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:
So I am going to take a slightly different angle to Worst of the Week because I have been traveling this week to China and Washington, D.C. and the worst thing of the week is airline travel. Whether it is the middle seat, long international flights, domestic delays (four hours, Frontier, because you didn’t factor in the pilots’ flying time restrictions, really?) airline food, lack of individual TV sets or clean bathrooms, air travel can be trying.
So consider this column more of a “Random thoughts while jet-lagged” feature:
— China Telecom definitely had some interesting presentations over the two days I was in Guangzhou. I think what was most interesting is that the operator (which is the big fixed-line service provider in the country and has 100-year-old roots in the space) is changing the way it does business because customers only care about devices and applications these days. If China Telecom is learning to be more flexible, the rest of the world should probably take note.
— At the CDMA Development Group’s CDMA World Forum, in Guangzhou, China, the ugly “how much longer will CDMA exist” question reared its head a time or two. I tend to agree with James Person, COO of the CDG, who said he expects to be at a world forum in 10 years answering the same question. Machine-to-machine is getting a strong push globally from operators, and those long-term contracts will force carriers to maintain the networks, especially if the predicted M2M explosion occurs.
— While airline travel sucks, staying in brand-new hotels is awesome. New “everything” definitely has its perks. Taxi drivers, on the other hand, never once brought us to our hotel destination. Instead, they brought us to the more established hotel, where we shuttled to the new hotel. Never once did the shuttle driver roll his eyes at us.
— I can’t say Guangzhou. Microsoft Word can tell me when I am spelling it wrong, however.
— One Nigerian operator attending the event asked expressed concern about the U.S. government being so much in debt. Is it a bad sign when Nigeria is worried about the U.S. economy? Does anyone have a better answer than we are like teenagers and think nothing bad can happen to us?
— Boo to Verizon Wireless for changing its international data roaming plan. It was awesome to be able to only get the international roaming for a week at a time while I was away, paying less than $10 to access my e-mail from a foreign country. Evidently VZW figured out how awesome it was.
— You can’t open Google Documents in China.
— I got a warning this morning from my Gmail account that it was opened in China. (Yes, by me, five days ago, from China.)
— During our trip to the China Telecom Device Fair, they let outsiders in to check out all of the latest gadgets and people were there in droves. People seemed very interested in all of the devices, including my colleague Marc Speir’s video equipment. At least 10 people must have looked at it as he was packing it up. Marc thinks it is because the equipment might be considered ancient in China.
— The Qualcomm booth at China Telecom Device Fair was blasting Justin Bieber’s Baby song. Nothing good can come from encouraging the world’s biggest population to like the Bieb.
— When was the last time you were on a roof of a commercial building? For me, maybe never, until I went on a DAS tour at the Renaissance Arlington Capital View Hotel as part of the DAS Forum’s DAS In Action: Capital View tour. So I was shocked to discover that rooftops are squishy, even in high heels. It’s a plastic-type of material designed to resist water damage. Can’t someone incorporate that onto trade-show floors?
I welcome your comments. Send them to me at tford@rcrwireless.com
