Worst of the Week: And Now, Some Extras

Hello!

And welcome to our Thursday column, Worst of the Week. There’s a lot of nutty stuff that goes on in this industry, so this column is a chance for us at RCR to rant and rave about whatever rubs us the wrong way. We hope you enjoy it!

And without further ado:

(Insert witty column here.)

So… I guess there’s some funny, interesting stuff going on somewhere, but I’m certainly not sober or awake enough to figure out what it is. So, since I really am that lazy, let’s just skip to some handy dandy bullet points, shall we?

(Actually, here’s the spin on it: Since there’s SO much going on right now, I need to touch on everything and not waste my time on an actual column. Good spin, huh?)

• Sprint Nextel announced that it will sell the Motorola Slvr, Krzr and Razr sometime in “early November.” I’m trying to figure out exactly why Sprint Nextel issued this press release. Why didn’t Sprint Nextel just wait until the phones were actually available before they announced them? Here’s the official translation of their press release: “Were you thinking about buying a new phone from Sprint Nextel? If so, please wait a month before you do so. Thanks.”

• Gov. Arnold is a flip-flopper! First he approved a ban on cell phones while driving (bad for the industry), then he vetoed a bill that would have allowed people to contest unauthorized billing charges (good for the industry). Let’s get a little philosophical for a moment, shall we? This is just like the Terminator movies, where in the first one Arnold was the bad guy and in the second one Arnold was the good guy. Yes, very philosophical. Very, very philosophical.

• Despite all sorts of whoopla about the horrors of pretexting—including the HP pretexting scandal—Congress has not actually done anything about it yet. Instead, now they’re talking about banning pages due to the Mark Foley scandal. Ah, my tax dollars in action.

• So Siemens executives are going to forego a pay raise and instead will give that money to the employees of BenQ Mobile (which is the handset business that Siemens gave to Taiwanese manufacturer BenQ). So, even though Siemens has nothing to do with that business anymore, they’re still going to give those employees some bail-out money. I appreciate the sentiment, but does this whole thing strike anyone else as just a little weird? It would be like me paying someone else to take my old, crappy Ford Tempo and then giving them some more money when it quit working. But maybe that’s normal in Germany? I have no idea.

• Did you see that Voce, the MVNO for rich people, cut its monthly service cost in half? Now it’s a much more reasonable $200 (down from an initial $400.) Yup, you heard right, only $200 a month. Now if they would only cut another $160 off that price, I would be able to afford it.

• Have you heard about these new things called “femtocells?” They’re little base stations you can put in your house. I can’t wait to get one. But I’m going to have to rename it to something my friends won’t make fun of, like “awesome-tocell” or “radical-tocell” or even just “manly-tocell.” Pretty much anything but “femtocell.”

• A company called EZ Scores put out a press release about how they are now the “nation’s No. 1 direct dial service for live sports information” since Mobile ESPN is now out of the picture. Here’s more: “Without Mobile ESPN and without any other dedicated sports phone services or providers, EZ Scores officially stakes its claim and challenges the entire industry to proving them wrong.” There you go, folks. You’ve been challenged. By EZ Scores. Yessir.

• So Amp’d Mobile is underwriting a filmmaking course for mobile at Boston University. The MVNO will provide camera phones and editing equipment for the cell phone movie-making course. And students who take the course will have their “mobilettes” distributed over Amp’d Mobile’s service. Wow. And I thought getting a journalism degree was easy.

• Toys “R” Us released its “Hot Toy” list for the 2006 holiday season. For the 5- to 7-year-old segment, Toys “R” Us predicts the big sellers will be “Hot Wheels Criss Cross Crash Track Set with 10 Cars,” “My Scene My Bling Bling Styling Heads” and… yes … a cell phone—the “Wherifone GPS Locator Phone,” from Wherify Wireless, to be exact. I’m personally going to get ahead of the curve and just buy my six-month-old son Owen a cell phone. Maybe the Razr. Or perhaps the Slvr. Yup, babies love Slvrs.

• And finally, Nortel Networks said that it will provide litigation support to the Navy in order to “assist the U.S. State Department Office of the Legal Advisor in providing the defense before the Iran-United States Claims Tribunal in The Hague against certain claims by Iran arising from sales of military equipment to Iran before the 1979-81 hostage crisis.” Well, I’m certainly impressed. And I thought Nortel just made base stations. Geez.

OK! Enough of that. Thanks for checking out this Worst of the Week column (even though it wasn’t really a column). Wanna check out other Worst of the Week entries? Click here for past columns.

I welcome your comments. Please send me an e-mail at [email protected].