The funny thing is, I think there's a broad sense in which I agree that the direction of technology in closed markets (like cell phones) does not always coincide with the wishes of the consumer. But that's not what Hering wrote. He used his platform to make a personal complaint, which is actually pretty common for him. I just wish he'd stop assuming that what he thinks is a universal concern and learn to make an argument that relies on more than bland assertion:The world no longer needs a good five-cent cigar. What the world needs instead is a cell phone technology that works and is applied to all such calls.
If you receive a lot of telephone calls from various people and locations, and if your hearing might have been better a few decades ago, you know the frustration of the modern age: the lousy quality of the acoustics in far too many calls.
Many calls are marred by interference. Others sound as though they originate inside an empty 50-gallon drum. Still others give you every second word and the the first half of each word in between.
There is, in other words, good reason for the ad campaign that asks: “Can you hear me now?”
The answer is no. Or just a little. Or, well, I missed the last few words because you must have gone through a tunnel. Or stood under a tree. Or turned your head sideways.
Voice communication by telephone used to be a wonder of the modern world. We have made it more ubiquitous but less reliable. Progress? No, it’s going backward. (hh)
Wednesday, December 5, 2007
Memo to Hering: The DH is Not Your Private Diary
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4 comments:
HH has reached the bottom of his rhetorical barrel with this. Did anyone even stay awake long enough to read the whole thing?
Sounds like someone had an important call dropped.
Funny. I agree with the old boy on this one. Unlike copper land lines, the cell phone networks adjust quality to traffic. To get more calls through, they allocate less bandwidth and that results in the low quality connection. Telephone technology never compromised before this and as a consumer I counted on getting reliable service when I signed that multi year contract.
"Five nines reliability-" acceptable servics 99.999% of the time, that has been the standard.
I actually gave up my much cheaper land line, as many do, meaning that the cell phone providers are no longer a nice-to-have additional service, but actually the telco provider now. The public utility commission may need to hold them to the kind of quality standards and reasonable profitability that traditional phone companies have always faced.
As much as I detest regulation, when a public good (radio frequencies) are allocated to private enterprise, private enterprise should be accountable to provide quality service else the allocation should go to another company.
I actually agree with the content of his editorial - but I think he loses his effective by framing it the way he does.
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