Click here to sign up for a FREE Refer-it Webmaster Account
Find a job or the right person
|
|
|
(or, The Diary of a Confessed Caffeine Abuser)
Wireless Or Clueless?
AT&T has unveiled their new PocketNet wireless Web browsing and email
service at an incredibly low price. Before you sign up, read the fine
print and you might be astounded at what you're not getting.
By David "Spam Me and Die" Fiedler
Wireless.
Wireless data.
Unlimited wireless data!
Free unlimited wireless Web access!!
How cool is that?
Let's find out.
A week or so ago, AT&T Wireless Services introduced its Digital PocketNet service (and no, it's not pocketnet.com, but I envy the guy who owns that domain if he got it before they launched their service). I was very excited when I heard some of the phrases they use in their advertising, such as "unlimited access to the wireless Internet", "basic plan is available free with a wireless Internet-ready phone and any AT&T Wireless Services Digital PCS Calling Plan", "unlimited e-mail service for just $6.99 extra a month", and so on. In fact, even though I've been a diehard analog cellular user (mainly because digital isn't fully deployed in my neck of the woods), this sounded like it would be enough to get me to sign up for digital once and for all.
But then I took a careful look at the brochure, and found out one very important detail. "The Wireless Internet", as defined by AT&T Wireless Services, is effectively the set of Web sites belonging to AT&T and its marketing partners! There are six (count 'em, six) listed in the brochure, and while there are a number of others listed in their Web site, you are essentially a consumer trapped in their universe by your new phone. That's right...you can't visit just any hoi-polloi Web site you want.
Perhaps this is the way big corporations intend to fight the freedom of the Internet...by creating captive audiences with "free" services, who are limited to where they can go, who they can spend money with, and what they're allowed to look at. It's as if the free Internet service providers not only displayed ads on your screen, but only let you visit certain sites.
The moral of the story: read the fine print. Perhaps AT&T will become famous, in years to come, as "Misleading Advertiser of the Millennium", but it's still early in the century. Even so...wow.
Here are some of their Terms and Conditions for Wireless Service, and it's not easy to find on their Web site, either:
The information available on the wireless Internet is significantly less than Internet information available on your PC because different protocols are used.Well, I don't know if that's quite true. It's true that the sites have been specially coded to work on a cell phone with a lousy 6-line display, but I'm pretty sure the CDPD network they use is based on standard protocols.
Some of the AT&T Digital PocketNet service compatible phones can also be connected to your PC using a cable (tethered). If you choose to connect your phone to your PC for use as a modem a $.05 per kilobyte charge for each individual session will apply in addition to the monthly fee.Say what?
Listen, I currently hook to my ancient analog cell phone using a $50 interface box and a standard Palm modem, and I get between 9.6 and 14.4 Kbps. That means I'm sending about a kilobyte per second, with old technology. They're using digital, which is much more reliable, and they're charging the equivalent of $3/minute for data calls? Most emails run 5 KB or so, which means that just checking your email would run into quite a bit of money. Hitting the internet.com home page would run you a cool $2 or so.
That's hardly free. But more important, since it actually costs them no more money to send a kilobyte of data from your PC than from your phone, you can now see that the entire point of this "service" is to make money off of your perceived value as a high-tech consumer!
Of course, this shouldn't surprise anyone else with a long memory. Back when "Touch-Tone" (TM) was a new thing, The Phone Company (AT&T) would charge you an extra dollar or so a month for the convenience and coolness of having this high-tech new service, rather than actually dialing a phone with pulses like everyone else. It was only when some consumer organization or other discovered that using Touch-Tone actually saved AT&T money because it allowed cheaper, computerized switching equipment, that the charge was forced to go away.
If you choose to use your AT&T Digital PocketNet service to access content provided by third parties, view third party web sites or purchase products from third parties, then your subscriber identification, which includes your mobile number, will be available to the third party provider. The way third parties handle your personal identification and information related to the use of their service is governed by their policies.Perhaps here we have the meat of the matter. Their marketing partners would be in a great position to spam or harass you unmercifully, once they have direct access to your name, phone number, and email address.
The maximum size for each individual e-mail message is limited to 2MB, with overall mailbox capacity limited to 50 e-mail messages. Once the 50 e-mail message capacity has been reached, even if e-mail messages have not been opened or read, additional incoming e-mail messages will result in messages being deleted to make room for the new messages. AT&T reserves the right to block information from certain domains to protect you from unsolicited information, transmission or distribution of illegal content, or to protect the AT&T network. Therefore, e-mail messages and other content may be deleted before delivery.Oh, that's customer service all right! We'll decide whether you should be seeing your email for yourself. And we'll even delete it before you read it!
I think I'll pass this one up. Don't tell me about the RIM Blackberry either...it's nice, but what people really need is something that works on the true Internet, wirelessly, and can operate standalone (like the Blackberry) or as a modem. It would be nice if it was a phone, but that's not totally necessary. I can't believe something like that is more than 6 months away...
-- D. Fiedler
David Fiedler is Editor-in-Chief of WebDeveloper.com®, and his opinions are definitely his own.
Last modified: Thu Jun 15 06:20:51 EDT 2000
Visit the complete archive for this column!
Copyright © 1999-2000
internet.com Corp.All Rights Reserved. Legal Notices.
Contact the WebDeveloper.com® staff
Last modified: Thu Jun 15 06:20:51 EDT 2000
Refresh Daily
Join Editor-in-Chief David Fiedler
and find truth, justice, and a clue or two.
ActiveX / VBscript Animated GIF Archive Browsers CGI / Perl Database Connectivity Design / Graphics E-Commerce HTML-Advanced: DHTML, CSS HTML / Site Authoring Tools Intranet/Groupware Java JavaScript Multimedia: Audio / Video / Streaming Technologies Opinions Refresh Daily: Editorial Column Security Servers & Server Tools Site Design / Graphics Site Management / Marketing / Log File Analysis Tutorials VRML / 3D XML
