Damned if You Do…

December 8th, 2009, by The Angry Drunk

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.

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  • Recycled Bottle

    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.

  • David R

    “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.)

  • http://www.linkedin.com/in/danshockley DanShockley

    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.

  • jdmuys

    Well, quite pos­si­bly. In any case the extent of my knowl­edge is so small that I always wel­come a chance to get edu­cated.

    I’m look­ing for­ward to your two expla­na­tions for why AT&T can’t mon­i­tor its own net­work while the oper­a­tor I’m work­ing with can.

  • http://www.theangrydrunk.com The Angry Drunk

    well, if you would, I don’t know…read the fuck­ing thread, you would see that John already explained exactly what a car­rier can mon­i­tor remotely, and why there are things that are bet­ter reported by end users.

  • jdmuys

    I don’t know what or who is “fuck­ing”, or how swear­ing makes it any bet­ter for you to under­stand my ques­tion (appar­ently it did not improve your read­ing abil­ity as you skipped half of my ques­tion), but I could not see any­where in this thread a tech­ni­cal expla­na­tion why AT&T can­not do things that other net­works can, from John or any­body else.

    In any case, I can tell you one thing: my phone calls using my iPhone on my net­work are high qual­ity, and never drop. And data is equally as good (I’m just hav­ing 1137 kbps through­put over 3G with a close-by server right now as a sin­gle point, but not iso­lated, exam­ple). And my net­work did not have to put up a sorry defect-reporting app to achieve that.

  • http://www.theangrydrunk.com The Angry Drunk

    Oh goody, the “I can’t actu­ally address your com­ments so I’ll com­plain about pro­fan­ity” trick. Always a treat.

    I’ll try to explain this to you like a small child, since you’re obvi­ously inca­pable of get­ting the gods damned point. No one is attempt­ing to claim that AT&T doesn’t have net­work prob­lems in some areas. On the other hand, try­ing to claim that AT&T releas­ing an app to gather data in the hopes of fix­ing the prob­lem is a bad thing, LIKE THE FUCKING ARTICLE THAT I’M COMMENTING ON DOES, is dip­shit blog­ger link-bait.

    And, again since you obvi­ously need things pointed out to you like a blind man in an art gallery:


    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.



    Now, I’m glad that you appar­ently live in some tech­no­log­i­cal utopia where your car­rier (who you’ve con­ve­niently neglected to iden­tify) can some­how gather more infor­ma­tion than that…possibly by way of uni­corn farts…but from the rest of us who want AT&T to actu­ally upgrade their shit…sod off.

  • jdmuys

    Ok you can go back spend­ing your unpaid time doing AT&T’s job in their place. Now I know who’s get­ting “fucked”. I’ll be watch­ing, laugh­ing my ass off with my iPhone on my Orange net­work.

    See? I can use pro­fan­ity too.

    Sigh…

  • http://www.theangrydrunk.com The Angry Drunk

    Oh for the love of Satan just stop.

    A) This isn’t some sort of dis­cus­sion forum.

    and

    B) You’re just embar­rass­ing yourself.

  • Anonymous

    I don’t know what or who is “fuck­ing”, or how swear­ing makes it any bet­ter for you to under­stand my ques­tion (appar­ently it did not improve your read­ing abil­ity as you skipped half of my ques­tion), but I could not see any­where in this thread a tech­ni­cal expla­na­tion why AT&T can­not do things that other net­works can, from John or any­body else.

    In any case, I can tell you one thing: my phone calls using my iPhone on my net­work are high qual­ity, and never drop. And data is equally as good (I’m just hav­ing 1137 kbps through­put over 3G with a remote server right now as a sin­gle data point — not iso­lated). And my net­work did not have to put up a sorry defect-reporting app to achieve that.

  • http://www.theangrydrunk.com The Angry Drunk

    Oh goody, the “I can’t actu­ally address your com­ments so I’ll com­plain about pro­fan­ity” trick. Always a treat.

    I’ll try to explain this to you like a small child, since you’re obvi­ously inca­pable of get­ting the gods damned point. No one is attempt­ing to claim that AT&T doesn’t have net­work prob­lems in some areas. On the other hand, try­ing to claim that AT&T releas­ing an app to gather data in the hopes of fix­ing the prob­lem is a bad thing, LIKE THE FUCKING ARTICLE THAT I’M COMMENTING ON DOES, is dip­shit blog­ger link-bait.

    And, again since you obvi­ously need things pointed out to you like a blind man in an art gallery:

    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.

    Now, I’m glad that you appar­ently live in some tech­no­log­i­cal utopia where your car­rier (who you’ve con­ve­niently neglected to iden­tify) can some­how gather more infor­ma­tion than that…possibly by way of uni­corn farts…but from the rest of us who want AT&T to actu­ally upgrade their shit…sod off.

  • Anonymous

    Ok you can go back spend­ing your unpaid time doing AT&T’s job in their place. Now I know who’s get­ting “fucked”. I’ll be watch­ing, laugh­ing my ass off with my iPhone on my Orange network.

    See? I can use pro­fan­ity too.

    Sigh…

  • http://www.theangrydrunk.com The Angry Drunk

    Oh for the love of Satan just stop.

    A) This isn’t some sort of dis­cus­sion forum.

    and

    B) You’re just embar­rass­ing yourself.

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