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 Wireless News to rant and rave about whatever rubs us the wrong way. We hope you enjoy it!
And without further ado:
So, a couple of airlines have recently announced plans to allow passengers to access some limited data applications from their wireless devices while in flight. Southwest Airlines said it would start offering Wi-Fi access on select flights beginning next year, while JetBlue said it was looking to offer text messaging capabilities to its passengers.
Now I know many outside the wireless industry see this as a bad idea, with most using the “I don’t want to be sitting next to someone yammering non-stop through a five-hour flight” argument, but if they look a little deeper at what is being offered, it’s not a bad idea.
You see, neither Southwest or JetBlue is allowing voice calls to be made while in flight, only access to the Internet and for text messages to be sent. These are both relatively quiet activities, and more importantly they are activities that can distract a passenger that would otherwise want to talk to me. While there is nothing wrong with a little conversation to pass the time, I have found that trying to hold a conversation with someone while sitting side-by-side usually results in either having to keep your head turned to the side to keep the conversation going and thus risking a stiff neck, or you end up looking straight ahead while talking, which makes you look crazy.
Of course, with the increasing popularity of such online video sites as YouTube and others, there is the risk that you end up sitting next to someone who spends the entire flight laughing hysterically to endless clips of cats trying to water ski or babies parachuting off roof tops, but I would hope the broadband connection is slow enough to make such endeavors unappealing to passengers and they stick with just answering e-mails or forwarding links to porn sites.
And of course for JetBlue passengers, being able to send text messages while being stuck on the runway for four hours will make the time fly by.
OK! Enough of that. Thanks for checking out this Worst of the Week column. And now, some extras:
–A VoIP company out of Albuquerque, that’s right, I said a company out of Albuquerque, with the cool name of iPhone2 Inc. announced its intentions this week to move from trading on the Pink Sheets to the over-the-counter Bulletin Board exchange. That’s right, there is a company in the telecom space called iPhone2. Now, where have I heard that name before? Oh yeah. A quick check of iPhone2’s trading price this week showed that it would take 15,000 shares of the company’s stock to buy one iPhone. Numbers are fun.
–Mobile couponing company Cellfire reported a partnership with four Bangor, Maine, merchants to roll out its application to Bangor residents. I have never been to Bangor, so I can’t make any informed comments on how silly this might sound to launch the service in Bangor, but Cellfire seems bullish on the rollout in Bangor, noting it chose Bangor “because of its proximity to the University of Maine and its concentration of teens, young adults and early younger baby boomers.” Also, I know the media likes to label certain age demographics to death, but where exactly do the “early younger baby boomers” fit in? I’m guessing they’re slightly older than the older late Gen-Xers and just younger than the sprightly younger middle-agers. So, 42 years, 4 months.
–AT&T said it has partnered with Academy Award winner Forest Whitaker in producing public service announcements that run before movies asking viewers to be quiet during the show. These spots are in some cases better than the feature presentation themselves, but with Ghost Dog himself telling you to be quiet, I’m thinking more people will listen.
–As further proof that the never-ending barrage of comic book-based movies clogging up movie theaters, and taking away precious screen time from those comedic geniuses the Wayans brothers, has gone too far, Marvel Studios said it has plans to produce a Broadway musical based on Spider-Man. Oh, wait. It gets better. U2’s Bono and The Edge are creating new music and lyrics for the project. Here’s hoping that an interpretative dance of Daredevil is not far behind.
