BY MIKE VON WAHLDE
Associate Editor, INTERNET TELEPHONY

A Modest Wireless Proposal

You wireless users follow fashion more than The Artist Formerly Known As The Artist Formerly Known As Prince! Always wanting smaller phones, bigger displays, WAP, iMode, whatevermore, more, more. And if a provider won't give it to you, you bid farewell and jump ship. You have that right after all. In this land of the free and home of consumerism, it seems to be our job not only to feed capitalism, but to propagate competition -- it is considered a higher good. However, I can't help but wonder if maybe everyone's service might improve if we weren't so quick to change. You should be ashamed!

Darn it, the American way is changing. What happened to rugged America? What happened to the "grin and bear it"-type services that used to define us as a country? No, things have come to this: Provide or get out, we say, and do the legwork and hold my hand while you're at it. Here is a perfect example: I was at a ski area the other day and when safety was not up to standard, I told the ski patrol. I didn't run off the mountain and go to a different hill, I took matters into my own hands and tried to make the situation better for everyone else. Ask yourself not what your service provider can do for you, but what you can do for your service provider!

Telephia, a company that provides, among other services, market research figures on the mobile wireless use, states that more than 20 percent of wireless users have changed providers in the last year. In addition to that, another 8 to 10 percent suspended or disconnected their service; 44 percent told Telephia that they are not committed to staying with their current service in the coming year. People, have you no decency? How do you expect things to get better if you jump around so much? Trying to save money, huh? How many credit cards do you own? That's what I thought.

In a different study released only a month earlier than the one cited above, Telephia found that 65 percent of wireless data users are satisfied with their devices, and on average rated them at a 7 out of 10. Some might say that this kind of research is taintedI would like to offer that maybe consumers are crazy.

Look at yourselves, people! You throw away technology like there is no tomorrow. You move your tech stocks around faster than the NASDAQ can blink! Bad technology won't lead us into a recession -- short term, non-ideological thinking will. This type of market contamination is driving us helter-skelter from service provider to service service, and does no one any good. Companies need money to integrate, and they need people who are willing to stick through times of development in order to produce new services.

Back to the stats. I could get into describing how Telephia arrived at these numbers, but why? Take a look around you and you will see it's true. How many times have you cursed your wireless device in the past week? Mine almost became part of the landscape on Hwy. 1 last weekend. I understand the frustration of not being able to make contact when necessary, but switching carriers not only hurts competition, it hurts your chances of ever getting better service.

"Stickiness" is a popular term in the jargon-addled world of the Internet. Stickiness is what we all seek -- being able to grab attention and hold on to it. The flip side is that we are now expected to jump more than we are to stay. What does that say to the service providers? It says make things cheap, make them quick, and make them out of translucent plastic.

So while I may sometimes want to toss both my phone and my service provider towards a large body of water, I am sticking with them. Give them some time, see where their vision is going to get them. Tell them when there is a problem or an issue with pricing, and they just might rectify it. In the meantime, you can switch around four or five times and get a few new phones. But I'll be here, just like I have been, with my personalized, portable solution to the green cubicle at the office, and I'm sticking to it.

At least for now.

Mike von Wahlde welcomes your comments at mvonwahlde@tmcnet.com.