T-Mobile Bobsleds Into Facebook

If you’re T-Mobile, you can either sit and wait for the US Government to OK the sale between you and AT&T or you can actually do something big.  T-Mobile opted for Big.  As in Facebook’s 500 million users big.  And Skype may have taken the mortal hit because of it. 

You see, today, T-Mobile announced their new Facebook application, Bobsled.  Teamed with developer Vivox, Bobsled is a web-based voice chat app that runs in Facebook .  That’s right, this lets you start voice chats with your Facebook friends from within Facebook’s chat window. All you need is a mike and speakers. You can leave a voice message for your friends and family when they are not available. You do not need to have Bobsled in order to receive a voice message. Did I mention this was free? And since approximately 88 percent of Facebook users have said that voice chat is something they want, that’s a lot of users.

How does it work?  The app is natively integrated into Facebook’s chat system. When you pull up a Facebook chat window, you can see a phone icon. If you click on that, you can call your friend. It’s instantaneous. I’ve been playing with it this afternoon.  The call quality is OK. 

So what does this mean for Skype? A previously announced partnership between Facebook and Skype has left many people expecting the two would be taking care of intra-Facebook calls, which makes the announcement by T-Mobile all the more interesting.  Apparently, someone wasn’t moving fast enough.  A possible 500 million plus users, and you know that T-Mobile is going to expand into video chat, the ability to place VoIP calls to mobile and landline U.S. numbers, and apps on all devices.  T-Mobile appears to be getting aggressive and fast.  This does not bode well for Skype. 

But besides the business of business, this is a nice to have. 

And Then There Were Three (for now)

Is it really surprising that AT&T’s plan of innovation includes buying out T-Mobile, their competitor in the GSM arena?  As Om Malik points out in his post about the merger:

T-Mobile has been pretty experimental and innovative. … AT&T, on the other hand, has the innovation of a lead pencil.

So what does this mean, other than the probable demise of some really great commercials featuring Charles Barkley?  Let’s look at this, shall we?  This leaves AT&T, Verizon and Sprint as the three major wireless companies in the US.  There are smaller companies out there, but we’re not talking about them.  Three major companies.  For the whole US.  Don’t like AT&T?  You would have Two other major choices.  So much for that invisble hand

Now before we go any further, let me point out that we have all ready heard AT&T say that in no way would this affect prices.  As their press release said so quickly:

“The U.S. wireless industry is one of the most fiercely competitive markets in the world and will remain so after this deal. … The U.S. is one of the few countries in the world where a large majority of consumers can choose from five or more wireless providers.”

Only one small problem with that. It always seems as if less competition allows companies to drive the price up whenever they please, since there is no incentive for them to keep prices low.  T-Mobile USA has been fairly aggressive in offering cheaper voice and data plans which has kept the prices in the market low enough. That thorn in AT&T’s side will be gone.  After that, where are you going to go?  Verizon?  Why? They will be following suit with the same excuses as AT&T because suddenly they can.  Sprint?  Possibly, but for how long before Verizon buys them?  Cricket?  US Cellular?  Pardon me while I laugh, French-like at you. 

No, the only real winners here are AT&T and Deutsche Telekom.  And given the climate in Washington, this deal will pass.  It may take a few months until all the screaming from consumers dies down, but it will indeed pass.  So enjoy the Barkley commercial while you can.

Mad Men, 2010

4G: As defined by the International Telecommunication Union, 4G service must deliver peak download speeds of approximately 100Mbps in high-mobility environments (cell phones) and peak download speeds of approximately 1Gbps in low-mobility environments.

And, as Boy Genius Report eloquently points out, when you talk about telecommunications in the US, there is not a carrier that has 4G service.

NOT ONE.  NADA.  ZILCH.  FUGGEDABOUTIT. 

That, of course won’t stop the members of the telecommunications industry from telling you otherwise.  Sprint has been telling you that for the last six to nine months, AT&T will cheerfully lie to you as well.  And T-Mobile just climbed aboard the bandwagon telling the world that they now have the largest 4G network.  Expect Verizon to pile on later this year.

Why?  Because, according to Tommy Lee Jones, “A person is smart.  People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals.”  And they buy the line, provided it is said often and with authority.   The fact is, all T-Mobile has is  a slightly faster service than what they had before.  But people don’t get that.  They get 4G as opposed to 3G.  4 is more, therefore it is “better, stronger, faster”.  And while T-Mobile’s upgraded data network, which is being rolled out across the country, isn’t technically 4G, its theoretical peak of 21 Mbps and average speeds of 5 Mbps probably make it the fastest data service available.  But it still isn’t 4G, no matter what T-Mobile wants to peddle.

From the BGR:

What’s funny is that when T-Mobile finally does launch an LTE network, it could potentially use the same logic carriers use now and call it a 5G network. Yes, it would use the same technology as AT&T and Verizon Wireless’ 4G networks, but it would be 5G. This scenario sounds ridiculous — but it’s actually happening right now. AT&T has an HSPA+ network just like T-Mobile, but AT&T calls it 3G while T-Mobile calls it 4G.

The thing about marketing is that it has always played fast and loose with the rules.  From four of five doctors recommending filtered cigarettes to Four of Five G’s recommending HSPA+ for speed, it’s never about truth.  It’s about what you can get away with.  Look around.  These days, you can get away with quite a lot. 

WordPress Tags: telecomunnications corporations, Lies, Marketing, 4G

Now Playing: U2 – Zooropa – Zooropa

And I Should Trust Azure, Why Again?

From the start, I have been leery of “The Cloud”.  There have been major questions concerning what happens to my data should my cloud company goes tits-up.  There are plenty of security questions.  And then there are the questions about backups.

Or in the case of Microsoft/Danger, the lack, thereof. 

You see, according to Endgaget, owners of the T-Mobile Sidekick were having problems this week with the basic tasks-text message going awry, missing address books, you name it.  T-Mobile’s now reporting that personal data stored on Sidekicks has "almost certainly has been lost as a result of a server failure at Microsoft/Danger." They’re still looking for a way to recover it, but they’re not giving users a lot of hope.  In addition, the server is still on the Fritz.  It’s been almost a week.  In addition, T-Mobile is warning customers to not restart, power down or let their handhelds lose power, as the Sidekick itself only caches the information and powering down can turn your unit into a brick.

Nice, eh? So the problem?  According to Hiptop3.com, apparently Microsoft was upgrading their SAN (Storage Area Network aka the thing that stores all your data), and the effort failed horribly. 

Microsoft had contracted with Hitachi to come in and do the SAN upgrade.  And noone knows yet if whether MS had expected Hitachi to make a backup before the upgrade and it wasn’t done, or if it was because of the amount of data that would be required, or if MS didn’t have time to do it, or if someone had actually been conned into thinking that everything would have gone so seamlessly that there was no need for it, or if they simply forgot .   Yeah, “I forgot to make a backup.  My bad.”  Famous last words.  But why there was no backup made before the upgrade is not the point.  The point is there was no backup at all. 

“But,” you may interject, “This is Microsoft – they have to have a backup plan, I mean, that’s taught Day 1 in any database class.   Have a backup.  When you do anything major to the system – have a backup.  If you think you may sneeze – have a backup.  Especially when you are doing an upgrade to you storage area network.”  At this point, no one knows why there was no working backup procedure in place.  And there was obviously no procedure in place because if there was, THERE WOULD BE A FREAKING BACKUP AVAILABLE!  How this happens in today’s day and age is beyond belief. Hundreds of thousands of customers that generate millions of dollars in revenue means you back their stuff up, in triplicate. You test these backups regularly like clockwork, and you move a copy off site that doesn’t get touched except in case of an emergency (i.e. right now). This is not a place where you make a cut in the budget because a breakdown has never happened.  The head of the mobile division (and person in charge of what’s left of Danger) is Roz Ho, who has been at Microsoft for 18 years. You would think she’d know something about how to run a business division.  Hopefully she’ll be able to fill out an unemployment form.  Because that’s what she should be doing Monday morning.  She, and every single DBA who had anything to do with this.  I know that if it were me, I would have been out on my butt about ten minutes after something like this, no questions asked. 

The fact that T-Mobile and/or Microsoft Danger don’t have a redundant backup is simply inexcusable, especially given the fact that the Sidekick is totally reliant on the cloud because it doesn’t store its data locally.  That’s right.  All your data lives in the cloud.  Isn’t that a great idea?  Negligence does not even begin to describe this.  There are people whose entire business was just eliminated.  Why didn’t the users do a backup?  Oh but many did.  You see, T-Mobile had a wonderful backup service that allowed you to effortlessly do just that.  And that information is… guess where?  It rhymes with “down the toilet”.  And trust me, the lawyers will be contacting ever single Sidekick owner in five, four, three, two…

Now Playing: Alice In Chains – Unplugged – No Excuses

WordPress Tags: T-Mobile, Sidekick, Stupidity, Cloud Computing, Failure, Microsoft, Danger, Lawyers