No More Surprise Cellular Overages?

For anyone who has gotten a heart attack when your cell phone bill showed up and said you owe $600 due to not being able to stop talking, your days of worry are over it appears.  Under FCC recommendations, new policies from AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile will start effective October 17, 2012.  I saw recommendations loosely, as the FCC is already working on new policies to force smaller regional carriers to follow along and play ball.  The FCC also warned the big 4 that if they don't play ball under teh agreements, there would be "strict consequences."  Awesome!

Under the new policies, carriers must send alerts to customers when they are close to their allocation of voice, text, or data.  Yes, some of these people still have bucket plans for texting.  It's amazing.  It also requires notification when you're about to incur international roaming charges (because you obviously had no clue you mysteriously wondered outside the U.S.), and disclose tools where consumers can check their use themselves.

At this point, Verizon already offers the free alerts, as does AT&T.  T-Mobile offers free alerts although I'm not sure if they're automatic, and Sprint has an option to text for usage info.  All four carriers also provide self help tools online to check use.

Ok so there's all your happy info, and I'm sure millions of cellular customers will rejoice.  It seems though that after conversing with some co workers (I work for a cell phone carrier) about the changes, I'm an odd man odd for not doing cartwheels after reading about this.  Don't get me wrong, I'm all for not dealing with people calling and screaming like an idiot after getting $200 in overages they swear are totally wrong.  I am, however, against The Great FCC stepping in and forcing these changes on cellular carriers.  The minor concern, oddly enough, is cost.  Services like this take resources to perform them.  Resources in place for the constant monitoring of thousands or millions of customer accounts depending on the size of the carrier, and systems to then push those notice as they hit the marks to require them.  These resources require cash to provide them, and that cash has to come from somewhere.  That somewhere ends up being your wallet.  Cell phone carriers ate the full cost or majority cost of a lot of fees they endure for being in business, so you can count on this being one you'll pay something toward.

That's all great you say?  I don't mind paying a little extra to know where my usage is.  It ends up being less in the end than paying the overages.  Right, right?

This brings me to my second dispute, customers tend to be complete idiots.  Yes, it's a large majority.  Cell phone companies already provide tools available 24/7 to check your use.  You ALREADY have these services, yet a large majority of customers either don't know about them or ignore them.  Most times, it's that they ignore them.  The problem is personal responsibility.  They don't proactively check their use, which is YOUR responsibility and NOT the carrier.  You are an adult, and you made an adult decision to get a service.  You're given the information up front on what you get with your plan, and how to monitor it.  You should be ashamed of demanding a babysitter.

You're usually going to get at least 2 out of the 3 options below...

Internet:  Log into your account online.  You'll probably find a big bright button as soon as you log in to check your current usage.  They don't hide this.
Call in:  It's a safe bet when you call your carrier, that annoying little menu system has an option there to check your use.
Text message alert:  You shoot a text to a short code, and it sends a text back telling you the use.

So let's try a new approach, let's be proactive to our responsibilities and put on our big kids pants.  Now hopefully I get a bit of relief and someone else agrees with me lol.

The AT&T steamroller and you!

This I suppose is more of an in-depth follow up from a brief rant I did about this on my blog, The Fn Icon.  Thanks to Amanda for giving me a chance to complain a little more.

Let me start by saying this....

I'm all for competition in any given market.  Anytime you have competition, fair competition that is, it benefits the consumer.  We get innovation, we get better pricing, and we're all winners.  OK that might be a bit of a stretch, but hey, I like to think positive.

The cellular market is no different than any other.  You keep a good amount of companies in the mix, they battle some back and forth on what they're willing to give up for subscribers (subs), and we pick and choose what we need most and jump on it.  Through time numerous mergers and buyouts have occurred for the sake of growth, or sometimes even survival.  Small market carriers group up into one to increase their overall base, large carriers eat up the small guys to increase their coverage maps.  It's all economics.

The most important thing is you must maintain balance in the market.  No one really gets hurt if Verizon picks up Local John's Wireless World.  More than likely, our friend John has a nice batch of towers already set up in some rural area that Verizon can't see as financially worth while to expand into on their own.  They buy out John, John makes a ton of cash to swim in on his bed, and Verizon makes that red coverage map a little bigger with less expense.  

Customers are also happy as their coverage options just jumped by leaps and bounds.  Previously, they may not have had the luxury of nation wide coverage as their small carrier couldn't foot the bill on all the roaming agreements, and Verizon had no towers out there so they were stuck.  Now they walk in the Verizon store and get a huge stash of phones to pick and choose from.  Again, this is a win for the consumer.

Most of these are just sideways moves for the most part.  There's no real innovation that comes out of it, just a jump in coverage and selection.  No one is going to jump out of their seat in excitement.  Take the Sprint Nextel merger.  To this day it still doesn't make sense as the two wireless networks aren't compatible, but Sprint got a nice jump in the business market with the direct connect service businesses love so much.  Again, all they did was increase market share and revenue.

Then you have those mergers that are purely for innovation.  Best example on current scenarios is the Sprint merger with Clear not long ago to help boost the 4G inception.  Sprint had nothing invested in 4G really, and Clear had a nice market they were building but needed financial backing.  Sprint jumped on the boat, 4G took off, and now it's being rolled out in various forms by all the major carriers.  Carriers are happy because they get more revenue, and customers are happy with all the cool new phones and blazing speeds for porn.

Now we have the proposition of a juggernaut.  AT&T is looking to purchase T-Mobile for $39 billion in cash and stock.  Now I understand T-Mobile is only #4 among the major carriers, but the combined sub numbers are pretty astounding.

Currently, Verizon has about 101 million subscribers, while AT&T has 96 million, Sprint Nextel 48 million, and T-Mobile 36 million. All of the other players have less than 10 percent of market share combined. 

Do the math.....that's about 132 million subs combined.

"Wireless competition will continue to flourish," AT&T said, arguing that the "transaction is in the public interest."

Really now?  I remember the last time they said that when they bought Cingular.  Their major claim was "more bars in more places".  Funny, my signal never went up any.  All I got out of that deal is never knowing the actual name of my cell phone carrier because it kept changing back and forth, and causing me hassle having to migrate from one type of account to another.  Thanks guys.

AT&T has also neglected to come out and say what few perks that T-Mo customers have now will carry over.  At the moment their prices are lower.....don't count on that to keep up.  AT&T I think at times is happy being the most expensive carrier.  Unlimited data?  Yeah, not so much.  AT&T is already on a tiered data system, and buying T-Mo is nothing more than an easy way to get into the 4G market they couldn't sink any real cash into.  They've taken enough of a beating over their over clocked 3G network being billed as 4G.  Now they can gut out T-Mo for their own gain to play catch up with Verizon and Sprint.

So who wins in this?  No one honestly.  When you have a monopoly like this happen, the consumer suffers.  All the other carriers have to eat each other up into one which creates less parity, or just chip away on the bottom end of the sub base for what they can get and try to wait out the storm.  

Once complete, they can set their own prices and gouge them however they choose.  They own the market, so what can you do about it?  All those new super sweet phones coming out you want so bad? Forget it....exclusive deals stick to the carrier who can shell out the most in subsidies.  With the revenue they would bring in, they can lock almost any phone they want.

Now, who are the biggest losers besides consumers?

Sprint:  They're #3 in the big boy market.  They only gain they'll have is T-Mobile's low end customers which are rarely profitable.  Now they'll be stuck between 2 carriers with a large advantage in subs, and pre-paid carriers that chew their ankles daily.

Small market carriers:  Take your pick....Metro PCS, Cricket, US Cellular, etc.  They'll never compete with the big boys.  They'll have to join together or die out.  For the most part, their coverage maps are based on deals to use space from the big boys.  Wait till their incurred rates get so drastic they're no longer an affordable option and fizzle out.

Google: Yeah, I said it.  AT&T's CEO absolutely hates Google.  This is common knowledge.  The few Google phones that made it to an AT&T shelf were so scaled down they're worthless.  T-Mobile is the only carrier with a Google developer-model GSM phone.  Don't expect that to continue.

T-Mobile Employees:  One thing is a constant when companies merge....employees get fired.  It's a normal cost cutting expense when it happens, and daddy isn't going to kick his own kids out on the street.

Here's the plus side to this whole scenario.  It's going to be about a year before anything is final.  During this time, there's going to be investigations by the FCC, SEC, FTC, Homeland Security, Congress, and every other all letter group that gets paid too much that you can think of.  FCC insiders have already claimed there's no way they'll give the OK to this.

Let's certainly hope so......

Nick

twitter.com/NickTheFnIcon

Article I originally posted on The Tech Support Cubicle!

Sprint sticks to unlimited data, Dan Hesse just won't get off TV

Let me start by saying this.  I don't like Dan Hesse on TV commercials.  In fact, I normally race to change the channel when Sprint commercials would come on just because of him.  This time though, I find myself applauding him and Sprint for the decision to keep unlimited data options for smartphone users.

From the new commercial:

“The other day, I looked up the word unlimited in the dictionary. Nowhere in the definition did I see words like metering, overage, or throttling, which is code for slowing you down. Only Sprint gives you true unlimited calling, texting, surfing, TV and navigation on all phones.”

Don't take this as a direct fanboi post for Sprint.  This is simply support for going against AT&T and Verizon in their decision to move to a tiered data system.  Sure, 2GB sounds like a lot of data.  Normally, it would be.  


Smartphones however have evolved quite a bit over the years with their hardware capabilities and features, and continue to push forward.  This in turn uses more data up and down on the network.  Because of this, the standards of how providers operate have to change to accommodate.  Upgrades have to be done to cover the usage, which obviously requires more cash.  Thus far, the two most efficient options to cover this have been tiered data where you pay overages over the cap to cover your use, or pay a little more to maintain unlimited data.


This unfortunately has become a necessity to pick the lesser of the two evils.  In my personal experience, the more experienced smart phone users have come to understand the reasoning, and have even embraced the extra $10 charge a month to not have to baby sit their usage.  Most of the resistance has come from that group of users that have smartphones or are just buying them, and aren't familiar with what they're capable of.  I suppose if you're jumping ship from that old LG flip phone, you might not really know what you're getting into. 


In the case of Sprint, the extra charge doesn't apply to feature phones which are basically any non-smartphone.  As for AT&T and Verizon on the tiered system, I'm not completely sure at this point.  I would certainly hope this isn't the case.


Bottom line is this.  Technology advances, sometimes faster than we like.  Users want to do more, phones are made to do more, so the providers have to ensure the extra revenue is in place to go into the network so it can do more.  You can either go with it, or re-activate that old Motorola Razr you used to love so much.  

Worst in Tech for 2010

Microsoft Kin

The Kin was once dubbed as the cousin to Windows Phone 7.  That might be true if that cousin is comatose.  Consumers who bought this device were blessed with no apps or games, a forced data plan by Verizon used for real smart phones, and quite possibly the worst UI ever invented.  Let's not forget all those cloud hosting issues they experienced randomly.  Lost contacts anyone?

The Kin was killed off after an impressive 6 weeks on the market.


AT&T 3G MicroCell

We all know that AT&T has the worst cellular network known to man.  It drops calls, data, runs slow, and has a natural ability to piss people off daily.  The MicroCell unit is their solution to fix all of this, at least in your home.  In theory it's great, except for the forced $150 price tag that goes along with it.

Here is a better idea long term.  Just fix your horrible network.


The TV Hat

Now this is the perfect gift, if your sole purpose if simply to piss someone off and make them hate you.  One thing we have learned since the inception of the iPod is that any random company will make some stupid accessory to try and cash in.  The TV Hat was designed to allow the user watch media on their iPod Touch, iPhone, or iPod Classic with no glare.  It even has a 2.5x magnification screen that "helps give you a movie theater experience".

We better all jump to get this as it's a steal at $30.  Just don't go outdoors with it, as you may have find new friends with the people that wear foil hats.


Shake Weight

I have nothing against integrating technology into our daily lives and routines, but I don't think any of us believe this thing was invented to get your average Joe into shape.  It may have been innocent, but the Shake Weight has quickly become the butt of sexual jokes of everyone.

And yes, I still laugh uncontrollably when I see the commercials.  And thank you YouTube for your wonderful parody videos.


USB 3.0

It came, it saw, and it fell harder than a fat man in a slide at the water park.  USB 3.0 was supposed to be the magnificent replacement to current standards, offering 10x the speed of 2.0 and giving us a world of new high speed peripherals.  Someone forgot to send this memo to Intel and AMD, as they never integrated this technology natively, and only a small amount of devices support it.


Google Wave

This was supposed to be Google's solution to Facebook, or so they thought.  The biggest problem that Wave faced was, well, everything about it.  No one knew how to take advantage of the thing beyond logging in, and it ran so horribly that it became almost worthless.  We tried it here on the beta and it lasted for oh, a week at best and we gave up.  Wave has now been formally killed off, although Google as said they plan to integrate parts of it into other services.


QIK

One thing that Android users want is a quality app for live video streaming and chat like FaceTime on the iPhone 4.  What many of us were stuck with what QIK.  All it offered us in return was performance including choppy framerates, grainy images and frequently dropped connections over 3G, 4G, and Wi-Fi.  Thankfully, we have Skype coming out hopefully soon with their video chat update and a possible addition to Google Talk.