Worst of the Week: Do it for the children

Hello! And welcome to our Friday 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 RCRWireless.com to rant and rave about whatever rubs us the wrong way. We hope you enjoy it!
And without further ado:
I would like to think that at least from an age perspective we are all adults here, and as such can have an adult discussion. Now, I am not talking about that sort of adult discussion, but instead a discussion about a serious issue I think we can all acknowledge is afflicting mobile services. (Those of you who are not quite of an adult age mentally can continue to giggle.)
I would like to propose that perhaps the rush to launch unlimited/bucket messaging plans has turned out horribly, horribly wrong. Not Borat in a unitard wrong, but more cats and dogs living in harmony wrong.
I know these plans have proven a boon for carriers that are looking to balance out falling voice revenues with “data” services, but the impact of providing unlimited messaging to a public we can now see is not responsible enough to handle such responsibility has been nothing short of catastrophic. (It sort of reminds me of one year when trick-or-treating we went to house where the people just left a bowl of candy on the door step. They might have figured all the good little boys and girls would just take one piece. They figured wrong.)
Here is the issue: Have you ever tried to have a conversation with someone under the age of 25? And I mean a real conversation, involving a coherent back-and-forth discussion. It can’t be done. It seems that the mongoose-on-Red Bull attention span these people once possessed has somehow been slashed as they can’t seem to go a nanosecond without looking at their phone for their latest text, picture or instant message, or to provide that second-by-second update to their Twitter or Facebook account. All the while all you get is a glazed look in their eyes and the overriding urge to slap ‘em. (Urge to slap may vary.)
I will admit that I do participate in the sending and receiving of messages on occasion, and I have even done so while in the presence of one or more people I am supposed to be socializing with. But, the seeming willingness for so many of our nation’s youth to give up any sort of real-world interaction in exchange for some random message sent to or received by some faceless entity that is probably also neglecting all possible human interaction around them has me fearing for the future.
How are these kids going to handle a job interview? How are they going to ever read anything longer than 140 characters long? What about the children?
And for all of this I blame all of us associated with the mobile industry that sat by and let such shenanigans transpire. We have extolled the virtues of messaging services, patted the backs of those that have unveiled user interfaces that allow consumers to conduct dozens of messaging interactions from their device at one time and for the most part ignored any sort of consequence such actions could lead to.
But, now that we can see the folly of our ways, we must take steps to fix it.
The only solution I see for this is for carriers to start charging per message sent and received, and not just pennies per message. They need to charge dollars per message. Hey it’s an invaluable service and should be charged as such. If AT&T Mobility can pull a slight of hand by revoking unlimited data services for its smartphone users, beginning to charge more for messaging should be a piece of cake.
Not only will this – I hope – cut back on the rapidly deteriorating communication skills of our youth, but could help further bolster the bottom line for carriers struggling to maintain their bottoms.
I know there are a whole lot of other issues impacting the mobile space, many with far more pressing importance and perhaps we will dive into those at a later date. But we cannot let this issue slip through our increasingly texting-fortified fingers.
OK, enough of that.
Thanks for checking out this week’s Worst of the Week column. And now for some extras:
–Further proof why numbers are for suckers: Sprint Nextel early this week announced that it sold three times as many HTC Evo 4G device on its launch day of June 4 – a Friday – than the combined sales of the Samsung Instinct and Palm Pre over their opening weekends. (If you remember, both of those devices were also launched just says ahead of announced updates by Apple for its iPhone and were going to help save Sprint Nextel. How has that worked out?) While no official numbers were released to support any of this bravado, it still seemed to indicate that Sprint Nextel had a hit on its hands with the Evo 4G.
Fast forward a day or so and Sprint Nextel toned down the hype saying that in fact it did not sell three times as many Evo 4G’s in one day as the combined sales of the Instinct and Pre over their opening weekends. Instead the number was in fact six times higher for launch day sales of the Instinct and nearly twice the number of Pres sold on its first day. Hmmm.
I don’t think we will ever really figure out how many Evo 4Gs or Instinct or Pres Sprint Nextel managed to sell at any one point in time, but obviously this situation again points out to the evil inherent in numbers.
–Those fine folks at big box retailer Best Buy Mobile released a survey this week showing that 53% of consumers did not know the month or year that their current mobile phone contract expires. This does not seem like such a surprise as people have a lot going on in their lives – most of it involves either texting or standing in line to buy new phones – and many don’t have the time or really care about keeping up on the particulars of their cellphone plans. That has not, however, stopped Best Buy Mobile from setting up a service that allows those with mean-spirited friends from mocking those that have more going on in their lives than having the latest cellphone. Bravo!
–I was almost able to get through this week’s rantings without making mention of Apple’s latest iPhone launch. Almost. While my brain seized up while trying to follow the activity via our own Matt Kapko’s Twitter posts from the event, I think like most people I got a kick out of the technical difficulties experienced during the presentation. How can Apple run into a Wi-Fi problem? Don’t they like own all that free spectrum somehow? Man, who ever thought a bunch of bloggers would make Apple look silly? Twice.
I welcome your comments. Please send me an e-mail at dmeyer@ardenmedia.com