Yesterday Reuters covered a breaking story: AT&T Wireless now have the ability to SMS across the Atlantic.
What the hell took them so long?
I signed up with T-Mobile about a year ago. Shortly after finding the Mobitopians on IRC, I sent a quick SMS to Jim to see if I had properly configured delivery confirmation. Sure enough a minute or so after I sent the message, I got a delivery confirmation. A few minutes later, I got a reply from Jim.
Transatlantic texting has been working for quite some time, thankyouverymuch. I’m glad that AT&T is finally catching up, but they’re a bit late to the game.
Have you ever noticed that just as every mobile phone seems to be missing that one thing that would make it perfect? The same holds true for mobile operators.
For example, T-Mobile is my carrier, and I love them. But GPRS on a 3650 is painfully slow, and there’s no word about T-Mobile rolling out EDGE or other 3G data services in the US. Everyone that I have spoken to at customer service has been excellent and helpful.
And then there’s AT&T. When researching my new phone and carrier, I was seriously looking at AT&T Wireless and T-Mobile. When I went to the AT&T retail store, I got a very Sprint-ish vibe. The sales staff was there when you wanted to actually purchase a phone, but were nowhere to be seen if you had a question that didn’t involve a purchase. Their data plans didn’t seem very appealing at the time, and their current EDGE plans are out of my tax bracket.
But AT&T has EDGE. T-Mobile does not, and it doesn’t look like they will any time soon.
And so, each carrier and each phone is missing that one thing that would make them perfect. So what is your dream team phone and dream team carrier? I think mine would be a 7610 + IR + EDGE for everyday in the pocket. In a fantasy world I’d also have a 9500 in my satchel. It’s too big for an everyday phone, but I love my 9290 and love the functionality that an updated version could give me. My dream team carrier would be ATT-Mobileular. It would have enough infrastructure that I always had a signal. The data would flow fast and cheaply. When you dialed customer service, they’d be helpful. International roaming would be straighforward at a low rate. I would still pay less than the locals for data access while roaming in the UK. It wouldn’t break my bank account.
That would be lovely.