engadget.com — There was almost too much to discuss, but we able to get his take on Android and the Open Handset Alliance (specifically, why AT&T isn't a part of it -- yet), the 700MHz spectrum auction in January, their groundbreaking partnership with Apple, and the many reasons the US wireless market does and doesn't seem to suck so badly.
Nov 26, 2007 View in Crawl 4
adamrigginsNov 27, 2007
anyone else find it funny that the interview was brought to us by Verizon Wireless?
erikhensarlingNov 27, 2007
Again...the CEO goes on to say "...every OS that's out there, we carry." What he forgot to say was, "...and summarily lock down for our profit."
dotorgNov 27, 2007
I hate to appear to be siding with the *shudder* wireless carriers, but your rant needs a few things addressed...1) In most places an unlimited internet and telephone plan is going to run you in the area of $100/month. You can get pretty close to unlimited voice and data at that price range. Do you really have enough friends that you need to talk thousands of minutes a month? Personally my combined cell and home voice usage is under 500 minutes a month. I bet most people are no higher.2) Don't buy a subsidized phone, then your credit has nothing to do with it. Until I got my iPhone, I'd never given any wireless carrier my social security number. You sometimes have to pitch a fit, but it was *never* a problem. Even with the iPhone, if its a problem and you pitch a fit you can pay $5 more a month for a contract-free plan. 3) Ring all your devices? Use grand central or design a new cell technology... current stuff doesn't allow that. Thats not ATT's fault. 4) Ease of cancelling? If you are moving a number via porting you don't have to do *anything* How is that not easy? If you want to just cancel and you're out of your contract (which YOU agreed to) call and cancel. Its not that hard. 5) If you buy an unsubsidized phone for any network type and want to use it on a providers' network, that works fine. Don't expect a subsidized or customized phone to. Go buy any unlocked GSM phone and it'll work like a charm on AT&T.6) Improve the towers? I have almost no cell coverage at my house. Thats not AT&T's fault, or Verizon's or any other cell carrier. You do realize they don't own the cell towers right? Independent companies do and lease the space to the cell companies. When you have poor coverage far more often than not its because no one has built a tower to give you good coverage because you're either too far from any tower (often because of towns not allowing them to be built) or because you've got the bad luck to be close to a tower without your provider on it which in turn is too close to another tower that does. Again, generally not the providers fault. In most casts cell reception problems are because of town zoning, nothing else. So most of what you complained about you can do now... and most of the rest are the fault of groups other than the ones you are ranting against.
xauckyiteDec 11, 2007
good one :)