Aaron Huslage

Since Apple announced the 3G upgrade for its (now) venerable iPhone, I’ve been chomping at the bit to get one. I’m not a line waiter, so I ordered one through AT&T’s National Business Ordering department at the uncommitted price ($399 for the 8GB). I received the phone yesterday and was ready to activate it by the evening.

Since my employer, who pays my phone bill, and I have decided to part ways things have changed with regard to my mobile needs. I decided to activate the phone on my family’s account instead. With any other phone this would not be an issue at all. With iPhone things are different.

I called up what AT&T calls “Customer Care” at about 7pm last night to begin what I thought would be an easy process, after all I had the phone in my hand and it wasn’t configured for any account as of yet. Then things went wonky.

The first thing the agent said was “How did you get this phone?” I told her that I had ordered it via phone on my business account, but that I now needed to add a line and activate it on my family’s consumer account. She said that no one could order a phone and that they all had to be purchased at an AT&T Core store or from Apple. I retorted that I did exactly that and had the phone in my hands. She then asked for the SIM card number, did some things, and the iPhone magically came to life. Then my father looked at his phone and saw “SIM Card not Provisioned. Error: A05″. Not good.

It turns out that the representative had turned the iPhone into my father’s phone. This had the knock-on effect of deactivating my father’s SIM making it useless and leaving him without a phone until he could go to AT&T to get a new one. This would not do, as one could imagine. After making a brick out of both my iPhone and my father’s phone, the representative told us that she couldn’t add a line or activate iPhones. Nice of her to think of this before causing pain to the customer.

We then were transferred to the “Add a Line” department where they informed us that they couldn’t activate an iPhone either. This happed at about 9pm. I gave up.

This morning, I went to the AT&T store here in Redmond to get a new SIM card, which they happily provided. The man at the counter told me he couldn’t activate the iPhone or do anything else on the family’s account, which is based in North Carolina, because it was out of his market. He said I could call customer care and that they could activate the phone instead. This did not bode well for the day’s activation activities.

I came home and got on the phone to customer care once more. I got a person in their Austin call center who was convinced that I had picked up the phone at a retail location. No matter what she was told. This made me laugh with disgust. She transferred me to another person who talked to his supervisor and tried to make good, but he was told that he had to find the source of the order first. He couldn’t figure it out and transferred me yet again to Small Business Care to see if they could sort it out. This is when I met Don Blackmon. After 44 minutes on the phone I had finally found who I thought was my savior.

Don was a fabulous fellow who really did want to treat me with respect and believe what I had to say. He pulled up my order quickly (as quickly as the always slow AT&T systems would allow at least) and listened to my story. He tried to pull up the family’s account, but was hit by the barrier that exists between different disparate systems within AT&T.

He dug and dug through documents and procedures that are on the company’s Intranet to find a way to make it happen. Apparently there are certain things (which were not named) that could have gotten him fired, but actually helping a customer was apparently not one of them. After the digging he finally found a nugget of gold buried in an iPhone 3G provisioning document under a section entitled “Consumer Customer Requesting to Add a Line” that gave another phone number to call. We called.

Don stayed with me as we went through the standard voice prompts of AT&T’s customer care obfuscation mechanism (aka menu system) and were finally connected to a representative. She gave the same spiel as the other consumer representatives I had talked to and told us that I would have to talk to sales to add a line, but that she wasn’t sure that they could activate the iPhone since that had to be done in-store. I told her that I was in Washington and that the account owner, my mother, was in North Carolina and it would be nigh-on impossible for us to be in the same place at the same time to get this done. She went off to talk to someone and Don had to leave to handle other issues.

She came back and told me that sales could add a line, but they weren’t sure that they could activate the iPhone even if I gave them the SIM number. I had to go, since I had been on the phone for 1 hour and 45 minutes and I have an actual life with things to do and blog posts to write about my experiences. She gave me the sales department’s number and wished me luck.

There will be more to this story, I am sure, as I continute to try to activate a phone. Thanks Don Blackmon of AT&T’s Small Business Care department in Joplin, Missouri for doing what you felt was right and taking the time to make the customer happy. He is doing his job very well where others in his company are falling over left and right. Let’s hope his example propagates. More in a bit.

Well well well. It seems that AT&T hasn’t learned anything from the sham that was iPhone 1.0 activation for corporate users. Instead of allowing anyone to switch to the new iPhone 3G, they have decided to impose the über ridiculous 2 year upgrade cycle on everyone. At least they’re equally distributing the pain.

I inquired of friends at the company about how to switch my current Blackberry Curve to the new iPhone. They informed me that since the line I am using was opened just over a month ago, I am not eligible for an upgrade at this time. I’m on a corporate plan with 20 or so lines all sharing the same pool of minutes and every device has unlimited text and data, so we aren’t a tiny customer for them — not huge either, but good solid monthly revenue.

Not only am I ineligible for an upgrade, but they insist that they cannot simply add the iPhone 3G to our existing pool of minutes. Every iPhone must use the iPhone plans. Period. If a small company has an account like ours, that apparently means nothing to AT&T. My friend then suggested that I either open a new line or purchase the iPhone at the noncommitted price of $699 (!). Ridiculous. Again.

Of course the guy blamed Apple for all of this nonsense. Published reports say that AT&T and Apple no longer have a revenue sharing deal and that AT&T just buys the devices outright from Apple. Therefore Apple no longer has a say in the plans or deals that AT&T makes with its customers. Not to mention, Apple has completely ceded the customer’s initial experience with their device.

So in summary, our company gives AT&T a decent amount of recurring revenue and are, in most ways, their ideal customer that delivers very high ARPU month over month…for years. They aren’t willing or able to provide us with a device that we want because of politics and flawed marketing. If I were to open a new line under their new iPhone plans, they would actually be making LESS money from us than if they just added it to the pool. Go figure.

AT&T continues to not value its existing customers in any way. They force us to use devices for two years, regardless of whether the device was purchased on contract or not (mine was brought in and not purchased from AT&T). They are willing to lose money in the name of strange policies and contractual “obligations”. When will they learn that the customer just wants what they want and they should give it to them so that they can preserve their market and improve their reputation?

I wrote this as a comment to Nick O’Neill’s excellent post on the ridiculousness of the recent Gillmor Gang podcast on “Data Portability” between some of the Internet’s most vocal folks:

This is a discussion about protocols. The only difference between talking about “data portability” and email is that SMTP was designed by some geeks in a back room and this one is being designed by some geeks with loud mouths.

The truth of the matter is that they want this “ecosystem” to thrive outside of just Facebook, et al. They want social networking features everywhere because they think that it will make money. But it is truly only an echo chamber thusfar and the users just don’t care.

The fact still remains that no one has yet made a dime on any of this except the founders of these companies and they aren’t likely to any time soon. Protocols are all nice, but until there is a true financial incentive for companies to implement them they are only specifications.

Moreover this discussion is as much about egos as anything. The “Gillmor Gang” is only the tip of the iceberg of folks that think their opinion actually matters. It mostly doesn’t. The “rank and file” users of these services plain don’t care if they can sync Facebook, Myspace and Bebo or even use their profiles off-site. So this is, in my opinion, a bunch of self-important folks talking about nonsense in their ever-expanding fight to remain (become?) relevant.

The Internet is so much more than the sum of its parts or the protocols that it is based on. It is itself a community tool and has been since its inception. This seems to have been forgotten by these folks.

I’m here at the Pangea Day screening at MSStudios’ Studio C. We’re awaiting the start of the event. The folks in LA just recorded the intro for the one-hour summary show and the set looks AMAZING. I’ll be updating this post periodically with my thoughts about the event.

If you aren’t at a screening, I hope that you will check out the streaming feeds on pangeaday.org and get around the “global campfire”

[11:06AM PDT]

It amazes me that this whole thing came out of a TED talk. The cynicism of the world, especially my little geek world, forgets the power of people so often. This event will no doubt be panned by skeptics and cynics alike, but the importance of things like this should not be questioned.

[12:00PM PDT]

The first hour of the show was absolutely stunning. The organizers of this event have done an amazing job finding films that really do get to the heart of the human spirit. From Carl Sagan’s wonderful story “Pale Blue Dot” to a film about soccer balls made from condoms. They have focused on “human universals” — emotions that we all share the world around like Love, Hope and Sorrow. Helping regain perspective and see the world as it is.

[1:00PM PDT]

This hour was much more intense. It started with a montage of people all over the world talking about their dreams and was followed by Gilberto Gil singing. After that, things were about identification of differences and why we might open our minds to ignoring differences.

Then we saw an amazing film from a soldier who simply told a story about a car accident in Iraq. It was simply a sequence of renactment photos with his voice, but the power of his words was unquestionable. We are all capable of feeling for those that we imagine are our enemies. We are all the same and there are no “accidents” in war.

Comcast, one of the US’s largest broadband providers, issued a press release today in which it said it would “undertake a collaborative effort” with BitTorrent  ”to more effectively address issues associated with rich media content and network capacity management”. This is in response to their recently being caught with their ”hand in the cookie jar” of bandwidth management with the BitTorrent and eDonkey file sharing protocols. They have said that they will work to find new ways of managing bandwidth (while still creating an obviously tiered network).

Comcast has done a clever thing with this press release that I have yet to see anyone chime in on. The company has effectively shifted the focus of the debate on bandwidth management away from the core issue of network investment and on to the overlayed problem of file sharing as the source of their woes.  The real issue is that they won’t upgrade the network, not that people are sharing files.

Comcast refuses to upgrade its network to meet the needs of its customers. This is the ultimate in turning “no press is bad press” into reality for Comcast. They have effectively said “we’re not the bad guys here, those file sharers are making you all pay” and put the onus on their own customers to change their behaviors. The customer is never right in this day and age with broadband service. The customer pays Comcast, but Comcast is apparently ceding it’s responsibility to give good service. In lieu of that they punish their customers for using what they pay for.

Where are the customer advocates? Who is yelling about this instead of regurgitating the press release and saying what good boys and girls these people are?

I live in one of the most well connected communities in the United States. Redmond, WA is home to my employer Microsoft and countless other large bandwidth-hogging companies. One would think that with all of these high-tech workers in the city of 51,000 it would be pretty easy to get good, reliable broadband at my house. It isn’t.

It appears that in this place, with these consumers and this large number of smart and affluent people that I live in a broadband wasteland. I have had Comcast cable modem since moving here in the middle of last year, and it has been sub-par at best. The quality of the link is good (as measured by upstream signal-to-noise ratio of 34db) and the bandwidth averages about 3mbits down and 256k up at non-peak times, but during peak times it slows to a crawl of less than 1mbit down and 56k up. This sort of service level is intolerable for someone who uses their connection as heavily as I do. I have asked Comcast for different service tiers, had their service tech come out and replace my cable line and even said a prayer over the cable modem. Nothing I have done has had any measurable effect and short of contacting the local authoroties I don’t see what else there is.

A couple of weeks ago, I decided to try using our local wireless provider Clearwire, which has been getting good press in the area. I went to Best Buy, bought a modem and hooked it up straight to my laptop. After opening my browser, filling out the signup form and giving away the keys to my bank account I was allowed to use my precious Internet. The link has been solid, if a little pokey for my tastes, at about 2mbits down and 256k up. The fact that the service is wireless means that latency can spike from 50ms to 200ms on a simple ping test over a period of 5 minutes. This spikey behavior can cause havoc on streaming video and large file transfers. I’ve had a few problems, but it’s overall just OK in my opinion.

I’m off to try other options. Over the next few months I hope to try out ADSL2 service from both Verizon and Covad. This should give me the full gamut of what’s available in the area without moving house. I’m not sure what else to check out, considering my upcoming optional accessory and his financial responsibilities. I’m happy to listen to ideas, and stay tuned for your man-on-the-street opinion.

Tune in to CNN on Saturday or Sunday or almost any other afternoon for that matter and you’ll see Ballot Bowl, which CNN describes thusly:

CNN Ballot Bowl: CNN brings viewers rare, in-depth access to the people, places and events impacting our world and our lives.

To the naked eye this sounds pretty cool. You get to hear the candidates “Live and unfiltered” and commentary from “The Best Political Team on TV” to boot. Wow. Nice, huh? CNN has taken time out of its busy schedule to show you all the candidates’ stump speeches and press conferences without bothering to edit them. CNN is also letting you hear the latest polls and what “Ordinary Americans” think from their Election Express bus. They must be giving you more information, right? Wrong.

Stump speeches aren’t supposed to give their viewers information. They are designed to excite the audience into action. They are speeches that have been honed and sculpted to get the audience to go out and canvass or give money or evangelize the candidate. They are the ultimate in preaching to the choir. There is no new information given in the typical speech given by any candidate.

The simple act of CNN giving the candidates access to the national TV audience has changed what the stump speech used to be. They still don’t usually convey anything new, but they do speak to a larger audience than those gathered in the room to hear it. Candidates have recently come to “respond” to what the issues of the day are, because they have a national audience in what is essentially an intimate and local affair. This is the case of the Uncertainty Principle in action every day.

I don’t really think this is bad per se, but I do think that it further dilutes the messages of the candidates and contributes to fatigue in the electorate. The US voter is already tired of the elections, and now CNN is helping to make it worse. They aren’t helping people make a better decision for their favorite candidate. They aren’t letting the viewer know any more about what the candidate stands for. They are misrepresenting what they are doing as journalism and informative. The typical US voter doesn’t care about the election until they walk in to the voting booth. They don’t even really make up their mind until their finger is on the button. So piping rhetoric into these addled brains is not really helping much.

This idea about how Obama has no platform to run on and is just spouting hope for hope’s sake is a perfect example of what happens when people hear the same stuff over and over. Obama has all of his position papers and white papers posted handily at his website, the same as all the other candidates. The reason this incorrect rumor persists, I think, is because people hear McCain and Clinton talking about it all day every day on shows like Ballot Bowl.

This just proves to me that TV won’t really set you free. If you’re a voter in the US you have an obligation to vote not only with your heart, but with your mind. You should know who you are voting for and educate yourself independently of any media sources. In the hour you sit down to watch Ballot Bowl, you could read papers on all 3 of the big player’s web sites about an issue that you care about. You could actually know more about these people and what they say. You would be less ignorant and susceptible to rumors like the Obama one and make up your own mind. Go read and understand. Here are the links:

• Barack Obama
• Hillary Clinton
• John McCain

Enjoy yourself!

I didn’t want to put the info about our coming baby here, but if you are interested please check out baby.hact.net for pictures and talk from Chrissey and I.

Friends will know that I am by no means bashful about politics. I am a big democrat and a couple of weeks ago I really decided I loved Barack Obama for president this time around. So tonight I was thrilled when I heard that he had won the Iowa caucuses. This bodes well for him, since many had written him off as running for VP.

The Democrats really did take the spotlight from the Republicans today. The Republicans looked like complete clods with no direction and their only real message being Fear. While the Democrats came out looking like they had a clear direction, a good group of candidates with some real differentiation, but all with a “unity” and iconoclastic message.

I just got home and was reading what Salon had to say about the whole thing, and noticed this in the middle of the article:

Wow. Interesting. There has been a TON of talk regarding Bloomberg in the press tonight. All of this was no doubt floated by the Republicans and pre-planned in the event that they ended up looking like complete strange people. They need to move the focus off of their failure to capitalize on months and months of press coverage and muddying up the waters with something like Bloomberg is right up their alley. The Republicans are running scared, and that’s really good to see again.

I’d like to send out my best wishes to Om Malik whom I’ve been working with only a few weeks. We’ve just started to get to know each other, but I know our relationship will grow quickly. For those that don’t know Om suffered from a heart attack on December 28.

 Best of luck to him and the staff at GigaOmniMedia.