Your link to Northwest Indiana. tm
Your link to Northwest Indiana. tm |
|
| [sidebar.htm] |
|
|||
From Our Founder “I hate this phone, stupid piece of junk, when my contract’s up, I’m jumping to <fill in a competing cell provider’s name here> and getting a new phone!” My children, their friends, my wife, my business associates, my siblings… all share something in common. They’re frustrated and sometimes infuriated with their cell phone service provider. Nextel/Sprint, Verizon, Cingular/ AT&T, T-Mobile, and so many more. So many choices, so many devices, so many opinions, so many uses, so many customers, but one common experience… at some point…cell service failure. When the cell phone industry was in its infancy and cell phone providers were busy building out their networks, inconsistent performance was expected and largely tolerated, but such is not the case any longer. Cell phones have become an indispensable appliance which is now indelibly threaded into the American lifestyle. The genie is “out of the bottle.” The cell phone has accelerated business and contributed to unimagined increases in productivity. The cell phone has increased personal security. The cell phone has changed human behavior and served as the genesis for information services which have enhanced the quality of all of our lives. Cell phones have spawned a multitude of businesses. Cases, holsters, covers, ring tones, hands-free devices, interface devices, text messaging, electronic mail, music, video, scheduling, sports scores, weather, stock quotes… these little gadgets aren’t gadgets anymore. In fact, the cell phone has so much become part of our collective everyday experience, that legislators are now confronting public safety issues related to our use of our cell phones… mobile misbehavior. But our increasing dependence on our cell phones and their increased profile in all of our lives has contributed to our frustration with cell phone reliability. When I travel down Interstate 65 to Indy, I expect “bad cells” or “holes in service” and know precisely where they are. I don’t expect seamless, uninterrupted service. So too when I am in a building adorned with concrete and steel, I’m willing to be understanding and patient with my service. But traveling around the region with all of the cell towers poking conspicuously above the horizon virtually everywhere, I am hard pressed to understand why service is so inconsistent. I carry two cell phones from different providers. My wife and children are subscribers to yet another provider. My business associates have collectively covered the remainder of the high-profile providers. They all report (sometimes using language unfit for mixed company or young ears) problems with their cell service. So what’s the problem? It does not seem like any provider “gets it right” no matter what their marketing department would have us believe. No, I can’t hear you now… irrespective of the provider or model phone I have. And day-old voice mail further adds to my aggravation. The message does me no good when I am notified of its existence (and can thereby respond) days after it was recorded into my voice mailbox. So why the service interruption? I have burned endless minutes and have endured countless calls to my provider troubleshooting service problems. I’m telephony-knowledgeable so the “canned excuses” simply don’t cut it anymore with me. “Our engineers are retuning the tower in your area, your phone is malfunctioning, your phone needs to be reset, a competing provider appears to be interfering with our signal in your area, you’re switching cells and subsequently getting dropped”… I have heard them all and have memorized the error codes my phone offers up instead of service. I think what it boils down to is oversubscription, plain and simple. As the cell providers add stores, add customers (especially teens and young adults who communicate ceaselessly), offer more free minutes & free phones, and offer more features… the system becomes overloaded with the demand exceeding design capacities. Cell phone companies are competing for their corporate lives and to boost revenues they are increasing their marketing, increasing their incentives, increasing their discounts, and increasing their customer base. It does not take a math whiz to figure out what’s happening; demand is going up, prices are going down, net revenues are going down, and the result is less revenue available to keep pace with the demands of all those new customers we’re adding… and the revenue the providers are realizing has to be invested in more sales & marketing to keep the competition at bay vis-à-vis requisite engineering, maintenance, and expansion to keep pace with the increased demands upon their system. The cycle is spiraling and the tempest is drawing everyone, users and providers, into the inevitable flush. Our present solution to our cell phone addiction is to change service providers and/or buy a new phone as regularly as we can afford. Now I understand why the telecommunications industry was regulated in the first place. The users require protection and the providers require salvation… from themselves! Hear me now? As always, I can be reached via e-mail at b@219.com |
||||
About Us. © 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003 by
Onsite Computer, LLC. |