Twelve Black Code Monkeys

Gizmodo has a review of the Sidekick II in addition to an accounting of some T-Mobile account problems. The review is ok, although it doesn’t really compare the unit to the previous Sidekick and may have a couple of inaccuracies. Nevertheless, it seems like it works well as long as you understand some of the inherent limitations.

As far as the problems with T-Mobile and their customer care, I can’t say that I have had too many issues with them myself, luckily. Normally if I have a problem I’m able to resolve it fairly quickly. The one time where this was not the case was when I first bought my first Sidekick back in November of 2002. The device was very new at the time, so there’s that excuse. However, here’s in a nutshell what happened. The Sidekick has a web interface to all your data on the phone which I thought would provide a much faster interface to entering stuff, etc. (as it turns out it wasn’t because the site can be pretty sluggish). This account has to be set up and linked to your regular T-Mobile account by T-Mobile. Mine was not and I started calling after a couple of days. I got people who were generally eager to help but ultimately couldn’t do much. Eventually one of them figured out something and I got access to it, after probably 2-3 weeks! All the others had tried something and then said to wait a few days to see if it worked. I am convinced that if I didn’t luck into getting this one rep who tried this one thing, I could have been waiting months!

Customer support seems to be a big issue with cell phone companies, and companies in general. It turns out that it is very costly and this is why companies have farmed their support to overseas, mainly India. While some people complain about this, I don’t mind it. Yes, there can sometimes be a language barrier, although it’s not exactly that. English is widely spoken in India, but is a heavily accented, so it can take a little time to understand sometimes. Of course when one is having problems with equipment, and already frustrated, there’s not a whole lot of room to be patient and forgiving. But I’ve never come across a rude Indian CSR Rep. Then again, I can’t remember the time I’ve come across a rude American CSR Rep. I realize I may be in the minority here, but I am never demanding or rude to a CSR person and I believe that usually is enough to prevent them from being rude to me. Of course I could also be living in la-la land here! What I don’t understand is if customer support is so expensive that we have to set up call centers halfway around the world in order to save money, why don’t companies simply design better products? This will save a lot of people calling in the first place. I know, there are inevitable issues with people not understanding more complex, technical devices, especially those who aren’t technical to begin with. All the better reason to invest in some great documentation, not the cryptic manuals which few read or idiot “quick start guides” that don’t answer any questions other than how to turn something on and the most basic of operating procedures.

With the mobile phone industry, there seems to be a particular issue with customer support. I was very happy to see a Sprint PCS commercial last night during the Olympics that actually made fun of the fact that new subscribers get all the benefits compared to current/long-time subscribers. This methodology should be made fun of and done away with. I kind of understand the motivation behind it, but maybe this is just conjecture. Basically, I’m thinking there are industry metrics that are reported in annual reports, quarterly reports, etc., which then theoretically help with the stock price. One of these metrics is new customers, while another is “churn” or people switching to someone else. The stock market has a growth fettish that can usually supercede everything else. Thus, it is reasoned that as many new customers must be had and if older customers have to be given the short stick, so be it. So, mobile phone companies offer sweet deals on new phones to lure new customers. The cost of the phone is actually “subsidized” by the mobile provider because they know they will be getting X amount of money from that new provider over a year’s contract. Some provider’s are a bit more enlightened and actually offer similar deals for people who extend their contract, but others, like T-Mobile, only offer something like free nights or free T-Mobile-to-T-Mobile calls if one renews one’s contract. Sprint has also come out with a plan that actually changes every month according to usage, so you don’t end up going over and paying exorbitant per-minute charges. But it seems all of these different pricing plans and methodologies have made billing issues multiply out of control. The industry, it seems, needs to standardize on some simple plan and stick to that. I think it should be the unlimited plan. You get one flat fee for unlimited calling. This would take 95% of the billing issues off the table and would save providers lots of time and expense trying to resolve these issues with customer support. This would allow them to decrease the cost of such an unlimited account.

The new telephone technology that may yet supercede current GSM and CDMA cell phones (or even their 3G predecessors), is Voice Over IP or “VOIP”. VOIP is a phone that uses the internet to communicate voice. It can translate between any analog (traditional) phone and the internet, so the only thing you need is a high-speed internet connection (DSL or a cable modem, etc.) and a little box that the VOIP company provides. Anyone can start a VOIP company in that you are only providing a box and a service, but not the wires or connection itself. So although we have all the large communications companies like AT&T, Verizon, Time Warner, etc., jumping on the bandwagon, the pioneers of this technology have been small companies like Vonage, Broadvoice, and the like. This makes the environment potentially much more competitive and consumers have benefited by cheap rates and tons of features and unlimited calling rates. So far VOIP is taking over the landline phone market because you need to have a high-speed connection, and once you leave your house you no longer have access to that. However, a new wireless networking technology called Wimax could change all of that by offering a very high speed wireless connection that can be broadcast over large areas (measured in miles) much like current cell towers. Either Wimax will be a competitor to standard cellular, or it will be coopted by them, who knows, but the actual VOIP service as part of this theoretically could remain in the hands of anyone who wants to start such a service. The one thing that might foil much of this open competitiveness is that Wimax providers may decide to lock down the port(s) that VOIP uses unless one pays a toll or subscribes only to the network’s preferred VOIP service. In fact, I have heard that at least for HotSpot, the wireless internet service owned by T-Mobile that one can access at just about any Starbucks or Borders Books in the U.S., they have already done this. I can’t take my VOIP “adapter” into one of these locations and use it to talk to people. Of course the reasoning behind this, I’m sure, is that it could theoretically hurt T-Mobile’s mobile phone revenues, since if people can talk unlimited amounts any hour of the day and any day of the week, they can opt for a cheaper mobile phone plan and never go over in those minutes. This is all the better reason for all mobile providers to switch over to one unlimited plan model. Revenue can still be generated by the growing ringtone market, but eventually I think as a society we may need to consider whether mobile communications has become such a critical utility in our society that it should be regulated (at least to the point that it is subsidized by the government so that cheap unlimited access for basic voice communications can be had by all). The FCC has had to deal with so many complex issues and has bungled so many when it comes to creating more competition in order to lower prices. While I get more for my money than I used to on my cell, my monthly fees have only gone up. VOIP is the only service so far that has actually started SAVING me money, so I think the government needs to pay special heed to this industry and make sure that it’s model is not crushed by those who want to keep the control of personal communications in the hands of a few very large companies…