As you might imagine I have heard directly from thousands for disgusted AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile and Sprint customers over the 10 years. The one common theme that does not seem to be improving is transparency and self service technical support. Here are 10 way I think Google will bring disruptive change to an old stodgy wireless industry that has way too NIH syndrome (not invented here).
- Choose the service that works best at your home or office. Maybe its VoIP and roaming?
- Self-service automation for technical support with SnapIn purchased by Nuance.
- Display network outages, dead zones, dropped calls and network congestion on a map.
- No more phone customer service and tier 1, tier 2, tier 3 support idiots. Email does work :)
- Seamless Wi-Fi / VoIP hand off when you want to call overseas or someone on Google Talk or Skype
- No more .10 - .25 cent fees for text messages when Google can give it away for free with ads.
- Voice and data fees may soon become FREE if location based advertising takes off
- Cloud based operating systems is a no brainier for consumers and is slowly adopted by enterprise
- Network speed, dead zones and dropped calls all become monitored by an independent 3rd party
- AT&T, Verizon, Sprint & T-Mobile become location based advertising experts instead of dumb pipes.
My recent problems with my G1 Android phone (3rd phone in 30 days) and experience dealing with T-Mobile's horrendous technical support has inspired me to write about why I think Google needs to take control of the industry. I am on my 3rd Android phone in 3 days and T-Mobile has no clue why I keep getting kicked off of the network. Just to be fair I think T-Mobile's customer support is courteous and friendly but they are in over their heads with smart phones and incompetent employees. As smart phones get more complicated for connectivity the need for self-service automation is apparent.
