AT&T Wireless screwing up portability

Grok Headline matches for AT&T Wireless screwing up portability

AT&T Wireless to explain portability
woes

AT&T Wireless to explain portability
woes 12/09/2003 07:23 PM
The carrier is set to tell federal regulators that it has addressed software problems that kept people waiting weeks to switch carriers while keeping their old phone number.

BellSouth eyes wireless portability fee

BellSouth eyes wireless portability fee 11/17/2003 01:56 PM
The company wants to charge monthly fees to recover the $38 million it spent to allow customers to keep their old telephone numbers after switching to a cell phone provider.

AT&T Wireless Fumbles Number
Portability

AT&T Wireless Fumbles Number
Portability 12/05/2003 03:03 PM
cloudscout writes "The FCC is demanding that AT&T Wireless Services explain their number portability failures. Apparently, tens of thousands of customers ...

Cingular and AT&T Wireless make last
minute attempt to delay number
portability

Cingular and AT&T Wireless make last
minute attempt to delay number
portability 10/31/2003 01:39 AM
We'd thought that the cellphone companies had stopped trying to weasel out implementing number portability after a Federal appeals court threw out their lawsuit against the FCC back in June, but apparently they hadn't quite given up yet. AT&T Wireless and Cingular just tried again in court to stall the new rules by arguing that the FCC hadn't been clear enough about how number portability applies to landlines as well. On Wednesday this second lawsuit was also thrown out, though now it looks like AT&T Wireless and Cingular might be trying get Congress to intervene and obtain a delay. Read [Via MobileTracker]...

AirPort Express Brings Audio,
Portability to Wireless Networking
(07-Jun-2004; 5.9K)

AirPort Express Brings Audio,
Portability to Wireless Networking
(07-Jun-2004; 5.9K) 06/07/2004 10:03 PM

Government benefits: screwing the young

Government benefits: screwing the young 12/10/2003 10:12 PM
Screwing the young. American government benefits will give a typical man reaching age 65 today a net windfall of more than $70,000 beyond what he paid in. A luckless 25-year-old, by contrast, can count on paying $322,000 more in payroll taxes than he will ever get back in benefits.

T-Mobile Screwing Blackberry Customers

T-Mobile Screwing Blackberry Customers 12/24/2004 12:46 PM

I got an urgent e-mail today from a dedicated reader and I want to share the information he passed to me. Be sure to check out the complete story on his website.

"Todd-I'm currently covering how T-Mobile has cut off Blackberry users from full Internet access on one of my sites:

www.tinyscreenfuls.com

Basically, they've stripped paying customers of service that used to work just fine, with no notice or explanation. In fact, they've admitted that they didn't intend to affect Blackberry users this way.

But a month later, nothing has changed. Most companies don't understand how important blogs and web opinion have become. They're pretty clueless (Kryptonite, etc.). But I know that there is power in the community of bloggers and writers to get things done."

Go read the full story and if you can help out drop a link to his site. If your a Blackberry user then get out their and complain to T-Mobile. As I have dealt with T-Mobile quite a bit you have to work through about 4 levels of Customer service before you can get to someone that has a clue. Good Hunting. [www.tinyscreenfuls.com]

Blogging for charity is like screwing
for virginity. No wait, it isn't.

Blogging for charity is like screwing
for virginity. No wait, it isn't. 05/31/2004 06:52 PM
So the Blogathon is taking a year off to come back bigger and better than ever before, but for all of you just itching to stay awake for 24 hours raising money for charity, there is Project-Blog, a Blogathon-style event happening July 24th. See previous Blogathon discussion here.

Enron traders gloating about screwing
California

Enron traders gloating about screwing
California 06/03/2004 05:24 AM
CBS has got hold of tapes of conversations between Enron employees during the California rolling blackouts. The conversations are amazing, basically a bunch of corrks gloating about the savage rogering they're giving to the people of California and how much money they're making. This has put fresh fire into the bellies of lawmakers who have renewed their vows to decapitate Enron's management and stake their heads on pikes outside of every polling place before election day.

Employee 1: "All the money you guys stole from those poor grandmothers in California?

Employee 2: "Yeah, Grandma Millie man.

Employee 1: "Yeah, now she wants her f-----g money back for all the power you've charged right up, jammed right up her a—for f-----g $250 a megawatt hour."

Link (via Making Light)

Cellphone towers screwing up homing
pigeons

Cellphone towers screwing up homing
pigeons 01/23/2004 02:18 PM
Britain's Royal Pigeon Racing Association says that radiation from cellphone towers is screwing up the directional instincts of homing pigeons (those aren't extinct?). Unfortunately, the...

Chris Abraham: A Conservative View of
the People Screwing Up America

Chris Abraham: A Conservative View of
the People Screwing Up America 06/22/2005 02:45 AM
A Conservative View of the People Screwing Up America .. Permalink

chrisabraham.com/2005/06/a_conservative.html
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Now It's Time To Blame The Record Lables
For Screwing Up Mobile Music

Now It's Time To Blame The Record Lables
For Screwing Up Mobile Music 04/15/2005 12:47 PM
It was just last night that we were saying that the mobile phone operators were going to screw up the mobile music market with their greed... though we also noted that the recording industry was just as bad, and that the two of them together, guaranteed a disaster. As if on cue, News.com comes along to confirm this, with a story about how the record labels are pissed off at Steve Jobs because he won't let them raise prices or force people to buy a bad song to get a good song. Instead, of course, they want to work with the mobile carriers, "The (wireless) carriers' economics are aligned with us much better than Apple is aligned with us." By which the anonymous executive means they're both incredibly greedy and willing to sacrifice long term viability for short term profits. This is like watching a massive train wreck in incredibly slow motion.

DSL Portability Comes To The UK?

DSL Portability Comes To The UK? 08/02/2004 08:43 PM
One of the most annoying things about a broadband connection is that, unlike with a phone connection, it's often quite a pain to switch providers -- sometimes involving extended periods without service, multiple installs, and completely redoing work that's already been done. In an attempt to show that they really can regulate themselves, and don't need government officials bothering them, a bunch of ISPs in the UK have come up with a voluntary plan to make it easier for UK DSL customers to switch providers (mostly) seamlessly. Of course, it helps when there are a lot of providers and they're all using the same wholesaler, as is the case in the UK.

What you need to know about number
portability

What you need to know about number
portability 06/01/2004 08:22 PM
ZDNet Jun 2 2004 0:26AM GMT

What Has Number Portability Done For
You?

What Has Number Portability Done For
You? 12/03/2003 02:32 PM
Coldeagle writes "Number portability has been around for a few days now, I was wondering; have any of you fellow Slashdot readers switched carriers? How was ...

Portability is a Good Thing (Again!)

Portability is a Good Thing (Again!) 08/05/2002 10:44 PM

FCC allows phone number portability

FCC allows phone number portability 11/11/2003 09:22 AM
globetechnology.com Nov 11 2003 8:34AM ET

Portability complaints? Take a number

Portability complaints? Take a number 01/28/2004 08:43 PM
ZDNet Jan 29 2004 1:05AM GMT

TiVo Adds Portability to the Mix

TiVo Adds Portability to the Mix 01/05/2005 10:11 PM
TiVoToGo lets you copy recorded shows to your PC by way of a home network and even burn them onto DVD’s. Is it worth checking out?

AT&T admits to portability problems

AT&T admits to portability problems 12/09/2003 07:30 PM
But says it's getting better

Test-Portability-Files-0.03

Test-Portability-Files-0.03 09/25/2004 05:35 PM

Test-Portability-Files-0.02

Test-Portability-Files-0.02 07/04/2004 05:03 PM

Test-Portability-Files-0.01

Test-Portability-Files-0.01 06/27/2004 06:31 AM

Opportunity seen in number portability

Opportunity seen in number portability 11/17/2003 03:11 AM
Boston Globe Nov 17 2003 1:50AM ET

Number portability sites pop up

Number portability sites pop up 11/14/2003 12:32 PM
USA Today Nov 14 2003 11:58AM ET

Phone number portability OK'd

Phone number portability OK'd 11/11/2003 02:06 PM
SiliconValley.com Nov 11 2003 11:41AM ET

Amazon helps with number portability

Amazon helps with number portability 05/03/2004 03:07 PM
Amazon's phone-sales business unit has added a HOWTO on number-portability, and a service to help you keep your number when you change mobile carriers.

Transferring your cell phone number is easy when you order from Amazon.com. You won't have to wait in line at a store while your number is transferred from your previous carrier to your new one. And, in some cases, you will be assigned a temporary phone number for your new phone so that you can use it until your transfer is completed (you can even forward your calls from your current phone to your new phone in the interim). Best of all, when you buy a cell phone from Amazon.com and transfer your number, you will still qualify for all of our great rebates and discounts.

Link (via MobileWhack)

Number portability winners and losers

Number portability winners and losers 11/05/2003 02:31 PM
Even more on number portability: MyRatePlan.com is running a poll about cellphone number portability, and while it's not scientific, the results aren't exactly surprising, either. Of those planning to switch, most say they're going to move to Verizon, which has embraced number portability and is refusing to charge their subscribers any additional monthly fees. As for the rest of the poll results, let's just say that Sprint is in trouble. Read [Via GigaOm]...

Number Portability Finally Getting
Sorted Out

Number Portability Finally Getting
Sorted Out 04/30/2004 02:47 PM
Well, it only took half a year, but the FCC is now reporting that wireless number portability appears to be moving along smoothly. Of course, all hell might break loose again when the rest of the country (that is, anywhere that is not one of the top 100 metropolitan regions) starts offering number portability next month - but hopefully the carriers have learned their lesson. There are still some problems with portability, so don't be completely surprised it things don't work the way they're supposed to. However, if you really want to switch, there's not much reason to wait any more.

The New Musical Functionality:
Portability and access

The New Musical Functionality:
Portability and access 07/26/2004 05:41 PM

The other day I started this run of posts on the New Musical Functionality by arguing that the behaviour of an until-recently small group of digital music fans seemed to be now spreading into the mainstream. I also listed four areas that seemed to me to be where the most significant changes in consumption patterns were occurring - areas to which I believe that anyone building sites, services or hardware around music should be paying close attention. These four areas were (1) portability and access, (2) navigation, (3) self-presentation/social uses and (4) data use and privacy. Today I'm going to concentrate briefly on the trends towards portability and access.

This may seem like an obvious place to start, but I think it's an important thing to get out in the open: the core difference between an iPod and a CD Walkman isn't audio quality. That's not to say that there isn't a differences in the audio quality between the MP3/AAC file and CD 'originals' because - of course - there is and it is a significant one. However, in defiance of the normal path of technological achievements, the newer technology does not have the advantage in reproductive fidelity. In the future this may change (Apple's lossless compression and increasingly cheap storage space are just two of the reasons why), but at the moment MP3s and AACs use lossy forms of compression and for this reason simply do not sound as good as their CD originals. It would probably be pushing it to say that this is the first significant change of popular audio format that actually made the sound quality worse (vinyl fans have been criticising the CD for that for years), but it does at least seem to be one of the first where claims of improved sound haven't been a major selling point.

So why are these new formats and players starting to occupy the mainstream so effectively? What is it that means people want iPods so desperately even though they're effectively purchasing a technology that will result in a decrease in audio quality? Again the answer is so obvious that it hardly bears repeating - particularly given that it's on every single bloody advert that Apple produce. The reason that people are buying iPods is because they want 10,000 songs in their pockets. They want access to music wherever they are in the world. More still - they want access to all their music everywhere. Every last bit. Every last place.

As I've said, this sounds obvious but it is important. It's important because once we understand the need that a product is filling, we can attempt to find other/better ways of filling it. The iPod's current success has demonstrated that the need exists - and how - but I would argue that in the longer term it is by no means obvious that the need would be best served by small portable hard discs embedded in MP3 players.

It doesn't take a lot of foresight to see the scope for development in this area. In the short-term, the trend seems fairly clear - storage capacity looks set to increase and/or devices look set to get smaller. This has been the trend of almost all computing technology over the last few decades (cf. Moore's Law for the near-parallel phenomenon happening in processor speed). Given these fundamental developments, there aren't an enormous numbers of directions that these devices can go.

The first two options for future product directions around this stuff are (1) larger capacities and (2) smaller form factors. We have already seen movements in both of these directions (iPod Mini / 60Gb iPod coming). However, there's only so far that either of these trends can develop.

Increased capacity ceases to be interesting at the point where there is more capacity than data to fill it - hence the problem with saying that newer iPods can hold 10,000 songs. There are very few people in the world who would be capable, let alone interested, in sourcing that much music. After listening to my music exclusively through a computer for the last two or three years, I've still only got 8,000 MP3s. And I'm hardly representative. If we're talking about significant subsequent increases in capacity then there are some pretty clear limits in place. 10,000 songs is about a month of solid listening. 100,000 songs would be getting on for a year. 1,000,000 songs a lifetime. Somewhere between a month and lifetime, the marginal utility of another song being on your iPod reaches zero (even assuming that physics lets you get to that size in the first place).

Of course when we talk about capacity in terms of songs we're kind of missing the point. From this point on, advances in capacity are more likely to allow us to listen to higher quality audio than they are to increase the number of songs that people want to listen to. A tenfold increase in portable storage would mean that a future iPod could carry the same number of songs as a current iPod except in Apple Lossless formats that have all the sound quality of a CD. A parallel increase in bandwidth speeds could mean that the last few decades of work on compression could become fundamentally redundant - much like the techniques that meant programmers had to write whole applications to run with 8k of RAM are now pretty much irrelevant. So this is clearly a direction things are likely to move over the next few years. But even this has its limits. Once you've escalated disc size ten times there's nowhere to go in terms of audio quality - or at least, nowhere that will make the slightest difference to most individual consumers. So again any subsequent growth in capacity will have to be sold in terms of an increased number of songs that could be held - and as such the gradual diminishing marginal utility problem comes in again. Increased capacity, therefore, has only so much of a shelf life - can only go so far before it collapses under its own weight.

The other potential obvious future direction - as I've said above - is to make the appliances themselves smaller. Here again there are limits to utility. There would seem to be a size under which a device ceases to be practical - that size being directly related to the size of interface elements, screens and buttons, which in turn relate directly to the size of fingers and thumbs and the limits of human vision. Now again, you can merge this in as a direction with the increased capacities and find a bottomed-out form factor and gradually increase the capacity on it - and no doubt this is the main approach that people like Apple will take over the next few years. At least that is until physics steps in or human interest (in having unlistenable amounts of music) begins to wane - both of which are probably a way off, but remain definite limits to future development in these directions.

Of course, there are certain conditions where an appliance may usefully shrink below the size of its interface, and that's when it shares that interface with a number of other pieces of technology. This is the approach that the mobile phone manufacturers have taken - as the phones became almost unmanageably small, people's attention moved instead to enhancing functionality and adding in cameras, PDAs, web-browsers, comms equipment, bluetooth and the like. This had the effect of keeping the form factors at manageable sizes while still allowing competition and product development to occur. There's absolutely no doubt that this kind of hybridisation will be / is already a core part of the development of portable digital music players. Much of this hybridisation results in useful connections and possible new products emerging from music devices that are permanently network-enabled.

All of this previous stuff has been relatively uncontroversial - it's no more than the immediate development along a couple of pre-existing axes of the products we have in our stores today. The incorporation of network-enabled devices has the capacity to change things a lot though. This is where alternative models for fulfilling a design for universal access and portability are likely to start emerging more strongly. We currently seem to be moving towards a world with greater and greater connectivity and one in which some kind of flat-rate, always-on broad-ish band internet access is likely to be integrated into pretty much all portable devices. This opens up other possibilities for having access to all of your music wherever you might be - and without actually carrying any of the files around with you. We could be looking towards a near future in which all of your media (and perhaps applications and information) can be held 'in the sky' and streamed/downloaded down to whatever appliance you like as and when required. Where this repository would live (with an ISP, with your home server, on your TV's set top-box, on Apple's iTunes Music store) is not immediately clear. But it's conceivable that - given enough bandwidth and centralisation - massively redundant models like we have at the moment where everyone has their own copy of a music file could be replaced completely by centralised music-on-demand services. Personally, I'm not much convinced that particular extreme is likely - people still seem to like to own music and still think of it as an object rather than as a service - but that's not particularly relevant. The important aspect is simply that the same user need can be met in different ways.

So will we move towards larger portable hard discs or towards connected repositories explorable through massive bandwidth? Probably the direction that we take here will depend on nothing more elegant and interesting than financial cost. If enormous storage options were to become enormously cheap and small, then carrying a significant hard disc is likely to remain the preference of individual music fans. On the other hand, if bandwidth became cheap, then we'll probably find ourselves in a more service-driven and centralised streaming-based world. The model that's most likely to dominate is likely to lie somewhere in between the two - in hybridised technologies that use hard disks as local copies of stashes of music held in more centralised locations - using the network to syncas and when appropriate (see note) as well as a mediator for various forms of engagement, navigation and data-mining around and in-between individual listeners. But more around that stuff in the next part of this sprawling rant around the New Musical Functionality: On trends in navigation.... (Coming Soon)

Note: Syncing becomes very important in a world with innumerable devices and limited connectivity. On a slight tangent - there are innumerable hybrid models where increases in portable data collide with the ability to access data at a distance. At the desktop level you can imagine computers running off the wired internet creating the impression of your 'home' computer wherever you sit, and on the portable level with large local storage being kept up-to-date perpetually via slower trickle-fed syncing protocols.

Read the comments

F.C.C. Backs Phone Number Portability

F.C.C. Backs Phone Number Portability 11/11/2003 01:11 AM
New York Times Nov 10 2003 11:45PM ET

Portability is a Good Thing (ADODB)

Portability is a Good Thing (ADODB) 07/25/2002 07:36 AM

iPod Sets New Trend In Portability

iPod Sets New Trend In Portability 12/05/2003 11:26 AM
"It's by far the hottest item for the holiday." By Dennis Friedel (Delaware Beachcomber via MyAppleMenu)

Carriers not ready for number
portability

Carriers not ready for number
portability 11/10/2003 11:05 PM
Oh man, we really don't want people to think we're fixated on the whole cellphone number portability thing (though it is nice to be pre-occupied with something besides the dismal failure of the N-Gage), but there's a new report out from Mobile Competency about how the cellphone companies still aren't ready for November 24th, the first day the new rules go into effect (even though they're had no problem charging their subscribers for it for months). They're recommending that if you can manage it, to wait until next year to switch. Read...

Local Number Portability Glitches Still
There

Local Number Portability Glitches Still
There 01/22/2004 02:06 PM
Now that nearly two months has passed since wireless local number portability went into effect in the US, it turns out that carri ers are still having problems porting numbers in a timely fashion. There are eve a few cases where people who signed up back in November still don't have their numbers ported. The problems are being worked out, though, and are much less likely to occur these days. However, it is still taking a few days to port the number in most cases - which is way more than the 2.5 hours the FCC had told carriers it should take. For the time being, it looks like the FCC isn't taking the carriers to task for missing that mark. It's also interesting to note that all of the carriers report that portability has not been nearly as big an issue as they expected, with many fewer subscribers moving than were predicted. Of course, some might point out that the carriers who had the most to lose from number portability had every incentive in the world not to make the process very smooth - and to make sure everyone knew that it wasn't going to be smooth.

Rocky start for number portability

Rocky start for number portability 12/22/2003 02:02 AM
Boston Globe Dec 22 2003 1:01AM ET

FCC Swamped By Number Portability
Complaints

FCC Swamped By Number Portability
Complaints 01/29/2004 03:49 AM
By this point, it's pretty well known that wireless number portability didn't go so smoothly over the past couple of months. However, now the FCC has admitted the extent of the problems, saying that they've recei ved 4,750 complaints concerning number portability. Considering the total number of switchers, that's really not a huge percentage - but it still doesn't speak well to the efforts the wireless carriers put into the process. The FCC is now looking to see if any regulations were broken. Considering that many carriers were clearly dragging their feet on getting ready for this (partly as a ploy to ask for more delays), it seems likely that the FCC will fine a few carriers for screwing around when they should have been preparing (as we expected back in May). It still seems like a strategically backwards move not to have embraced something that customers clearly wanted - and which was clearly going to come sooner or later.

Paul Jones' Blog: Database Portability

Paul Jones' Blog: Database Portability 03/17/2005 02:47 AM
Paul Jones wrote in to tell us about a new posting over on his blog concerning Database Portability.

More Doom & Gloom Predictions For Number
Portability

More Doom & Gloom Predictions For Number
Portability 11/13/2003 12:28 PM
It seems like November 24th, 2003 is increasingly taking on a Y2K feel, as story after story after story is talking about how much of a mess it's going to be when people first try to switch their mobile phone numbers. It's tough to tell how much of these stories are carrier propaganda, from those who are trying to scare people away from switching, and how much is legitimate. Even if the fear is legitimate, it's still possible that many of the problems aren't necessary, but are caused by certain carriers who are purposely making the process annoying, in order to scare away people from switching. No matter what, everyone's gearing up for November 24th. Large call centers are being trained to deal with number portability issues, and basically no one has any idea (a) how many people are actually going to switch on that first day or (b) how well the process will work? At least no one is heading off for reinforced bunkers in the mountains.
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AT&T Wireless screwing up portability

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