Worst of the Week: Byte me!

Hello! And welcome to our Friday column, Worst of the Week. There's a lot of nutty stuff that goes on in this industry, so this column is a chance for us at RCRWireless.com to rant and rave about whatever rubs us the wrong way. We hope you enjoy it!

And without further ado:

One of the wonders of so-called “4G” networks is their ability to efficiently transport data traffic that for a spectrum-constrained industry like the mobile industry is seen as an increasing necessity. This is of course due to a customer base that does not seem to be losing their enthusiasm for streaming high-definition cat videos to their mobile devices.

In talking with dozens of people way smarter than me on this topic, I have learned that these networks can do this because they convert all of the information to be transmitted into bytes of data that somehow travel unabated along all-IP networks.

Whenever I hear this described my mind always pictures a Popsicle stick flowing unimpeded down a river of water. I know it’s a lot more complicated than that, but I am a simple man and this is how I understand it.

One downside to all of this high efficiency mumbo-jumbo is that this information, which in the future will include both voice and data traffic, leaves carriers with no real easy way to count the traffic in a manner that simple people, like me, can understand. The easiest way from a network perspective is to track this information in byte form. However, in order to make this whole plan work customers need to be educated as to what a byte is. (And by educated I mean they must know that a byte is not like a bite and will not turn them into a vampire.)

Unlike minutes, which people reference to on a daily basis and waste endlessly watching movies in which people are turned into vampires, or “unlimited,” which people reference to when going to a buffet, trying to teach them that 1 gigabyte equals 1,024 megabytes, or 1,048,576 kilobytes, or 1,073,741,828 bytes seem a difficult exercise. (And yes, I had to look those up.)

I mean just look at the decimal system. People could not get their heads around one meter equaling 100 centimeters, equaling 1,000 millimeters. (And yes, I also had to look up all of that.)

I blame all of this on the fact that once numbers get beyond the triple digits, people in general start looking for something else to learn about, or better yet a movie to watch in which people turn into vampires. Think back to when you were in school. Math was a pretty sweet class until they started making you multiply stuff together that resulted in numbers that you just knew you would never encounter at any time in your life. (This excludes Bill Gates, Warren Buffet and Steve Jobs.)

Carriers have tried to educate people on this whole byte issue by providing handy guides that show how many bytes some standard Internet processes require. Verizon Wireless notes on its handy-dandy converter thingy that a text-only e-mail message is the equivalent to 20 kilobytes (or 20,480 bytes), while one minute of streaming video is equal to four megabytes (or 4,194,304 bytes). They even provide a very handy data calculator to further inform consumers of data usage.

AT&T Mobility, which recently “updated” their mobile data packages by downgrading the amount of data available per dollar, said it would also send reminders to consumers when they are getting close to their capped data allotment. Seems nice enough.

But, all of these “solutions” are flawed in their execution by my previous premise that they rely on numbers greater than 999. Sure, consumers may look at those numbers and think they understand what they are seeing, but in reality we all know that 95% of them will probably sprain a pinky finger trying to delete the message as quickly as possible.

So, is there a solution to this quagmire?

I say we just open up the spigots and let the water run free. Sure, this will likely crash networks and make the current “my iPhone doesn’t work” syndrome seem like a pleasant memory, but this is the only way for people to understand that wireless is really not something that can just be neutral to all network traffic. There will of course plenty of hemming and hawing as people are unable to make a phone call because everyone just has to see the latest preview for some vampire flick, but I think this will be the only way for them to learn.

Harsh and unrealistic? Most definitely. But until carriers can come up with a solution that most people can understand, or a new numbering system that does not exceed 999, I think it’s the only answer.

OK, enough of that.

Thanks for checking out this week's Worst of the Week column. And now for some extras:

--In a move that could only be seen as rubbing salt in an open, festering wound, Bloomberg late last week came out with its rankings of the worst merger and acquisitions in recent years. The telecom world was well represented on the list by Sprint Nextel Corp., which garnered the No. 3 spot with its formation following Sprint Corp.’s $35 billion acquisition of Nextel Communications Inc. way back in 2005.

The story noted the combination led to hundreds of thousands of customers defecting to competitors, a stock price pushed 47% lower than its peers and a company that is now valued at around one-sixth the $70 billion it was worth when the deal was announced. Those facts do seem to indeed back the story’s claim.

While many (most) would concede that the deal was indeed a head scratcher when it was announced, it’s hard to fault the uniting of the 2.5 GHz spectrum holdings of each company has done for their future plans. Sure, that spectrum has been offloaded onto Clearwire Corp., but Sprint Nextel still owns a majority stake in that venture, which has a spectrum depth to deploy next-generation services that dwarf their competition. Heck, they have so much spectrum that Clearwire’s CEO has said the company was looking at possibly selling some off. A bold statement for any established wireless carrier.

The selling off of some of those spectrum assets may be the only way to show the real value the combination of Sprint and Nextel. Sure, it likely won’t bring back those hundreds of thousands of customers or even embiggen the carrier’s market capitalization to its previous heyday. But, it could at least show that the deal was not made in vain.

I welcome your comments. Please send me an e-mail at dmeyer@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx