WOTW congratulates Verizon, AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile for perfect networks
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:
This is far and away the best time in history to be a wireless communications customer. Sure, I guess it might have been cool to have been a caveman sporting a camera phone or asking your best friend to guess where you were calling him from during a Roman gladiator fight, but if marketing is to be believed (and when is it not?) all domestic wireless carriers today have the fastest networks with the best coverage.
Truly amazing!
Of course, this thought popped into my mind as I received yet another industry survey somehow finding a certain carrier provided the best “insert service/speed/coverage here” amongst its peers, which followed similar claims about a different carrier from a different survey source.
This latest industry survey came from the folks at OpenSignal, which tapped into a downloadable application to “test” network performance. Depending on where in the results one may have landed, the voracity of these sorts of tests are either hailed as ground breaking or laughed off as being accomplished by amateurs. For me, I am sticking by my long-time response when asked which carrier has the “best” network: depends where you are standing at what second of the day and what you want to do. (And some dare say I’m surly.)
The OpenSignal results follow up on recent testing accomplished by the likes of RootMetrics and Nielsen Mobile Performance, each of which provided different podium positions for the country’s four nationwide operators. (I again ask you to reference my standards response to who has the “best” network.)
And all of these latest rankings follow the rash (that’s right … rash) of television commercials that have seemingly clogged every 30-second spot of advertising available with advertisements conspicuously similar to one another touting claims of these network tests. I know we have all seen these a million times over the past several weeks, but they are just so good:
Glorious times indeed!
The best part of all these network claims is how they serve the public. There is nothing better than to quiz people after watching a wireless carrier commercial to see if they can remember which carrier the commercial was for. With this last group of ads, I found it hilarious that family members had no idea, and in fact had one say: “Cingular?” Cingular!
The power of advertising!
I would like to think the people putting together these network performance reports and resulting television advertising are good people only doing what they think is right in terms of educating the public.
But, I can’t.
Instead, I think these people have no control over a power that is way beyond their comprehension. I know this business is cut throat, but do we really need to confuse the consumer before emptying their wallet?
That just seems mean.
Of course, maybe everything these reports and advertisements state are indeed factual and we have reached network nirvana where every wireless carrier somehow has the best network for everyone, everywhere. All those dropped calls and lost data connections you think you experience? Well, you’re wrong!
Everything is perfect and we have the reports to prove it.
Well done everyone.
Thanks for checking out this week’s Worst of the Week column. Here is a quick, but satisfying extra:
–Cisco Systems this week unveiled its latest Visual Networking Index Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast, which as I have mentioned in the past will be drilled into our heads over the next 12 months as the source for every chart, fact and number from every company in need of a chart, fact or number to put in their press release, PowerPoint presentation, keynote address or reason for existing.
I have been moved to the point of not even really caring if the numbers Cisco puts out in this annual number-fest are reasonable or accurate. It’s not like I am going to go back to the 2009 VNI to see if Cisco was right when it predicted there would be 200 million WiMAX customers in the U.S. I am just going to assume since it came from a company as well known as Cisco, it’s correct. WiMAX!
So, thanks again Cisco for providing the telecom market with the numbers and respected source needed to back those numbers, which will in turn allow for the insertion of those numbers into everything we see over the next 12 months. I think all of you reading this column can agree numbers are more entertaining than letters.
I welcome your comments. Please send me an e-mail at dmeyer@rcrwireless.com.
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