Summer kvetching

It’s 100 degrees outside. It seems dismal second-quarter earnings are muddying my hopes for a steady industry upturn. In short, it seems like an appropriate time to kvetch. So here goes:

c Wireless is a numbers games. 147.8 million subscribers. $20 a month. Penny handsets. 300 kilobits per second. 3G … you get the idea. But the problem with numbers is they have been exaggerated since the first time a number was written down in a cave. (Certainly since the first fish was caught.)

EDGE offers peak rates of 170 kilobits per second (but only if no one is on the network). Cdma2000 meets the technical specifications of 3G (but many analysts don’t really think it meets the soul of what 3G is supposed to do). Likewise, 802.11b offers peak speeds of 11 megabits per second,(but again, there are limitations like other people using the network).

The only numbers I suspect aren’t a little exaggerated are the ones counting layoffs in the industry.

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c Wi-Fi. Yes, I believe some day masses of people will wirelessly connect their laptops etc. to the Internet at outrageously fast speeds-somehow. I’m not good at picking technologies. Here’s my real problem. As an informed and trying-to-be-good parent, I am not supposed to have a TV in my children’s rooms because they may access something inappropriate like anything related to Pamela Anderson (who has her own cartoon now. Ugh.) I understand and have complied. I also am supposed to put the family PC in an open area like the kitchen so no inappropriate surfing goes on (like anything related to Pamela Anderson). My children are young, and this has been easy to control. But my kids are going to be pretty savvy about laptops/PDAs/etc about the same time wireless computing explodes. So how am I going to keep them “contained” in the kitchen, when they can walk right up to their bedrooms and close the door with their laptops via wireless and discover Pamela Anderson?

c Push to talk. How, how, how did Nextel get a trademark on that phrase? And since Verizon has freed up its lawyers from the LNP battle, why doesn’t it fight Nextel on this? Verizon has simply continued using PTT since Nextel reminded everyone it had trademarked the phrase.

c LNP. While carriers can spend the next six months arguing over whether customers will churn or not, the smart operators will be fortifying their networks. It’s STILL ABOUT COVERAGE. Its always been about coverage. It will always be about coverage.

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