Tag Archives: AT&T

We’re from AT&T, We Don’t Know The Word, “Stop”

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I wrote this letter as a reply to the fifth or sixth sales representative with AT&T. They are attempting to sell us fiber optic data services. I directed them to our Telecom MSP as a professional courtesy, as I do to all sales folk who directly appeal to us. It’s just good business practice, the MSP exists to handle the complexities of telecommunications for us.

Hello,

You’ll be the fifth AT&T sales associate that I have written this to, so here goes… Please direct all sales inquiries for the COMPANY domain to MSP. Person 1 and Person 2 have been CC’ed to this email. Please feel free to share this detail with any other AT&T sales associates who might want to contact us, or not, as we are just forwarding all of this to our Tcom MSP. 

We are now considering AT&T to be harassing us, but since your company doesn’t seem to understand cease and desist, we’ll just keep on sending all of you to our MSP. I would ask to be taken off the list and to “Please Stop”, but AT&T isn’t interested in stop. Perhaps AT&T doesn’t have a clear definition of the word stop.

Here… here’s the definition of stop:

stop |stäp| 

verb (stops, stopping, stopped) 

1 [ no obj. ] (of an event, action, or process) come to an end; cease to happen:his laughter stopped as quickly as it had begun | the rain had stopped and the clouds had cleared.

• [ with present participle ] cease to perform a specified action or have a specified experience: she stopped giggling | [ with obj. ] :  he stopped work for tea.

• [ with present participle ] abandon a specified practice or habit: I’ve stopped eating meat.

• stop moving or operating: he stopped to look at the view | my watch has stopped.

• (of a bus or train) call at a designated place to pick up or let off passengers: main-line trains stop at platform 7.

• Brit. informal stay somewhere for a short time: you’ll have to stop the night.

2 [ with obj. ] cause (an action, process, or event) to come to an end: this harassment has got to be stopped.

• prevent (an action or event) from happening: a security guard was killed trying to stop a raid.

• prevent or dissuade (someone) from continuing in an activity or achieving an aim: a campaign is under way to stop the bombers.

• prevent (someone or something) from performing a specified action or undergoing a specified experience: you can’t stopme fromgetting what I want.

• cause or order to cease moving or operating: he stopped his car by the house |police were given powers to stop and search suspects.

• informal be hit by (a bullet).

• instruct a bank to withhold payment on (a check).

• refuse to supply as usual; withhold or deduct: the union has threatened to stop the supply of minerals.

• Boxing defeat (an opponent) by a knockout: he was stopped in the sixth by Tyson

ORIGIN Old English (for)stoppian‘block up (an aperture)’; related to German stopfen, from late Latin stuppare ‘to stuff.’

Please Stop. 

Please Go Away.

No, We do not want any. Even if we did, we don’t anymore.

Thanks

We’ll keep getting helpful AT&T sales reps until I create a spam filter for the att.net domain and route everything to the trash, which really, I should do out of professional courtesy to AT&T. If it wasn’t for the fact that they at some point could email me about repairs, that would be something I could seriously consider. Alas, I may have to just start ignoring them with my delete key.

Unless they … stop… HA! HA! HA! They don’t know the word, “Stop.”

Friday Flashback – March 8th

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2004 – I got my IRS return back from the Feds, $1700, a part of that went to GenCon. Boy, were those the days. Since GenCon went to Indianapolis, and I don’t travel through Indiana unless driven by a myrddraal, that won’t be happening again. Some funny Andy-abuses-popsong-lyrics humor and the almost daily work issues, which at this point are at the focus where irritation and cliché meet. Moving along…

2006 – The big thing on this day was Project Runway was concluded. The most important bit from this show happened this year, “Where’s Andre?” Yes. Where.

2007 – Owning an American Made Car made the headlines on this day. Getting screwed over by General Motors makes 2013 a laugh-fest. We saved GM, Quist-ler, and Ford. Oh hooray. $1200 for replacement bearings and fourth set of brakes. It’s one of the reasons why I’ll never own another American made piece of shit car again. American auto companies can fail – hah – or not. wry smile The start of my debt was this awful car, one small little golden brick of it at least.

2009 – The beginning of the end for my odd benign cyst that was on my leg for years and years and years. This was when that whole thing started on the path to the end. Now I’m delightfully symmetrical and ever so daintily scarred. In the movies? Watchmen. Those were the days.

2010 – Wireless carriers still mattered. Sprint was good for highways, Verizon was slow but everywhere and AT&T was shit. This also was when AT&T bought Centennial wireless. So, whatever. Little did these carriers know but they were on the path to becoming commodity carriers. Nobody cares about their products or their employees, just their towers. In other news, I was hopeful that La Palma would break off, hit the ocean and several hours later erase New York City with a megatsunami. Alas, my hopes were for naught. New York City still exists. Blah. I started to blog and lauded how I could link dump automatically on Twitter and Facebook. Yeah, social networks as whores, take it bitches. It was at this point I realized that Apple Sales are whores. If you approach them and jingle money at them, they’ll do anything for you, but after the sale? You’re full of Santorum and the beer goggles have worn off. I also wished for Fax Machines to disappear. I didn’t get my wish.

2011 – A bit of Sage love as an email brought me great joy. I still thought Daniel Tosh was pretty neat, before the rape jokes and general wretchedness set in. WMU rolled out the Bronco Transit Mobile GPS and I thought it was neat, then I stopped using the system. I started thinking about how awkward it must be for Christians when Easter isn’t a fixed date but based off a calculation on the moon after the vernal equinox, lulz. Extra special work-fun and I started talking about AES–256 and how smart people look it up and take advantage of it.

2013 – Reality TV and Contest TV kind of suck. I decided to make a change to what I do at home, after dinner and cleanup are done. A very old friend and I shared a special moment, but they have no idea because it was just a dream. My daily tarot card readings pretty much jive with my horoscopes and so, I do my best to not go all “Hulk Angry/Hulk Smash”. I dealt with work issues, did things I’m not proud of, found FBackup which was okay, and generally felt that the day was best forgotten. I laughed heartily at the foibles of folken, they don’t, so I do, and it doesn’t matter. Well, it matters to me, which is why I do it. What is it? Ah, yes. Work stuff… you’ll never be knowing. Trust Issues. Dangly Bits. LOL.

4G

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I’ve caught myself in one of my first fuddy-duddy moments. It has to do with 4G. Mobile phones have taken on this moniker to help people understand that lower values of G are slower than higher ones. So far 3G is pretty snappy, and 4G is on the horizon.

This has me wondering what exactly would one use 4G speeds for. I start to think about the nature of the devices, what people are likely to do with them. I would say that for most people, voice still dominates the use of these devices but data use is nipping at voice’s heels. People are starting to request more data through their mobile devices and I think that the majority of the data is internet services followed up by the packetized SMS data traffic on the back-end. People are getting their emails, sending and receiving pictures as well as video over these data links and this use will only grow. I can see 3G filling the need for these services quite well, but I start to wonder about 4G, and what it could be useful for. Certainly 4G is overkill for most data traffic, as most of it is designed to flow neatly over current 3G signals. While shopping for new phones at our local Verizon store they started to push 4G on one of my friends. First of all, 4G isn’t in our market yet and I dare say it won’t be for two or three more years. Even if you did have 4G, what would you do with it?

The only applications I can think of are data tethering other devices or a group of devices to that signal, but that would only work well if the data was unlimited. As it is, I seriously doubt any provider will ever offer such service where the data cap isn’t 2 to 5 gigabytes per month, with more money due after you blow by that limit. So, what is the use of 4G? If I was using it, I’d say video calling would probably be the first use, but with a 2-5 GB cap, how many of these calls could you make before you started digging into your limit? If you artificially put a limit on a thing, people are going to use it and fill up their lives with that thing until they hit that limit. Much like how a goldfish will grow to fit the tank it lives in, if it’s a small tank, it’s a small goldfish, if it’s a giant tank, it turns into a carp. With the speed that 4G is pushing, the only other use that springs to mind immediately is BitTorrent. Now what would you be BitTorrent’ing over your mobile phone? Chances are pretty good that it isn’t a legal use of that protocol, chances are it’ll be porn or some pirated data.

I think what I’m getting at is, the nature of these devices may have all the speed they need to do what they do. That any more speed is a solution in search of a problem, and that almost never works well in the end. Is it speed people should be clamoring for or is it network coverage they should be clamoring for? I think that I’d be hotter for a well-fleshed out network than a network that is super speedy. It comes down to the question, what could I do with that speed, and when I hit my data cap, what then? What good is 4G speeds when you’ve burnt through your 2GB cap? In order to not accrue more charges you’d turn off 4G and float around with 3G or 2G. What use is that? And if there weren’t caps, what legal uses of 4G traffic are left? Video calling, yes, but beyond that? I’m not so sure.

A good portion of this argument comes to mind when I see TV spots for AT&T pushing their network speed over their shitty network coverage. Verizon makes the opposite argument, that network coverage is more important than speed. I personally agree with Verizon and am critical of AT&T. Yes your network may be very fast, maybe even 4G fast, but unless you live in a megalopolis and happen to catch the network when a minimum of people are using it all at the same time, then yes, I can see the benefit. But how many of us live in a megalopolis *and* can count on nobody in said Burg from trying to hit the network all at the same time? I call bullshit on 4G data currently. Those companies pushing 4G have an intended-use mismatch and they should probably get in touch with their legal and compliance teams to see if their customers will use 4G traffic for purely innocent and legal means. I am full of doubt.

So, why not just embrace 3G, call it a wash and concentrate on expanding network coverage? That’s an idea worth pursuing.

One thing did strike me at the end, if the really compelling use of 4G is video calling, who wants that? Do you really want to have to shave and look presentable, wearing the right (if any) clothing to make a call? It seems neat and does have some very limited use, but after all, who really needs it? Oh that’s right… Pornographers do. And that’s what will sell 4G. Mark my words. 4G will be powered by pornography, and you know deep in your heart that men will order up 4G porn while back-benching it at church on Sunday with their naive wifeypoo and accidental children. Mark my words.

Verizon iPhone 4

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Everyone is weighing in on a device that hasn’t been released yet, and everyone already has formed opinions based on rumors and suppositions. Since this is the way it is going, I’ll just toss my unrequested three-cents in with the rest of the noise and babble.

Key Differences between AT&T and Verizon on the iPhone 4:

  1. No 4G Service – Who cares to have broadband speeds in your pocket? Eventually there is a good-enough-speed that people reach, with 3G and WiFi pretty much available everywhere this claim is only going to make the really geeky miffed. If you need such speeds in your pocket, what exactly are you doing IN YOUR POCKET? At some point extra speed only benefits BitTorrent users. The only exception to this is media streaming, but frankly my dear, if you are sitting back and enjoying a movie, chances are you are doing so in the comfort of some place that has WiFi. Just like FaceTime Chat…
  2. iPhone 4 Antennagate – CDMA doesn’t have the same antenna as a GSM phone has, so physical attenuation isn’t a problem. The Verizon phone won’t have the grip-of-death, while the AT&T phone will.
  3. CDMA-GSM Simultaneous Data and Voice – I have to admit to living without this as such a thing is by the design of CDMA very unlikely if not impossible to bring off. I’ve never needed both data and voice services at the same time. My logic is that people smush the phone against their face to talk, they aren’t going to smush-tap-tap-smush-tap. The fact that AT&T can do this is pretty much a cute empty little extra. People who have been using CDMA won’t notice at all.
  4. Network Size – AT&T has done NOTHING to address signal quality in key markets that I find important. Really it comes down to Kalamazoo. AT&T bought out Centennial, along with all their 3G towers in the area. The fact that AT&T hasn’t enabled those towers speaks volumes to me. They don’t care. They claim that their network reaches 97% of Americans, and it does, some are graced with 3G service like the people in Grand Rapids or Chicago, while the rest of us have to contend with their EDGE network. So, what about Verizon? They’ve got a giant network and they have 3G in Kalamazoo. I live in Kalamazoo, it is an important market. I would argue that Kalamazoo is more important than Grand Rapids. So, when it comes to 3G network traffic, who wins? Verizon.
  5. Finally, It’s AT&T PEOPLE! – AT&T, which lets face it is just a shelled out mask that Cingular wears to ritzy dinner parties (yes, it wears another’s tanned hide) is still CINGULAR. Just because it’s wearing AT&T’s dead face and animating it doesn’t mean that it’s somehow got a new soul. Both Cingular and AT&T were as I regard them, abhorrent companies. Cingular for their lameness before trapping and gutting AT&T, and AT&T for being inherently EVIL. Many people don’t recall, and it’s understandable, that AT&T used to be Ma Bell. The giant monster company that abused it’s customers, ran a monopoly, and retarded real technological innovation for decades! This is less of an argument based in reality as it is a name-game since Verizon also was a shard of Ma Bell’s evil empire. It’s not that somehow Verizon is good, of course they aren’t, they are just as evil as AT&T is, but AT&T is stupid and evil. Verizon is clever and evil. It’s a very fine difference.
  6. Waiting around for iPhone 5 – Great, so Verizon is going to get iPhone 4, but Consumer Reports goes on at length about how they are going to wait until iPhone 5 before they’ll look at it again. What exactly are people waiting for? Isn’t the iPhone 4 “Good Enough”? What can Apple do to make the iPhone 5 compelling enough for everyone to suddenly acquire buyers remorse regarding the iPhone 4? They could make the device thinner, perhaps make it transparent, change the shape perhaps but in every other instance the iPhone 4 can be field-upgraded to whatever iOS revision is coming down the pike unless Apple is serious about enabling things like BitTorrent on the iPhone. For this class of device, how much can change? Is it enough to continue to suffer with AT&T? In my case, is it enough to continue to suffer with Sprint? My answer is no. I don’t care what is or is not coming out in June or July. I’ve been waiting for the iPhone 4, without the grip-of-death, on a competent 3G network FOR A VERY LONG TIME. Who cares if you are locked into an iPhone4 for two years? It’s not like an immense base of other iPhone 4’s out there are suddenly going to just vanish. Just because there is something new doesn’t mean it’s needful. Sometimes what you need is right in your hand all along, or in this case, in the traveling roadshow that is Verizon.

For me, this entire release of a CDMA iPhone is mana from heaven. I’m willing to give up data+voice simultaneously for fewer dropped calls (in AT&T’s case) and way fewer impossible-to-make calls (in Sprint’s case). My professional recommendation is that the Verizon iPhone 4 is exactly what people need and they should pounce on it immediately. If you are beyond your ETF-barrier on your contract with AT&T or Sprint, you owe it to yourself to leave them behind and hop on. Even if a few months down the line iPhone 5 comes out, it’s not going to be revolutionary, it’ll be evolutionary. The same way the iPad 2 is not going to make me love my iPad 1 any less. A device is still a device and if it works well, isn’t that enough?

Blackberry vs. iPhone vs. DROID

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This is a bit of advice I wrote regarding Blackberry vs. iPhone vs. DROID…

Thanks for letting me know about what is covered during those meetings. I’d like to share with you some of the reasons why we are using Blackberry devices and not the others, yet.

WMU Development and Alumni Relations uses Blackberry devices because at the time (2007) they were the most relevant and best-featured devices at the time. Blackberry is carrier agnostic, they’ll run on anything, and the two competing systems are CDMA (Sprint and Verizon) and GSM (AT&T and T-Mobile). Blackberry also was a superior choice for corporate users because of the seamless security not only behind the scenes, where the network is edge-to-edge encrypted with AES-256, the US Federal Government standard, but also in-front of the scene. By using BES we have the capacity to manage devices over radio, so if a Blackberry is lost, we do not have to worry about sensitive information leaking out, we simply instruct the Blackberry to commit suicide, then order a new device. This really drove a lot of the Blackberry adoption, at least in the technical circles where these properties are worth quite a lot. Blackberry continues to be a ‘best-case’ device because of all the sticky technical bits that make them quite a pleasure to support. There are tradeoffs, as the devices are all business and no pleasure, they don’t have touchscreens, a panoply of apps, and they aren’t exceptionally fast with data. The competing devices, which would be iPhone and Droid are arguably the flipside of what the Blackberry is, it’s all pleasure, but very spartan when compared to Blackberry in the context of business use.

Between iPhone and Droid there is more detail that would benefit you to know. While the Apple iPhone is a tremendously attractive device (especially for someone like me) the device is locked into an arguably stunted network, AT&T. Here in Kalamazoo AT&T has been inexplicably retarded when it comes to fleshing out their 3G network capacity. A 3G network is essentially a “Fast Radio Network” which makes any device that uses it work faster than ‘2G’ or ‘Old and Slow Radio Network’. This lack of competent service in comparison to Sprint and Verizon’s 3G networks that already exist here is the principal reason why iPhones have yet to earn the mark of distinction from my office and why I have been silent about any future move off of the Blackberry infrastructure. I can argue that switching from Blackberry to iPhone at this juncture would be a stupid move, since 90% of users would do business in Kalamazoo county, ignoring Sprint and Blackberry’s 3G network for AT&T’s EDGE (their 2G network) would be akin to replacing the engine in a Camaro with a lawnmowers’. As for Droid, I cannot recommend that mobile device operating system because it has yet to establish a stable canon. Google has been working feverishly developing and extending this platform and Droid suffers for it. If we were to buy-in to Droid now, 6 months down the pike we’d be stuck with 25 devices that may or may not have an upgrade path to wherever Google takes Droid next.

What does the future hold? Blackberry and Sprint are the ‘Devil We Know’. We’re used to the rough patches and we have a well-beaten path and a contract that works for our needs. What conditions would need to happen for me to change my official recommendations? Any switch to iPhone would require AT&T to demonstrate a willingness to flesh out their 3G network in Kalamazoo county. AT&T did consume Centennial Wireless recently, so this may be coming sooner rather than later. Alternatively, if Apple reworks the iPhone to use the CDMA network, it would be useful on the Verizon network and iPhone + Verizon would make me switch us all over in the blink of an eye. So far, the legal rumblings from Apple state that there is a lovers-knot forged between AT&T and Apple in relation to the iPad. Apple needed a data provider, AT&T offered their network for the new iPad device, but the rumor states that the ‘sweetheart deal’ would only be possible if Apple kept the AT&T-only stricture on iPhone, at least until 2011. Verizon is very hungry for the iPhone, but Apple won’t budge, and everyone agrees it’s because AT&T has their hooks in Apple quite deeply. Droid, on the other hand, needs time to mature. The platform is still very young and prone to wild upset and I can’t justify us spending valuable University funds on something so prone to ‘platform-quakes’. Droid would be a valid option by 2015.

If there are any points you’d like clarification on please do not hesitate to ask.

The Devil, you know.

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I regularly receive questions regarding cellular providers and end up recommending the same things, that when you get right down to it, it doesn’t matter which carrier you select, they are all equally awful, in my experience. The big three in our area at least are AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon. What I do let people in on is what practical measures each carrier does differ on and which one you should take advantage of.

Verizon is the choice for you if you like to roam really off the beaten path. The network is very big, alas, the tradeoff is that it’s slower than many of the others. It’s really useful if you spend a lot of your time in your cabin deep in the woods, plotting the overthrow of the Government, for example.

Sprint is the choice for you if you only roam on the Eisenhower Interstate System in the United States. If you could plausibly walk to an I-## road, and that’s as far as you ever get, then Sprint has a network for you. If you end up in that cabin, you may be lucky, but chances are, you’ll be shit out of luck.

AT&T is the choice for all city mice. Big cities, don’t roam, don’t move. If you are like this, then AT&T is the best for you. They have a self-professed “Fastest 3G Experience”, but their coverage is horribly anemic.

Think of the carriers like a pyramid. The biggest is on the bottom, and the higher you go, the faster the service. That’s generally it.

One thing that is worth mentioning is AT&T recently purchased Centennial Wireless, there has been some chatter that AT&T will turn their 3G network loose on Centennial’s network, what this does to their anemic 3G coverage map has yet to be seen and the date is likewise a mystery – although conventional wisdom plunks it firmly sometime this year, although I would not be surprised if it slips as far as Q3 2011.