Well, April Fool’s Day came and went without much notice during the CTIA Wireless 2008 show. I find this disheartening; the CTIA show presents the perfect venue for companies both large and small to cause general havoc and mayhem in the name of April Fool’s fun.
The only whiff of pranksterism I came across occurred during Sir Richard Branson’s keynote yesterday morning. During the keynote, Branson said Virgin had formed a new joint venture with Google called Virgle, which will offer one-way spaceship trips to the planet Mars.
According to the new Web site for Virgle (if it’s on the Internet, it must be true) the joint venture will be “leading hundreds of users on one of the grandest adventures in human history: Project Virgle, the first permanent human colony on Mars.”
I’m not entirely sure if this is an April Fool’s Day prank or an actual joint venture between Google and Virgin. (Based on the number of ridiculous ideas thrown about in the wireless industry, I can’t tell who’s joking and who’s not anymore.) However, I’m willing to guess that it is in fact a prank.
Anyway, the point is that there’s not enough April Fool’s Day silliness in the wireless industry. So, in the spirit of Virgle and other silly things, I propose these pranks:
–The carrier with what is arguably the best spectrum position in the nation should lose customers like crazy. This is funny because the rest of the nation’s carriers, which are concerned about their current spectrum position and need to buy more, are the ones gaining customers like crazy.
–The company that invented the modern cellphone should lose much of its business to a European company that made its name making rubber boots and paper.
–A company that previously had nothing to do with the wireless industry should release a device so advanced that everyone, including the Federal Communications Commission’s chairman, agrees that it’s a game-changing event and will revolutionize the industry. This same company should then decide to have nothing to do with the wireless industry, and won’t even take the time to set up a booth at CTIA.
