Closer To The Ideal

I’ve already written about my troubles with Sprint. So I was, of course, interested to read this article about big job cuts at Sprint:

Sprint, the No. 3 wireless carrier behind AT&T (T) and Verizon Wireless (VZ), has struggled since it merged with Nextel in 2005. The $70 billion merger, engineered by Hesse’s predecessor, Gary Forsee, was supposed to create a wireless behemoth that could steamroll the competition while pushing boundaries in wireless.

Instead, Sprint stumbled as it tried to blend starkly different cultures of the two companies while trying to reconcile their incompatible wireless technologies.

Sprint wound up alienating customers, who bolted by the thousands. Sprint’s dismal performance eventually cost Forsee his job. Hesse, a former AT&T executive with long ties to wireless, was recruited from a Sprint spinoff, Embarq, to replace him.

Dawson says it’s not too late to save Sprint, a grand name in global telecommunications. “But they need to make some big changes and do it quickly.

“The challenge for them is to figure out how to save the Nextel customers,” and move them to Sprint’s network “rather than let them walk out the door,” Dawson says.

Actually, they should worrry about losing their Sprint customers. I’m a Sprint customer, and I’m frustrated that their automated bill paying service keeps telling me “You do not have an account with Sprint.”

Danah Boyd has a great post up about how the cost of cell phone use shapes the social life of teens:

I’m fascinated by how U.S. teens build intricate models of which friends are available via mobile and which aren’t. Teens know who is on what plan, who can be called after 7PM, who can be called after 9PM, who can receive texts, who is over their texting for the month, etc. It’s part of their mental model of their social network and knowing this is a core exchange of friendship.

Psychologically, all-you-can-eat plans change everything. Rather than having to mentally calculate the number of texts sent and received (because the phones rarely do it for you and the carriers like to make that info obscure), a floodgate of opportunities is suddenly opened. The weights are lifted and freedom reigns. The result? Zero to a thousand text messages in under a month! Those on all-you-can-eat plans go hog wild. Every mundane thought is transmitted and the phones go buzz buzz buzz. Those with restrictive plans are treated with caution, left out of the fluid communication flow and brought in for more practical or content-filled purposes (or by sig others who ignore these norms and face the ire of parents).