Since essentially Day One of the iPhone saga there have been constant complaints about AT&T’s service. While I reject the a priori conclusion that any network that merely possesses the property of “not-AT&T” would necessarily be better, no one in their right mind would attempt to argue that everything has been rainbows and unicorn jizzum. That’s why it’s heartening to see things like the email I received recently from AT&T informing me of a new cell tower being deployed in my neighborhood, or the release of the AT&T Marks the Spot app in the App Store [iTunes link]. It’s a brilliant idea really, use the power of crowd-sourcing to gather the data needed to efficiently upgrade your infrastructure. Scoble must be giddy.
Of course, nothing can appease the perpetual whiners and AT&T bashers; so The Unofficial Apple Web Log ran this turd by Mel Martin yesterday: AT&T offers app so you can report crappy service. Huh?
The dumb starts quickly:
In one of life’s supreme ironies, AT&T today posted an iPhone app that allows you to report substandard service. That’s right folks. Got a dropped call? No reception? AT&T Marks the Spot … is designed to get that info to your favorite cell company so they can act on it.
Did you have a point there Mel? Because that is exactly what the app is meant to do. How else should AT&T gather the data, fucking carrier pigeon? Moving on:
Let’s see… I don’t have any reception, so I pull out my new AT&T app to notify them of the problem. Doh! No reception to do that. And the app even nicely brings up a GPS map showing where I am. The GPS signal is much more reliable of course.
Mel’s right, it’s idiotic of AT&T to not include a way for the report to be stored and then sent once you can access the network. Wait, what’s that, the app does allow you to queue up requests so that they can be sent later? Too bad Mel couldn’t be bothered to actually use the app before attempting to slag on it.
Look, I know AT&T means well, but the app is a tacit admission that all is not well on the AT&T network. I know you could travel to someplace with good reception, and send the data to them, but I think this app will rub salt in an already sensitive wound.
Ah so, Mel actually did know that the app queued messages. Why then the pointless paragraph before this one? I know, it’s a shitty attempt at being “snarky.” Also, this isn’t a “tacit” admission of any fucking thing. AT&T has been pretty fucking clear about the fact that the iPhone is overwhelming their network. This is an explicit step to begin fixing shit.
I’ll skip Mel’s little bon mot about a previous manager airing a television program to help people with bad television reception (oh those precious non-techies, I bet he emails people to tell them that email is down too) and finish up with the last paragraph.
AT&T says they will acknowledge the report with an SMS (and I assume not charge for it) and I truly hope that they use the information they get to improve the network, because if it is just a PR stunt it is likely to backfire. There are already reports of people sending reports and not getting any acknowledgment. Oh well.
Hey Mel, here’s a clue for you: try not assuming and just use the fucking app. It says right on the box that the SMS notifications are free. Seriously, has a system SMS from AT&T ever cost the end user? Moreover, do you really think that AT&T would go through this exercise if they didn’t plan on using the data. If they wanted a PR stonewall they could just say, “we’re working on it,” just like they’ve been doing for almost three years. Maybe, instead of writing execrable crap like this in a vain effort to appear “edgy”, Mel and TUAW could do some real research and report on actual reality.
Then again, probably not.
Its TUAW. TUAW is retarded and I feel dumber every time I read something from there. What was that about not poking yourself in the eye with a fork?
So, I was bored and need to keep my knives sharp.
Thanks for the article. As a person switching to the iPhone and hoping AT&T can keep up, this brings at least a hint that they are indeed starting to “get it.”
Hope is sometimes all we have.
This might be the first ever attempt to Geolocate rage.
I've got the app and have used it already. My only complaint was receiving about _six_ SMS messages from AT&T saying that they had received my report. If anything, they seem to be a little TOO enthusiastic.
I'm glad you pointed out the many idiotic complaints people have had with the new AT&T app. I only see this app as a good thing. AT&T has already put great resources towards improving their network and the benefits are already being observed. This app is another step in the right direction towards greatly improving AT&T service. Many bloggers and websites have shunned this app, made fun of, or dismissed it all together. This app is a fast, easy, and direct way to communicate with AT&T regarding service issues. I guess people just love to hate on Blue/Orange. if Verizon had an app such as this is would be heralded.
Given the atrocious quality of ATT service at incredibly predictable places (*cough* LAX *cough*) it's hard to believe this will actually lead to much useful, as opposed to a desperate attempt to try to mollify people.
I think the app is a great idea. Unless AT&T deploys a gazillion technicians to crawl the country looking for dead zones, the next best thing is to ask their customers where the problem areas are.
Occasionally TUAW has something useful but then bloggers like Mel Martin post something stupid, making me wonder why I bother visiting the site.
I downloaded the app and checked out the UI (needs work).. I was sitting at my desk at home, no service problems in this area, but the location map dropped the pin 3 miles from me, right in the middle of a cemetery. If I were superstitious (I am), I would delete this app (I did).
Carriers with a clue should already be gathering this same information (oh wait, it's called crowdsourcing now) on the backend side, without requiring the phone to have an app store, the user to install and use the app, etc. Haven't they been building this into the infrastructure since forever?
Possessing the not-AT&T property might not be an a priori indication of superiority, but in my research I believe the correlation to be near 100%.
Apple should have worked with AT&T to create an opt-in signal monitor. The phone is constantly scanning, so it can collect this information continuously, map it out using the geo data, and then at the end of a trip tell the user 'The network appeared to be unavailable for xxx miles/minutes of your trip, would you like to report this to AT&T?' It could show the user the map that it's going to send so the user knows what they are disclosing, and for extra privacy, could be set up as an opt-in service at the outset – particularly if it would have a battery impact to do the extra datalogging/GPS bits. At the very least, I'd expect a lot of people would turn this on now and then for their commute.
From Apple's perspective, flooding AT&T with data to demonstrate how shitty their network is would be in their self-interest.
Plus, the problem with AT&T's coverage isn't dead zones (which they have, but not so many, and everyone else's networks have them too, and it's not too hard to learn to deal with dead zones — what's that about routing around problems?) — it's the zones where the signal phases in and out of existence, where one minute you get a voicemail notification and you spend the next 30 minutes in increasingly curious paranoia, stabbing the voicemail button and getting told the service is unavailable. Said zones include most of San Francisco, in my experience.
If it does point out enough really embarrassing spots where coverage lacks (like, right in front of the Soho, NYC Apple Store) maybe it'll be useful though.
Actually, I'd be a lot more interested in this app if the results were public… maybe someone else should have written it first!
Cell service in airports sucks, brilliant observation. Curse AT&T, there can't possibly be any sort of regulatory complications involved in building towers in the middle of an airport.
Amazing, you've discovered that GPS doesn't work for shit indoors. Have a cookie.
What you know about RF and how wireless carriers manage their networks could fill a whole syllable, perhaps two.
Yeah, uh, how exactly are they supposed to KNOW you got poor voice quality or bad data rates? Or that a call dropped unintentionally?
I stopped visiting because all the news seems to be scrapped from yesterdays news and then rewrote poorly. I haven't been back in over a year.
Actually it works better since I had the roof removed. Thanks for lunch too…
If you open Google Maps it would have said the same thing. Will you also strive to delete Goolge Maps from your phone?
GPS takes a minute to acclimate if you are inside. Just wait a moment and it will be fine. When Google Maps is accurate, reopen the app and your location will be correct.
Thanks for the feedback, Darby & co.
I gave it another chance, downloaded it.. this time sober. The cookie helped. Works much better. Feel kind of bad about the roof now though.
The only provider offering me worse service than AT&T is your mom. In bed. Performing oral sex on me. Your mom is poor at giving me oral sex.
And you are very bad at commentary you gibbering monkey.
Here's another vote for “Mel Martin is undeniably your worst writer.”
TUAW, the stupid is strong with this one.
I call those “Liar's Bars”. One of the most frustrating things I've ever seen – your phone tells you it has five bars, and then magically drops to zero when you try to make a phone call. Weak signal, fine, I can deal with that. But when a phone tells me that I *can* use it and I actually *can't*, that's what really gives me the rage.
With patience I can usually get a slow data connection at those times, though. So I'll give this a shot.
well I tend to agree this app is not the right way to fix issues. come on, the only way for AT&T to identify issues is to ask for users to report them? How about, say, searching their logs?
This reminds me of one of my past ISP who started to investigate crashed servers when they had received 3 angry customer phone calls.
Crappy
Thanks for playing another exciting round of I Have No Fucking Clue What I'm Talking About!
How, pray tell, are AT&T's “logs” going to tell them about places with low, but existing connectivity? Or detect slow data transfers short of packet inspection? Or detect audio distortion. There's more to this than dropped calls you simp.
Here's a hint…what you can tell from the phone:
signal strength
S/N
start/stop times for transmissions
Length of transmissions
Type of transmission, (EDGE, 3G, WIFI, etc.)
If you get draconian, (no, not dressing like Princess Ardala), and use actual phone call data, you might be able to add:
Was the call dropped or hung up, but that isn't really reliable.
What it wont' do crap for is when you can't download a web page unless you're doing content monitoring, (Who wants AT&T doing that? Right) It won't tell you what the audio quality of the call was. (just because signal strength is low doesn't mean the call quality sucked, nor does high strength or good S/N mean the call quality was high. Carrier and Content, 2 different things).
Do you really want your phone communicating to AT&T all the time like that? No? Then fucking think a goddamned minute and realize this is the best way to get this information, because you also get a better idea of what locations are having the problems that affect the most people, and that's not something that signal strength is going to tell you. Jesus.
That's not going to do fuck all good when you have signal, but can't actually make a connection. Signal strength and quality are not the magical determinants you think they are.
That's why you want this application. It is entirely possible to have a strong signal, yet other factors keep you from using it.
You don't actually have any technical knowledge of this sort of thing, do you.
Now, now, let's not let little things like “reality” get in the way of brainless pontification here. If AT&T doesn't have the balls to send some loser around asking “Can you here me now?” like Verizon does, then they can just bite me.
You *do* realize that cell phone towers are just carrier structures for the antennas that do the actual work, right? And that, just like 802.11 antennas, cell phone antennas do not have to be mounted on a tower in order to blanket a building with coverage?
Just checking. Because your sarcasm makes you look pretty dumb there. Cell service in airports should not suck, and usually doesn't.
You *do* realize that cell phone towers are just support structures for the antennas that do the actual work, right? And that, just like 802.11 antennas, cell phone antennas do not have to be mounted on a tower in order to blanket a building with coverage?
Just checking. Because your sarcasm makes you look pretty dumb there. Cell service in airports should not suck, and it usually doesn't.
Unlike you I *do* realize that cell phones use licensed frequencies, unlike 802.11 and operate at signal strengths orders of magnitude higher than those used for 802.11. I also *do* realize that airports cover millions of square feet, most of it adjacent to equipment that also uses RF signaling to fucking keep people alive, and that while “blanketing” a building with coverage may be wonderful from the point of view of satisfying the needs of new media douche bags to inform the world of their every passing thought, doing so involves working with no less than two federal regulatory agencies, and upwards of three local and state agencies. In short you fucking git, I didn't say it was impossible I said it was difficult.
Oh, by the by, airports that I've had shitty service in, on AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile:
LAX
Phoenix Sky Harbor
Chicago O'Hare
Dublin International
Dallas Fort Worth
…
I'm not holding out much hope here. There's a huge chunk of the Mission District in San Francisco, for example, pretty much tech hipster central, that's been an AT&T dead zone since the phone launched. I can't imagine that AT&T hasn't been told about this already through any number of other channels (for instance, an Apple employee of my acquaintance who I can't reliably text when she's at home). In at least some cases, it's not that they don't know about the problem, it's that they can't or won't fix it.
And yet coverage in Phoenix has only steadily improved. I guess AT&T just hates San Fransisco. Can't blame 'em really.
Maybe PHX lets cell providers build new towers or hang antennas off of existing structures, and the tech hipster Mission District has a bad case of cell-tower NIMBYism.
Also, if the FCC were a real regulatory agency, they'd mandate that every phone have an app like this, and the data collected would be publicly available on a site that allowed users to compare trouble reports for all carriers.
“Maybe PHX lets cell providers build new towers or hang antennas off of existing structures, and the tech hipster Mission District has a bad case of cell-tower NIMBYism.”
Yeah, I thought about pointing that out but was too lazy. It is, in fact, a pain in the ass here in PHX when a carrier wants to put in a new tower. Complaints a'plenty. I can only imagine it's much worse over in Hipster Town.
They can make cell towers look like trees, why not like Starbucks? Then they can put them all over.
You could even warm the homeless if you made them powerful enough.
You should get Fireballed more often. This is the most entertaining thing I've seen all day.
“Rewritten” poorly. Nice try.
So basically, stop being a typical snarky, do-nothing blogger. Got it. Way to give the airbag some linkage. Thing is with shitty bloggers like these is it pays more to get the linkage from the people they piss off than it does to do something good for the world.
So basically, stop being a typical snarky, do-nothing blogger. Got it. Way to give the airbag some linkage. Thing is with shitty bloggers like these is it pays more to get the linkage from the people they piss off than it does to do something good for the world.
TUAW is the brain-size-runt of the Mac-web. I've run across anti-Apple articles there that were completely illogical – it is like CNET has a secret division pretending to be an independent Mac-related website. Not sure why they bother.
Over the summer, AT&T fixed some of those dead zones in the Mission. It's not all better, but I'm not such an AT&T hater, now.
Yeah, LOL, they make you turn the phone off on the plane for a reason (not entirely hype). I've had no probs at LAX, SNA, SJC, SFO, LAS, PDX, IAD… maybe its the type of phone people have? Plus, several of the airports I have been offer wi fi. Most of the time bad service in a covered area is due to buildings blocking the signal. After nearly 2 years of iPhone use the only significant problem I had was on the east coast near DC. Didn't seem to have a 2G network.
“Its TUAW”
Proved your point! You must be reading too much TUAW, because it's “it's”. (If you meant two words, you want an apostrophe.)
John, that's especially true where there is heavy usage of the network, which is the big problem AT&T has today. However, wouldn't it be useful towards filling in those “Verizon provides coverage to the wild buffalo but AT&T doesn't” maps?
So, while it won't help most of the people complaining about having 5 bars of supposed signal but limited ability to make and receive calls (me, at home in Manhattan!), it would still be useful.
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