Recently in Telecommunications Category

A horrible accident occurred today in Phoenix, AZ. CNN reports that two news helicopters crashed while covering a police chase. Four people, a pilot and a photographer from each news station, were killed in the accident. No one on the ground was killed.

The CNN story quotes a Phoenix official stating that the suspect in the police chase will probably be held responsible for their deaths.

My question is should that guy be held responsible? Sure, I'll grant, that if he hadn't led police on a chase, there would have been zero chance of the accident occurring. However, is it his fault that two helicopters covering his actions came into contact with each other? Throw the book at him for everything else, but is this really his fault?

That being questioned, it is still a sad accident. Let's keep the four and their families in our prayers.

I am not sick. I am feeling fine. No fever. No headache. I am not a PC-elitist. While I've never personally owned an Apple product, I worked on them at school from Grade 4 through 12 plus a little more through the UT education program. In high school, I completed a multimedia major spending two of the four years working exclusively on a Macintosh.

Unless you're a volunteer for the European Space Agency's simulated mission to Mars and have been completely unaware of the world around you, you know that Apple released their first cell phone, the iPhone, last Friday.

I was impressed by the commercials and the videos on the iPhone website. The visual voicemail feature is very cool by allowing you to view a list of voicemails, similar to a list of e-mails, on your iPhone's screen. No more pressing 7 to delete or 9 to save! The integrated Google Maps applet looked sweet as well, even though there is no GPS option.

With all that and more, I decided to spend part of my July 4th holiday at the Apple Store at The Domain in Austin to play with one.

After playing with it for just shy of an hour, I conclude that I do not want one. Let's run down a few reasons why not.

• To dial a phone number, it appears you have to make two "clicks". From the home screen, click Phone. Then click Dialpad. Only then can you dial a phone number as usual. While the phone is becoming more and more a multifunctional device and being able to make a call is only one of the features, I think a shortcut on the home screen directly to the dialpad is needed.


• The touch screen is not designed for my fingers. I have smaller hands than most guys and I could not type on the iPhone to save my life. After an hour of trying, I could get through the word "Austin" with only one typo. Could I imagine typing a text message or an e-mail or anything else on this device? No. At least with other phones, there is tactile feedback to let the user know how far off their fingers are from the correct key. In this case, I really did not know what I was doing wrong.


• While I had read complaints about the AT&T EDGE network, which is slower than the latest 3G cellular networks—a reduced feature Apple blamed on wanting to conserve battery life—the saving point of the iPhone was the ability to connect to a WiFi network. While using the Apple Store's WiFi network, data services were still subpar. In some cases, the Maps never loaded or website images remain blank. Even on the Apple website, which is very graphics driven, all I saw was a black background for the first 30 seconds. Perhaps this is par for the course on mobile data services, WiFi or not, but compared to the commercials, it was very disappointing.


• Looking up items on the Map applet was difficult. In some cases, when little pushpins gave me the location of the local HEB grocery store, I was unable to click on the pushpins to learn more information about a particular location. When I made a search for Apple Store, suddenly I could click on any of the pushpins to learn more about that location. I tried multiple times without result. A saving point, however, is the driving directions feature. Each screen will display that particular driving action with a nice transition.


• The sensor alerting the software which way the iPhone was oriented seemed to only work if you held your phone up completely straight. At the 45 degree angle that I usually use my phones at, the sensor seemed confused and did not respond to my orientation shifts.

I did make a call on the little thing and well, that did go through successfully with normal quality.

In short, I think Apple did a great job with this device and it will raise the bar for cellular phones in the United States, however, I'll wait for the third or forth generation before adding it to my wishlist.

I'm not a huge Mac fan. I can handle my own on the system and used it as my primary education system when I was earning my multimedia (graphics design, desktop publishing, web design, etc) major while in high school. I remember the Macintosh operating system before it was known as "Mac OS", at least before version 7, as I remember upgrading to 7. The transition to Mac OS 8 was dandy as well. In short, I'm not a huge Mac fan, but I'm not anti-Apple.

I'm way behind in the iPod game. I don't own one, or any other mobile digital music device, but I've never been huge on always having music with me. I didn't know what podcasting was for quite some time since the name doesn't tell you anything, unless you're familar with the iPod and made the connection.

However, with discovering podcasts, the iPod is now very tempting. I have a whole set of NPR podcasts setup in iTunes as well as a few other favorites, including Paulist Father Dave Dwyer's Busted Halo. This is great! I can hear the story of the day on NPR with news and commentary whether or not I'm able to catch the live broadcast.

The only thing that could make it better is if I could take it with me in a form a bit easier than my full laptop.

I digress. I've been using iTunes to some degree since v. 6, so I'm new to the ballgame. I had previously used MusicMatch before college and mostly Windows Media Player over the past few years. iTunes was a bit of a jump as much of my ripped music was in WMA format and iTunes has to convert those files to mp3 or AAC to be useful.

Nevertheless, I jumped over to the iTunes game and recently upgraded to 7.0 and the shortly-released-thereafter 7.0.1.

I can't stand it now. It is slow and brings my laptop to a near halt. Sure, I could use more RAM but I figured 1 GB would be enough. Song playback is full of pops and crackles. When attempting to watch a downloaded TV episode on my roommate's computer, we were unable to get through five minutes of it without it becoming jerky and unwatchable.

Did they put too much into iTunes without ensuring everything can play together? How did some things, like sound playback, get worse?

I expect a basic level of quality for software and iTunes 7 fall short.

Lastly, why can't they put the iTunes store online as web-accessible? I'm online at a computer lab on campus, but would like to purchase a song to be downloaded when I get home. Shouldn't I be able to login, purchase a song using my iTunes account and be able to download it when I open iTunes at home?

Good news. The second SIM card, scheduled for delivery on June 5th, arrived on time, without fail and worked. I've been talking away ever since.

Without thinking about it, I left the first SIM card's tracking RSS feed in my RSS aggregator and went on with life. After the horror of a SIM card lost in transit slipped from my mind completely, I find a few new RSS items for my consideration.

The tracer, issued on 5/31/2006 for a package sent 5/25/2006 with a scheduled arrival date of 5/30/2005, found something. On 6/13/2006 at 10 a.m., UPS realized "An Incorrect Routing At A UPS Facility Caused This Delay;the Package Was Missorted At The Hub. It Has Been Rerouted To The Correct Destination Site". That hub appears to be Houston, TX. At 7 p.m., a location scan was made citing the package to be in Houston.

A couple of hours ago the package left Houston in route to San Antonio, and from there, I assume on to Austin.

Well, I am still without a cell phone.

I ordered an unlocked phone from Amazon.com, that arrived in Wichita Falls on Thursday, May 25th. I had planned on picking up a SIM card at any of the million Cingular stores in Texas between Austin, Houston and Wichita Falls.

I arrive at a store in Houston and discover that the SIM card I need, a special one due to my account type, is not in stock in stores.

I call Cingular and they ship one to Austin, to arrive on Tuesday, May 30th due to the holiday.

On May 30th, no SIM card. I call Cingular and we all conference with UPS. They lost it. No idea where it is.

Cingular orders another one for me to try to get me up sooner rather than later. It is backordered.

It finally shipped and now is expected to reach Austin on Monday, June 5th.

To aid everyone who is completely struck in wonder about the location of my SIM card, i.e. my phone, i.e. my communitive life- let's track it together with help from Google Reader and iSnoop.

Update: Okay, the Google Reader/iSnoop little thing is serving up really slow and so instead, you can click this link to find out where it is at...

In 1998, I started using this great and glorious piece of technology known as a cellular telephone. At the time, it was "mom's phone" that I held on to when I was out and about in order to keep in contact with her. I don't know if she ever made an unassisted call using that first phone, or the few that followed. [N.B. - She has her own phone now and uses like a champ] Since that time, I've heard many friends lose their phones, drop it in a toilet, breaking their phone or something else that rendered their phone useless and required a replacement.

I have to admit- I started thinking I was above it happening to me. I never thumbed my nose to someone when they said they were having cellular problems, but I just thought that it wasn't going to happen to me.

Not anymore. On Sunday night, I was talking on the phone as I approached the 57th Street Station for the F train to head back to Bishop Molloy retreat house in Queens for the night. I hung up the phone, since underground the phone only serves as a nice time piece, put it into my pocket. Due to construction on the line, there were no Queens-bound trains at that station, so I had to take a downtown train one stop and transfer over. I get comfortable for the ride to the end of the line and thought nothing of the cell phone.

I arrive at the 179th St stop in the Jamaica neighborhood of Queens and reach for the phone to get ready to use it. It's not in my left pocket- but it must be in the right by some odd chance. No. Did I put it into my bag instead? No. Fell into my umbrella? Nope. I'm a bit nervous about this situation now so I ask the ticket booth attendant if anyone has turned in a cell phone, as the train had already left the station. Since this is the end of the line, the trains leave the station beyond the route, switch tracks and come back untouched by human hands. When at the outbound track, MTA personnel clean the train of litter. The ticket attendant informed me of this and she buzzes me back into the station so I begin my search.

At first, I couldn't remember where I sat on the train. It isn't something I pay much attention to when I'm on the train. I remember in a flash that the train had nothing but Dunkin' Donuts ads. I run through each car and found the only car with only those ads. I see the same trash on the seat across from me I remember seeing on the long ride over. For a second, I start to breathe a bit easier. Until there's no phone.

I tell the guys working about my problem so they help me look. When they completed their sweep of the train (literally), there is still no phone. The only thing I can think of is it fell out of my pocket on that first train I had to take due to Queens-bound track construction.

Since that train is long gone toward Coney Island, I give up. I ask the ticket attendant for the procedure and she gave me a telephone number. I return to the retreat house.

Trying to find the silver lining- I've been thinking about getting a new phone for a little while now- I decide to cash in. Due to the Cingular/AT&T mergers, the plan I'm on is no longer offered, as I'm a grandfathered Cingular Blue customer (read: old AT&T wireless customer). If I want to get a new phone through Cingular (and their discount pricing), I would have to get a new plan. Every Cingular plan currently charges for text messages, which I'm completely opposed to. As far as I know, it is much cheaper to carry a single SMS text message over the system compared to one minute of voice, yet I can talk as much as I want and asked to pay 10 cents for the quick data burst? I don't think so.

I digress. I find an "unlocked" phone on Amazon.com that I like and I order it. I figure I should be able to get a new SIM card without problem (not 100% sure though, so let's cross fingers and/or pray, whatever your custom).

I wait to suspend my account since the online form wasn't working and just in case Lost and Found had the phone in the morning. If they did, problem solved and I could use the same SIM card.

I discover a pay phone in the retreat center- I'm the only one staying in the building Sunday night so I couldn't bum someone else's cell phone. I make a few personal calls using a credit card. Since my phone is also my alarm clock, I open the blinds in my room so that the morning sun might wake me up. It did, albeit I didn't know the time. Since it's a retreat house, they tend not to have many clocks in the building so I go to the lobby and find out that I woke up at 6:30 a.m.

I fiddle around online until 8 a.m. when Lost and Found opens. They inform me that anything lost and turned in on the system on Sunday would not reach them until Wednesday! Since I was flying out later that day, I know the case is one only for St. Jude. I call Cingular and have my phone suspended.

I should be back up and talking on Thursday

Another post relating to my various and many problems with Cingular, I hope everything is working.

This problem orginally started after a trip I took to Chicago/South Bend. Upon arrival back in Austin, the problems started up. I just got back from another trip to Chicago and South Bend. Hopefully history won't repeat itself.

For those keeping track of my various and many problems with Cingular, I heard back from them today.

They asked if I am still experiencing the problem, of which currently I am not. Apparently, field techs report that problems in the field have been fixed.

We'll see how long it lasts this time. For the moment, poor information design and Spanish await before a few hours of sleep.

Alright. So I thought the problem I was having with my phone was fixed. This weekend, I find out that Vanessa and Stephanie both had this happen to them while attempting to call my phone.

I call Customer Care tonight, after leaving a voicemail with the engineer who called me after the December 11 phone call. The customer care said that my trouble ticket was still pending with tech and that, after consulting to tech, my problem could be fixed by transferring from the old AT&T network to the Cingular Orange network. She highlights what all that would entail: a slightly changed rate plan and new phones. The new rate plan is more or less what I have now. Currently, I have 400 anytime minutes plus 300 promotional minutes, plus unlimited night and weekends and unlimited mobile-to-moblie calling. The new plan would have only 450 anytime minutes, 5000 night and weekend minutes with unlimited mobile-to-mobile. While it is a great reduction in minutes, since having free mobile-to-mobile, I haven't needed all 700 anytime minutes, or anything close to it. In short, I was willing to forget about those minutes since they aren't that vital to me.

I wasn't ready to make the switch as I wanted to do a little more research on my options. My thought is if I can get roughtly what I have now for the same price, I'll undergo switching phones and whatnot to get myself in a working situation.

I call them back after deciding that I would go with it. I do have one question though: on the old AT&T network, it cost me $0.10 to SEND each text message and there is no charge to receive them. Is that the same on "Cingular Orange"?

No. It cost $0.10/event to send OR RECEIVE a text message.

But, as the Customer Care rep said in her very broken English, "you currently have a $4.99 text messaging plan that allows you to send 100 messages. With Cingular, for the same price, it will be 200 so it offsets."

As I pointed out to her, it doesn't offset. I limit myself to 100 sent messages but I am sent many many more messages than I send.

I don't have a problem jumping through hoops to make my service better (or in other words, save their engineers the work of fixing my problem) as long as that is all it is. I don't want to be charged for something that I get free now.

All of this while thinking that text messages are cheaper to send/receive for Cingular than one minute of voice traffic. Remember Hurricane Rita and how no one in Houston could actually talk on the phone but had no problem sending SMS messages? That is because a voice call has to create a dedicated digital channel for the call while a text message uses only one packet of the data stream. (I don't really know the details so I might be using the wrong words, but more or less, that is the case).

I'll be paying a visit to the Cingular store to speak with someone who hopefully can speak English and see what can happen.

Update: I think the cell phone is fully functional again.

I was contacted directly by a tech to discuss the situation further and gave me his direct phone number, which I attempted and in fact rang directly to his desk, so if the problem continued, I could go directly past customer service.