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:
A recent vacation to a sunny location provided me with both some much needed sun exposure to my increasingly pasty complexion as well as some insight into the quickly fading memories of being disconnected from the world.
You see, this vacation included some serious time on a beach that for better or worse was on the fringe of cellular coverage. I could occasionally receive or make calls from my ocean-side locale, but only if I turned my head a certain way or if I held only one alcoholic drink instead of the regular two – sorry liver. (Never having been an iPhone owner, I guess I sort of lived the iPhone lifestyle for a bit.)
Further bolstering my suspicion that I was just on the cusp of a cell signal was the fact that the battery life of my device was about half of what I regularly get, telling me that my device was working extra hard to show that one-bar of coverage.
Now, for many people this would be a near tragedy and reason to write to their wireless carrier, local congressman and Santa Claus demanding that they receive an official apology from the carrier’s CEO, the President of the United States and Mrs. Claus for being inconvenienced with this shoddy network coverage.
But for me I realized how awesome life was before we all become so connected and how we in short time will be losing that ability to disconnect.
(I am sure we could experience this solitude on a daily basis by simply turning off our mobile device, but who really has the fortitude to have their mobile device turned off? I think we all want to get that feeling of importance when we receive a call, plus I am sure we all have a friend or family member that freaks out if we don’t answer a cell phone call within the first third of the first ring.)
Not being able to use my cell phone due to a lack of coverage – there were precious few times when I did not have two drinks in my hand – and because the battery died before noon was a freeing experience. I would have to put the feeling somewhere short of bungee jumping without a bungee and just past riding in a car without a seatbelt. (Neither of which are activities I recommend.)
However, I fear that this ability to disconnect is slowly fading as carriers continue to expand coverage to areas that really don’t need to be covered, and the government is putting a lot of emphasis on wireless technology to expand broadband coverage. I understand that I might be in the minority in not wanting to have cell coverage everywhere, and that indeed I can just turn off my device or better yet, leave it at home if I really want to get away.
But I could only guess there were others on the same stretch of beach that were losing their minds because of the lack of cell coverage and as soon as they returned home started firing off those nasty letters to their carrier, political representative and the North Pole.
When I returned back to civilization I seemed to be hyper-aware of just how much people have become wedded to their mobile devices. Every person at the airport was either screaming into their phone or bouncing off walls and other people staring at their phone while trying to run through the airport. Nearly every person I saw driving away or into the airport seemed to be talking on the phone, and of course there were a few who appeared to by tapping out a book onto their device as well.
And now that I am back entrenched in civilization I guess I may have gone a little too far off the grid as I am know fully reconnected to society and can’t imagine what the hell I was thinking in that being disconnected was so great. Sound confusing? Just another day living inside my head.
I am guessing the best course of action is to just take another vacation.
OK, enough of that.
Thanks for checking out this week’s Worst of the Week column. And now for some extras:
— Coincidences are an odd thing. According to those experts at Dictionary.com, a coincidence is “a striking occurrence of two or more events at one time apparently by mere chance.” Sounds innocent enough.
With that bit of background I look at yesterday’s announcement from Clearwire that its CEO Bill Morrow will be leaving immediately to be replaced by industry veteran John Stanton. This move comes at a time when the rumor mill is overfilling with talk that Clearwire is looking to partner with T-Mobile USA on some sort of network collaboration. You know T-Mobile USA. The company that used to be called VoiceStream Wireless before a certain John Stanton managed to sell of the assets to Deutsche Telecom about 10 years ago for something north of $30 billion.
And now, somehow that same John Stanton is back at the helm of a company that is rumored to be in serious talks with the same DT over some sort of network deal. Seriously?
This could all really be just a coincidence. I mean, Stanton could probably be the best person to actually run Clearwire, though I also think he is the best person to fund Clearwire’s buildout plans as I imagine he has enough spare change hiding in his couch cushions to fund the carrier’s build out plans to include the dark side of the moon.
But, wouldn’t it be awesome if Stanton is somehow tied into an eventual deal that see’s DT invest billions into Clearwire. Truly awesome.
–I think I understand the meaning of the quasi-word “synergy,” but it wasn’t until I received a press release from a company called iDevices for its iGrill application/service that I was truly able to taste what it meant. You see these iDevices people have managed to meld everyone’s favorite i-devices (iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad) with a wireless cooking thermometer. That’s right, I said cooking thermometer.
Somehow these geniuses have managed to combine a Bluetooth-enabled “thermometer with projection display and probe” with an application that can provide backyard chefs with constant updates on the “probed” temperature of their simmering flesh. I was sort of hoping these folks had come up with a service that actually required users to jam their i-device into a piece of raw meat. Oh well.
Sure, the concoction is priced at a crazy $100, but can you really put a price on finding yet another useless way to be glued to your iPhone?
I welcome your comments. Please send me an e-mail at dmeyer@ardenmedia.com.
