This is my first Pit rant; be gentle with me.
In the beginning, I leased (they were too expensive to buy) my first cell phone. It was in the mid ‘80s and I was going to college and driving a taxi. I wanted the phone so that I could have customers call me directly to make appointments for taxi service to the airport. I had some business cards printed up with my number on it and started building up a customer base. It was a decent business for a college student. The cell phone service was with Metrocell. Just as the business was taking off, I get a letter from Metrocel informing me that they had been leasing their equipment from Southwestern Bell and they were ready to transition to their own network. How did this impact me, you ask? I had to change my number. I tried to contact as many customers as I could and I had some new business cards printed, bus I still lost some business.
I hustled to build the business back up again and was successful enough that I got my girlfriend involved. One of the tricks to mitigating the expensive airtime was to use call-forwarding to my home number as often as possible. You didn’t had to pay for incoming calls if it was the call was forwarded. When my girlfriend was helping, I would forward te calls to her phone when I had to go to school. Except Metrocel’s billing software couldn’t handle this situation and I would get billed airtime on both phones for each incoming call. Every month, I had to call Metrocel to get the excess charges removed. They readily admitted it was a mistake and removed the duplicate calls, but I had to repeat this every month until I switched carriers (about six months). I doubt they ever fixed their software. I was not horribly angry at these type of problems. After all, it was new technology and it was bound to have growing pains.
After I finished college, I let the business dwindle. I got addicted to sleeping at night. Years went by and I existed happily without a cell phone. My wife would nag me about getting one, but I resisted. About six years ago, I got stuck in the mud and had to walk a couple of miles to use a neighbor’s phone to call for help. I decided it was time to give in and join the flock of cell-phone conjoined sheep. I did my research and chose AT&T because they had coverage in the city and down at the country estate. They also had a plan that covered both. I bought a handheld Nokia. It worked marvelously. I had signal coverage at both places and for most of the 180 miles in between. Cell phone life was good.
But, the cell phone spirits would not dare allow me to exist in this state of bliss for long. AT&T wanted its customers to switch from analog to digital. No problem, I have a hand-me-down Motorola flip phone that my wife decided was out of fashion. So, I survive this “upgrade” relatively unscathed.
The cell phone spirits stuck back with a vengeance. Cingular just had to buy out AT&T. At first, there was no impact. But, in the mail comes a letter. Cingular wanted to discontinue support of the old AT&T CDMA network and wants their customers to switch to their GSM service. To persuade them, Cingular announces they are going to add a $10.00 premium to every bill for customers on the old network.
So, I commence the search for a new phone. My employer does not allow cameras or blue tooth on the premises. Why in the flying fuck do the manufactures think everyone needs a low-resolution, plexiglass-lensed, crappy-ass camera in their cell phone? I know, I know, every mall inhabiting teenager with too much allowance to spend thinks they just have to have one. I finally settle on a Samsung quad-band phone. However, it’s only available in a Cingular network locked version.
One little nicety of this locked phone deserves it’s own little corner in the ninth level of hell. Cingular thinks that the menu buttons on this phone should be permanently programmed as hot keys to connect the Cingular Store features. It is all too easy to rock the menu key the wrong way when you wants to bring up your phone book and connect to the internet or start the ring tone download process. At 0.03 a pop. These buttons cannot be disabled. This crapola is the lowest, slimiest form of merchandising that I’m aware of and everyone involve in implementing it deserves to be anally sodomized with an iron rod that is emitting light waves at the upper end of the color spectrum.
The “new and improved” GSM network has its own little surprise in store. My new super-duper digital GSM phone seems to have little or no signal reception at my country estate. Through the grapevine, I find out that the FCC decided that if Cingular acquired all of the GSM towers formerly owned by AT&T, they would have a monopoly. So, they were order to divest themselves of some towers, one of which apparently provided coverage for my farm.
Oh, but I had a plan. I could install an external antenna and pick up the weak signal from the tower to the north. That’s when I discover that the rubber plug that covers the external antenna jack on the wonderful Samsung phone is covering nothing. There is no fucking antenna jack. All is not lost, I can stand between the corral and the pine tree and get ½ a bar.
Oh, this reminds me; out by the corral one cold night is where I discover another annoying little software “feature”. About 12:15 one morning, a signal sneaks in and the phone beeps to indicate I have a voice mail. “It must be an emergency,” think I. I go the corral and attempt to retrieve the voice mail. Every time I can connect, the only menu option is “Press 7 to erase all old messages.” I don’t want to erase anything, I want to listen to the new message. The next morning, I drive into town and use a pay phone. It seems the software designer(s) of the voice mail system thought it was more important to erase all message more than 30 days old before allowing the user to listen to their new messages. Who in the bloody hell thinks like that? Besides Microsoft, that is.
Well, the Samsung phone didn’t last long. I managed to lose it in the woods. I had learned a lesson, though. My next phone will be unlocked. Except, I can’t find an unlocked, quad-band, no camera phone with an external antenna jack at a moderate price. I settle for a tri-band Nokia for which Wilson makes a passive antenna adapter. Here, I pit myself. You would think, by now, I would have learned. I thought, all of Cingular’s networks in the area should be on the same band. Nooooooo! Apparently, all of Cingular’a towers along Hwy 175 are on the fourth band. Who knew I had to become a goddamned RF engineer to chose a cell phone?
The Nokia lasts a week before it pops out its holster and right into the toilet. I dived in after it, disassembled, and attacked it with a hair dryer as soon as possible. The phone still functioned, but he battery would not charge. I ordered another just like it without spending any time looking for an alternative. When I got the second one, I tried to find a headset for it. Nokia seems to be the only manufacturer that doesn’t use the standard 1/8 inch headphone jack. Nokia has a proprietary jack. I ordered a headset online, but it’s on back order.
All of my old analog phones had strong, consistent signals. I seldom failed to connect. Now, even in the city, I get dropouts on about half of my calls. And you call this upgrading? All of these upgrades were done to improve service to me? Cingular, you can kiss my shiny white ass. I figure if I use it often enough, Cingular will have to change their “fewest dropped calls” commercials.
