life eventually wasted listening to a robot tell me how to leave a voicemail and that it's ok to hang up. It's robbery, I tell you!
Today: Anonymous prepaid
- buy a pre-activated T-mobile 2 Go SIM off of ebay
- buy an unlocked GSM phone off ebay
No contracts, no fees, no lame choice of stupid phones, nobody knows who you are or how to hassle you. You put minutes on the SIM card and that's that.
This is the "plan" my wife and I have been on since May. Works nicely. Some friends just asked me to set them up with the same deal, since they were sick of paying $90/mo for a set of phones they barely used.
Tomorrow:
Replace handset you bought in "step A" wth an openMoko device. My next handset will hopefully be 100% open-source. I can get partway there with the P2k tools and what not for Motorola, but a truly open device just makes it all that much easier.
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
The REAL question we should be asking is why are none of the companies willing to step up and offer better, cheaper plans? In a free market, we would have the same plans (if not better) as the Europeans do. Businesses undercut each other in a free market in order to steal customers. So why are no cell phone companies doing this? Don't we have laws that are supposed to prevent companies from banding together to screw the consumer? I was under the assumption that price-fixing was against the law (and is clearly what's going on; the cell phone companies have agreed to offer minimal features for similar prices, so everyone gets part of the pie without any real competition)
If you don't like the product, don't buy it as the article submitter says. Don't buy the contract, accept the contract, then bitch about it later.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
They belong to us! Do not sell them to rich corporates that then monopolize,horde and charge ridiculous fees. As long as you people sit on your hands and don't organize then the dream will never happen.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_spectrum
So the issue is how to get out of the current muddle and to cut ties with these carriers. Of course, we can use Skype or various IM and video conferencing tools to talk to people without making a traditional landline or mobile call. The coming deployment of WiMAX networks will increase our ability to use IP-based devices for calling.
The forthcoming FCC auction of the 700MHz spectrum, now scheduled for January, will introduce more openness into the bidding process, and should enable a company such as Google to develop a competing service. Assuming that happens, there will be an alternative our dependence on the incumbent carriers, which will have its ups (price, flexibility) and possible downs (advertising, privacy concerns).
There are also numerous efforts underway to create devices based on open source software. The Nokia N800/N810 http://www.nseries.com/ is a Linux-based device with a useful developer site http://www.maemo.org/. The OpenMoko project http://www.openmoko.org/ is aimed at developing an open source phone. These devices are, of course, unlocked. When OpenMoko has advanced a little further, you should be able to take anyone's SIM chip, put it in your OpenMoko phone, and make a call. For now, though, the best you can do is to have an unlocked phone. (I have about 8 SIM chips from different countries, and switch them when I travel, thereby avoiding the extortionate international roaming charges of the mobile carriers. You can easily buy "pay-as-you-go" service almost everywhere, including in the US.)
So we can already take various steps to loosen our ties to the cellphone carriers. With some luck, many of us will be able to extricate ourselves completely. It's only then that the cellphone carriers will feel the need to improve their products and services to attract and retain customers.
Is this article and invite for everyone to say why they hate their cell phone company?
I have many reasons, but I'll throw out the most current situation. I'm a customer of the old AT&T. My contract expired but I have an old TDMA phone and they are shutting down the network. Fine, technological progress, I support that part. But, do they have to send me a text message at least once every day to tell me this? I was given an AT&T GSM phone from a friend, but they won't let me use it unless I sign up for a new 2 year contract. I have tried calling customer service and going into the store, but they still won't let me do it. The guy in the store actually said I could, but then he went to do it, asked the manager a question, and the manager shut him down. One of the guys on the phone asked me why I didn't want to sign up for a contract and I told him that I'm getting anything out of it. He said I could get a free phone and I told him that I don't want any of their phones. He asked incredulously if there was no phone they had that I wanted. I said that I kind of liked the Tilt, but part of the reason that I would want it is for the internet and I don't want to pay the $80 bucks a month for the cheapest plan and data. He said that I could get the internet on any phone. I told him that it is hardly usable on a regular phone and he grudgingly agreed.
I told him that if they allowed me to get the $60 iphone plan for a different phone, I would consider it. He said that the iphone is apple's deal. I told him I wasn't talking about the iphone, I was talking about the plan. I told him that I wanted him to note that I suggested it with the hope that if enough people do the same, they can make some f-ing graph to show the decision makers who don't get the pleasure of hearing real customers. I don't think he actually noted it, though.
Anyway, all this because I WAS TRYING TO STAY ON THEIR SERVICE AND NOT GET A FREE PHONE OUT OF THEM!
One clear evidence of how badly the "market" for cellphone service is performing is the lack of any "bring your own phone" plans. With T-Mobile and most other carriers, it is simply impossible to sign up for a monthly contract that does not have a minimum term. I would like to buy my phone on eBay and sign up for monthly service, but without the 1 or 2 year commitment. I am prepared to pay a reasonable "connection fee". However, most carriers simply don't offer this, except in the form of the more expensive (per minute) pre-paid phones. Why can't I do this?
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
You sounds like someone who's single and lives in his parent's basement. No offense; I used to be single too.
Personally, my wife places a lot of value on being able to reach me any time she has an important question or concern, whether I'm shopping, at work (I'm not always next to my desk phone), etc.
Many people have jobs which require them to have cell phones and be on-call. Obviously, you don't have such a job, but don't deride people who do, and tell them they don't need a cellphone, because that would get them fired.
Most people require telephone service of some kind for the daily lives, even if it's not a cellphone. Guess what? The landline companies are the same evil companies that provide cellular service, so you're not getting away from them by using a landline. Do you go without a phone altogether? Most people with jobs don't have that luxury. I certainly don't.
"the internet" isn't like subspace; it's a shared infrastructure just like that provided by cellular providers. How do you access the internet? Do you use a pringle's can and steal from your nearby Starbuck's? Most people have to pay for internet access, and this usually means using another big, evil company like Qwest, Cox, Comcast, Verizon, etc. So you're not getting away from these companies by using the internet either.
So unless you have some way of keeping in touch with family and business partners which doesn't involve using a big, evil company like one of those above (and you live in the USA, as this discussion is irrelevant elsewhere), then you're completely missing the point and your argument is invalid.
Well of course the telcos are buying people out. That's entirely why they torpedoed municiple wifi: they are more and more being forced into the role of "dumb pipes", which as everyone knows is really hard to loot money from. They need these other businesses in order to obfuscate what it is they really do.
If municiple wifi becomes a reality, so does their chance to make insane and obscene profit. Sure, it sucks for "we the people", but conservatives don't care, they are too busy spewing their anti-America hate speech.
While I sit here and defend the obvious, I do not own a cell phone, and probably never will again. I realized that I REALLY don't need one. If you sit down and think about it, 90% of you probably don't either.
People who think they know everything really piss off those of us that actually do.
I've never owned a cell in the US. Yes, I've spent most of my life there, and in the past decade, I've bounced between Europe and the US, yet spending most of my time stateside. Funny thing, though: while in Europe, cellular communications have gotten easier, to the point where I've now had three separate cell phones, and five separate phone numbers in four countries (including Switzerland, which is right up there with the US in terms of pharmaceutical and cell phone costs), in the US, I have never seen the point in having a cell phone. It just isn't worth it. Phone calls cost. Text messages cost. To get access, you effectively need a paid subscription. Then you need to use their hardware on the network, from which they have removed the balls. Yeah, I know, there are ways around many obstacles, but I'd have to be motivated and seriously mobile to care. I'm not.
It just comes to this: when our country, which should be representing us, sells our resources to private corporations, it has an obligation to ensure that it represents our interests in doing so.
I don't consider it in the public interest when all we get from such a transaction is a couple billion bucks the oligopoly will have a hard time recovering and a parking lot hand job for select bureaucrats. Oh boy. We can finally afford to pay the cell phone companies for that no-warrant surveillance system we always wanted. woop de doo.
What would compel me to put up with all of the nonsense associated with the iphone?
The company works overtime to try and brick my phone; on a limited-data plan like what i've described, an iphone doesn't sound very useful anyway.
OpenMoko has no features explicitly designed to piss me off. That puts it head and shoulders above the iphone. When it's done, I'll buy one.
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
The GSM networks are indeed more limited (T-Mobil and Cingular are the ones I've accessed) and the reception is not as good perhaps. However, you can buy very reasonably priced unlocked phones. I bought an unlocked from from Telestial in San Diego three years ago. I think that it cost around $100 US. I've used it in Spain, and twice in Italy. I now have a US SIM chip for it. I feed it T-Mobil cards every once in a while.
I hope you're able to take care of that smoke coming out of the ears problem. It sounds painful.
Ha, I was a customer care rep for AT&T back around 2002-2003, when they were slowly switching from TDMA to GSM.
Fine, great, GSM's superior in almost every way.
We had an internal website where you could check for known service outages in the event that a customer calls and reports no service or other technical problems.
I can't remember where it was, but mostly in southern california, they had one 'known outage' listed. It explained that the transmit power on cell towers in a given area for TDMA customers was being slowly diminished, in order to make the difference in call quality between TDMA and GSM seem more dramatic. Alongside this were strict instructions in big red letters DO NOT GIVE THIS INFORMATION TO THE CUSTOMER.
So, customers would call saying "damnit, before X date I was able to use my phone in my house just fine, but as of "fill-in-the-blank-date" it's been the shits, or no service! What did you guys do!?"
So we'd go thru the motions of troubleshooting, but essentially we were 'gaslight-ing' (look up the movie 'gaslight' if you don't understand) our customers.
The plural form of "anecdote" is "anecdotes", not "evidence".
It strikes me that Apple did not choose to play the ridiculous game that Carriers play when an OEM launches a new device. Years ago working at SonyEricsson, we could not believe when the geniuses at one carrier came up with MyMediaNet and demanded we modify the UI we had designed - and tested - in favor of this baloney. The carriers are so geared toward generating revenue that they forget what users actually want to use. It seems our friends at Apple told AT&T they're not going to budge on stuff like visual voicemail and we all benefit as a result. More OEMs need to take charge like this.
I have a Motorola V3. It does more than I even use as a cell phone. It has a camera, mp3 player, voicemail, cell phone and other stuff. I only use it as a phone, and every now and then I take a couple of pictures of my kids. It has great battery life, sounds very clear, and gets great reception. My cell phone rate per month is reasonable. Its actually cheaper than having a land-line phone in my house. Why should I be all upset about cell phones again? I remember what cell phones were like 20 years ago, and think they are progressing very nicely at this point. (My carrier is T-mobile)
The problem is much larger that just the cell providers. They're probably the worst of the bunch, but they're hardly the only industry with abusive contracts and pervasive fraudulant practices.
The most obvious is the concpt of contracts where one paarty may chang the terms at will and the other is simply stuck with them. I simply cannot imagine a sufficient contortion of reasoning that could make that seem conscionable or that could make any legal system that supports it seem just. For that matter, in a truly just world, the inclusion of such terms should be sufficient to void any contract. After all, nobody who would put such a thing in a contract and then stuff it down someone's throat could possibly be contracting in good faith. Before someone makes the inevitable "you aren't forced blah blah", yes, when most or all providers of a particular service do that, they ARE stuffing it down someone's throat. Becoming a hermit in a log cabin with candles for lighting is not a realistic alternative to electricity and phone service!
Billing errors in general are an issue, plenty of companies seem to routinely make "errors" in their favor (never in the customer's favor) In the case of many cell providers most of the bills they send out are that way month after month and we're supposed to believe it's NOT fraud? They deserve no mercy here. If they billed a million customers fraudulantly, charge them with one million counts of criminal fraud. Only large corporations can seem to get a bulk discount on felonies. If the evidence there isn't airtight, charge them with a million counts of negligence. Surely that has been demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt over the years. I have deealt with many companies large and small over the years. Only telecomms providers (not just cell BTW) ROUTINELY make billing errors.
Here's a simple one that IS specific to cell phones. They should not be allowed to charge for dropped calls. At the very least, they should be forced to refund any connection charges (since the need to connect again is clearly due to their screwed up network).
Truth in advertising! Is there anyone at the FTC who even knows we have truth in advertising laws? The public SHOULD be able to presume that advertisments are at least basically truthful. Unlimited means without limit. Making promises in bold and retracting them in fine print is a fundamental dishonesty. Fine print on television that is not clearly and easily readable even with 20/20 vision should not be lgally considered to have been displayd at all. Occasionally, out of curiosity, I freeze frame a commercial disclaimer (perfect digital reception) and frequently find that it is greeked, unreadable at any distance from 10 feet away to nose pressed against the screen. How can that possably be considered an act of communication?
Finally, the fines themselves. If they are not at LEAST as large as the ill gotten profit that caused them, they will be (and are) treated as a tax rather than a penelty.
Didn't you get the memo? It's "The new at&t" now ;)
T-Shitty - both of these networks are less than... adiquateDefine adequate. I took a coverage hit to switch to T-Mobile instead of Verizon and live in one of the worst areas for T-Mobile (Binghamton, NY). Go to this site and key in "Binghamton, NY" and check it out for yourself.
In spite of the spotty rural coverage, it works at my house, it works all around the city and it works in every major city where I would conceivably travel to. It worked like a charm in the Outer Banks when I went there for vacation. And on a daily basis it provides me with coverage in 90% of the areas where Verizon would have. Plus I can use it anywhere in the World free of charge with an open wi-fi and broadband connection. If I'm willing to pay I can use it almost anywhere in the World with a GSM network. Let me know how seamless that international roaming is for you with CDMA.
If you are an urban/suburban dweller then I don't see why T-Mobile isn't a viable solution. It doesn't work everywhere that Verizon does, but I honestly don't give a shit if my phone doesn't work in the boonies. I only go to the boonies if I want to escape for awhile, and when I'm looking to escape I really don't want my solitude interrupted by my fucking cell phone ringing.
he GSM system in the US uses two different carrier bands than GSM systems in the rest of the world.Uhh, don't make it out like it's JUST the US. Most of the Americas use the 850/1900 bands. Europe and Asia tend to be 900/1800 And since when did quad-mode phones "cost significantly more"? My quad-band Motorola V195 on T-Mobile set me back a whooping $20 with one year contract. Don't want a contract? You can buy them on eBay for less then $50.
If you want the ability to use another companies sim card in your GSM phone, you have to UNLOCK your phone. Various companies have variously bad policies on thisUhh, what exactly is a "bad policy"? T-Mobile will unlock them after you've been a customer for three months, free of charge. It's my understanding that AT&T's policy is similar, though I have no direct-hand experience with them.
GSM isn't as widely deployed (outside of major cities) as CDMA is, but it's a workable technology for any geek that would rather have control over their phone and use a published open standard instead of the crippled phones/royalties owed to Qualcomm of the CDMA market.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.