The fear that's driving AT&T's smartphone data plan policies

AT&T, one of my least favorite vendors, raised our family mobile costs last week by about $450 a year. That's a risky thing to do to customers, as Netflix recently discovered.

Once I calmed down I tried to understand what motivated such a desperate move ...

Gordon's Notes: AT&T and the mandatory iPhone tax - even out of contract phones must pay

For about two years my son has used my old iPhone on our family plan. He has never had a contract and he doesn't have a data plan. The phone is configured not to use cellular data...

Today AT&T enrolled him in a mandatory data plan because "he has a smartphone". His text messaging stopped working, perhaps because his cellular data was turned off...

... [I think ... ] They are preparing for the end of their text messaging revenue stream.

They figure they can hold onto voice for a while; longer than most of us think. They do, however, expect Apple, Google, Facebook and others to steal text messaging. So in the short term they're getting as much money as they can out of text messaging, while ensuring every single customer has a data plan...

When I wrote that I hadn't read a GigaOm post from 11/3 ...

Operators better say goodbye to the SMS cash cow — Broadband News and Analysis

... The carrier cash cow of SMS text messaging is on the wane, driven by third-party messaging apps that include BlackBerry Messenger, iMessage, Skype and others. The trend was highlighted Thursday by Wireless Intelligence, which used data from Dutch mobile operator regulator OPTA ...

According to OPTA, the total number of SMS sent in the Netherlands stood at 5.7 billion for the first six months of the year, down 2.5 percent from 5.9 billion in 2H 2010, even though total SMS revenue rose slightly (0.6 percent) to EUR378 million during the period.,,,

... This year, AT&T changed its messaging plans to push new subscribers into an all-or-nothing price plan where they pay per text or pay up for unlimited. The bet is most people who weren’t on unlimited plans will find themselves paying more or getting stuck with insanely high bills for sending a few too many texts.

... That’s how AT&T is squeezing out the last bit of value from its cash cow, but it’s undoubtedly aware that such draconian measures or too-high-rates on the unlimited side might push people over to the third-party apps even faster. The downside to most of those apps is that users have to make sure their friends are also on the service, which can be complicated. For carriers, the downside is they are trading high-margin texting revenue for barely profitable data use.

So expect more texting and data plan changes, and a continued focus on machine-to-machine communications, as well as more apps that try to make third-party messaging across different platforms easier...

Turns out we're right on target then, because our response to AT&T's mandatory data plan/cost increase is to drop our $30/month unlimited texting plan (offsets price increase exactly) and switch to a combination of Facebook Messenger and Google Voice while disabling all texting [2]. As predicted, AT&T's moves are accelerating customer migration from their most profitable revenue stream.

See also:

• Gordon's Tech: Testing Facebook Messenger as a texting alternative (4 and 3G)
• Gordon's Tech: AT&T Smart Limits for Wireless is almost worthless
• Gordon's Notes: AT&T and the mandatory iPhone tax - even out of contract phones must pay

[1] If Apple were to make iMessage available as an app and independent of texting we'd go that way; we're still exploring options.
[2] AT&T is required to do that on request. They don't like to admit it's possible. Say you want "administrative texting only". We also dropped a $5/month "Smart Limits for Wireless" plan because that is useless with smarphone accounts. There are other responses that AT&T won't like. As long as we have to pay a data plan, we might as well get a contract too. That redirects AT&T's revenue to Apple, and let us make money by selling either the new or older phones.

The sharing challenge: access, topic and identity. Why G+ fails.

Setting aside the act of mass datacide that moved Google up my corporate evil scale, G+ suffers from a fundamental Circle problem. It may be an attempt to work around Facebook patents rather than a misguided design, but either way it doesn't work.

G+ provides these tools for publication and subscription:

• A single identity. (In this case, identity is equivalent to a maximal set of Identity-Circles + Public)
• Circle: both Access Control and Topic definition and Subscription-filter option
• Person level blocks

These aren't sufficient. They put far too much of a burden on the publisher to create and maintain a multitude of Circles that pre-coordinate Access Control and Topic definition [1]. The pre-coordination work fails due to combinatorial explosion [2].

A full set of controls looks like this.

• Multiple identity: where identity is a set of access controls and topic definitions.
• Access controls: who can see what.
• Topic definitions: what are the topics, so subscribers who can see a stream can choose what they follow within that stream
• Person blocks: hide all comments from a person

A full set of controls seems more complex, but the workload largely falls on the Publisher, not the consumer -- and the combinatorial explosion problem is resolved. Subscribers choose which topic to follow. Unfollowing all topics is equivalent to blocking a person's posts but not their comments.

Google Reader Social had no access controls (that I remember), but it did allow multiple identities (an identity is equivalent to a subset of topics). The topic controls were very weak (subscribe to tags - almost never used), but the UI made it very easy to pick items of interest from a large stream. The G+ UI makes the combinatorial problem much more significant.

Google has promised pseudonym support. That will be roughly equivalent to a subset operation on Circles. Boolean operations on Circles would also somewhat alleviate the publisher combinatorial problem.

Alleviate, but not eliminate. Sooner or later, G+ will need to separate access control from topic definition.

(I'm grateful to a G+ comment from Peter C that helped me think this through.)

[1] Note too the 3 people on earth who'd probably appreciate this. This is identical to the pre- and post-coordination problems that bedevil anyone who works with concept based knowledge representation ontologies, including clinical terminologies/vocabularies like SNOMED and (yech) ICD-10-CM and ICD-10-PCS.
[2] A Sept 2011 WSJ post on "injury by falling turtle" in ICD-10-CM causes of injury illustrates this also. See #1.

Gordon's scale of corporate evil - 3rd edition

Top end of the scale is 15. It's a linear scale.

My personal scale rates large for-profit corporations. CARE International is provided as a baseline measure and Philip Morris shall forever define the upper limits of corporate evil.

1. Philip Morris: 15
2. Exxon: 13
3. Goldman Sachs: 12
4. United Healthcare: 11
5. AT&T and Verizon (tied): 11
6. Facebook: 10
7. Google: 8
8. Average publicly traded company: 8
9. Microsoft: 7
10. Apple: 5
11. CARE International: 1 (They're not a PTC, so this is merely a non-evil reference point)What's your ranking?

There's been a lot of action since the 2009 1st edition. Google was once tied with Apple, but the manner and actions of the Reader affair moved them, for the first time, above Microsoft. They're heading into Facebook territory, even as Facebook itself is improving. AT&T and Verizon are slowly rising up the scale , breaking into the top five for the first time.

Conversely Microsoft has been relatively angelic over the past two years. They are incompetent, yes, but this is a scale of corporate evilness. Similarly Netflix is not so much evil as incompetent.

Apple, for all its sins, has stayed relatively low on the chart. They take our money, they mostly give us what we expect. They did nuke several customer services, but with a 1 year warning (vs. Google's 1 week warning before eliminating my shared reader items).

Some past editions for comparison:

• Gordon's Notes: Gordon's scale of corporate evil - 2nd edition(12/2010)
• Gordon's Notes: Gordon's scale of corporate evil - 1st edition (12/2009)

AT&T and the mandatory iPhone tax - even out of contract phones must pay

For about two years my son has used my old iPhone on our family plan. He has never had a contract and he doesn't have a data plan. The phone is configured not to use cellular data, it does have text messaging. He has data access only via wifi.

Today AT&T enrolled him in a mandatory data plan because "he has a smartphone". His text messaging stopped working, perhaps because his cellular data was turned off.

This was not completely unexpected, though AT&T's policy has been ambiguous when it came to off-contract customers ...

• Gordon's Notes: AT&T: In case you forget why you hate the company (but not the customer reps) (8/2011)
• Gordon's Notes: Does anyone know what AT&T's smartphone data plan rules really are? (8/2010)

I called AT&T, put his SIM card into his old phone and they said they'd remove the data plan. However, they haven't done it yet [1], the charge is still showing on our family bill. Instead of enrolling him in the lowest cost data plan, he was auto-enrolled in the highest cost plan - $26/month.

So not only are iPhones carrier-locked in the US, they also incur an unwanted data plan even when they cannot use any cellular data, even when the user has no subsidized phone, and even when the user has no contract.

I am having a very bad week with evil corporations. First Google, now AT&T. If I wasn't already an OWS fan I'd sign up.

I'm researching what will happen if I get an AT&T GoPhone package and swap the SIM card into the iPhone. If that works I'll take both of our kids off the family plan. With iOS 5 on my iPhone 4 we can also drop our family texting plan and simply pay per text. In the meantime I'll review the policies of Sprint, Verizon and anyone else.

AT&T has complicated my life, but perhaps we'll save some money.

For what it's worth, I have filed a complaint with Minnesota's Attorney General. Even with the help of CU I couldn't find a physical address to use for AT&T, though other companies are listed. Evidently they hide well. eHow has it: AT&T Mobility, 5565 Glenridge Connector, Atlanta, GA 30342. (I wouldn't be surprised if they've changed their address to avoid the law.)

[1] On a 2nd call I was told it would be reversed.

See also:

• How to File Consumer Complaints Against ATT Wireless | eHow.com
• Gordon's Tech: Giving your old iPhone to your kid: working around AT&T's mandatory data plan

Update 11/4/11: I've been ruminating on what AT&T is trying to do. I think they have a rational goal, which they are pursuing in the blundering and inept manner of almost all publicly traded corporations.

They are preparing for the end of their text messaging revenue stream.

They figure they can hold onto voice for a while; longer than most of us think. They do, however, expect Apple, Google, Facebook and others to steal text messaging. So in the short term they're getting as much money as they can out of text messaging, while ensuring every single customer has a data plan. They can't get away with mandating a data plan for a dumb phone customer, but they would do that if they could manage the outrage.

Eventually they'll give up on text messaging entirely, and make do with data plan revenue. That transition may be painful, so they'll try anything they can imagine to increase data plan usage.

Update 11/23/11: Our Attorney General sent a letter to AT&T, which prompted a call to my home from a member of their "executive response team". Nice to know they have some sensitivity to these kinds of actions. I'll schedule a discussion with them.

The nine heroes

This is purest idiocy ...

Why affirm ‘In God we trust’? - - The Washington Post

Yesterday, the U.S. House of Representatives spent a good bit of time debating a resolution reaffirming “In God We Trust” as the official national motto. (Are you surprised that the vote was 396-9 in favor of the motto?)...

So who were the 9 heroes?

They are:

Nay	NY-5	Ackerman, Gary [D]
Nay	MI-3	Amash, Justin [R]
Nay	CA-32	Chu, Judy [D]
Nay	MO-5	Cleaver, Emanuel [D]
Nay	CA-15	Honda, Michael [D]
Nay	GA-4	Johnson, Henry [D]
Nay	NY-8	Nadler, Jerrold [D]
Nay	VA-3	Scott, Robert [D]
Nay	CA-13	Stark, Fortney [D]

In addition 2 other representatives are, if not heroes, at least not cowards ...

Present	MN-5	Ellison, Keith [D]
Present	NC-12	Watt, Melvin [D]

Ellison is local - he's the only Muslim representative in the House. Come to think of it, given his religion, just abstaining is heroic.

The biggest surprise is Justin Amash, the Republican. I really didn't think there were any left of his caliber.

Sadly, my own representative, Betty McCollum, caved.

Refugees from the wreck of Google Reader ...

Forbes ...

The Google Reader Redesign is an Ugly, Lonely User Experience - Ed Kain - Forbes

... On the overall changes as well as the unhelpful response from Google to its user base I give the new Google Reader a big, fat “E” for Evil. I guess the company’s slogan really was just a slogan. What fools we were to think it might have been anything more than that...

Kain is write about "sharebros". I never heard of it, and I was a mad sharer.

The Atlantic Wire

The Sharebros Are Building a Google Reader Replacement - Technology - The Atlantic Wire

Good article about Hivemined, despite the "sharebros".

More from the wire ...

Google Reader Backlash: A Fuss Over Nothing? - Rebecca J. Rosen - Technology - The Atlantic

... In a few ways, mostly aesthetic, Google Reader does seem better...

But for people who used Google Reader's sharing features, the upgrade is a big loss, for all intents and purposes ruining that aspect of Reader. The old sharing methods have been totally supplanted with Google+ tools, which, quality aside, are too different to satisfy the same needs. I'm going to dive into the nitty-gritty here, so consider yourself warned....

... The location of buttons, while annoying, does not ruin Google Reader's sharing utility.

... What does is having to read everything on Google+. First, it takes the experience out of Reader completely, making reading RSS feeds and reading your friends' gleanings from their RSS feeds two different activities. Second, it means that no longer can you read your friends' finds without also reading the other stuff they've posted on Google+...

... Finally, the worst part of reading shared items in Google+ is the stream. In Google Reader, you could easily come back to a post when a new comment appeared, or even put of reading certain streams until the weekend or until you left work. Now, once an item moves down the stream, the only way to get back to it is to scroll down. This will be the end of the Google Reader conversations that were the heart of Google Reader sharing...

There's a Facebook site for we shattered refugees. There I found a ranting Hitler parody that's particularly appropriate. I like the last line. Me too.

Google 1.0 is dead. When did it start dying?

Google 1.0 ended October 31, 2011. It wasn't just the vast destruction of cloud data, though this was an order of magnitude greater, and far more sudden, then Google's past kills.

It was the destruction of data and the incompetent design. Google is not just being evil, they're being stupid evil.

We're in the Google 2.0 era. Maybe they'll recover someday, but grim times are ahead.

Marco Siegler said it well ...

→ Faith No More:

... I specifically remember being excited about the launch of Google Calendar in 2006 because Google was a company cranking out hit after hit after hit. Great products. But recently, what have they done? ...

... That’s maybe my biggest problem with Google. They release something, and I no longer have any faith that it’s going to be any good. It’s hard to get excited about a company like that. It’s the same reason why it’s hard to get excited when Microsoft and Yahoo release new things. The track record just isn’t there any more. The faith is gone.

Google was great in 2006. I remember them doing exciting things in 2008. So when did Google start dying?

The Apple-Google war began in July 2009, two years after the launch of Google Android. I think Google began dying when they went to war with Apple.

How to replace Google Reader

Google Reader Social is dead. Thanks to its creators for showing what could be done, and thanks go Google for leaving room in the market to do this right.

Fortunately, it's not hard to do it right. At least, it's not hard for Reeder or NetNewsWire to do it right.

Even better, there's money in this market. We Google Reader infovores are ... different. Ok, not quite human. Whatever. We'll pay to reestablish what was lost.

The solution has the following components:

a. The shared item store: Posterous, Blogger, Wordpress, Tumblr (any blog-like thing will do)

b. The shared item data: Title and any one or none of: annotation, excerpt, url (all editable).

c. The tweet: Title, url (short), annotation.

d. Optional: A G+ pointer to the persistent shared item.

e. Optional: A Facebook pointer to the persistent shared item.

f. The platform: Reeder, NetNewsWire or a non-Google web based feed reader.

g. Bookmarklet to invoke the platform

This is how it works:

1. Using NetNewsWire or Reeder.app (iOS) or Reeder.app (Mac) I see an item I want to share.
2. I click a button or swipe, etc.
3. I get a Google Reader style data entry area - title, url, excerpt, annotation. (Note I can simply share a note).
4. On submission Write to the persistent store and create the Tweet.
5. Note the minimal action set is two clicks. One to show the data entry area, one to submit it. Optionally provide a secondary 1 click action that shares title, url, annotation.

That's it. That's all we need. The rest is details. This implementation meets my replacement criteria. If I use Wordpress on Dreamhost as my persistent store, for example, I have the data and I'm paying for the service and for the platform. That's what I want.

No rights reserved for any of this. It's all public. Anyone can use it. Do whatever you want.

The end of Google Reader shares and the rebirth Gordon's twitter feed

(cross posted to Gordon's Notes and Gordon's Tech)

Google Reader shares are gone.

I'm not going to switch to sharing via G+.

I will, however, be sharing via Twitter: John Gordon (jgordonshare) on Twitter.

That Twitter stream used to consist of feed-generated tweets from GR shares. Now it's the closest thing I have to an archive of those shares.

Now it will be the primary place I share -- with the help of the Twitter share bookmarklet.

Lessons from Dapocalypse Reader

I'm processing Google's day of infamy. I've written my Dear Google letter. So what lessons do I take away from this?

Here are a few ...

1. If you're not paying for it, you're the product.
2. If you can't store Cloud data locally, you're just renting.
3. It's time for me to learn Twitter. I've started; there will be more on that in future posts.
4. I'm done with G+. Why should I trust Google to save my G+ content? That would be like going for date with a serial killer.
5. I need to move my blogs to a service I'm paying for. (That won't be easy.)
6. My components of a knowledge share solution post is simpler now.

I'm sure I'll come up with a few more.

Dapocalypse now: Google's day of infamy

I shared thousands of articles through Google Reader.

They were a part of my extended memory. I often searched that repository.

This evening they are gone.

I had expected bad news, but I didn't expect the entire shared story repository to vanish.

Yes, there's a JSON export. I will do it of course, but Google is not providing any tools to navigate or transform that data set. The export of data in a non-useable format is no export at all.

Dapocalypse now. Google, I want a divorce.

Update: The JSON export links aren't working for me.

This is your life: Kiyoshi Tanimoto

Kiyoshi Tanimoto was a Christian minister who survived the nuclear attack on Hiroshima. My son was asked to write about his life.

In the course of research we came across a 1950s television program called "This is your life: Kiyoshi Tanimoto". The program included Reverend Tanimoto meeting the man who piloted the Enola Gay.

It starts with a realtime advertisement for cleaning products and cosmetics, though, mercifully, the sponsor omitted some later commercials. They did manage a nail commercial after the conclusion of the most intense part of the program. "Not a chip anywhere ... Hazel Bishop long lasting nail polish ...".

The word surreal was created to describe this program. 1950s America was both yesterday and a very long time ago.

How Minneapolis went from bicycle bust to bicycle boom in 30 years

Great review of how Minneapolis became a bicycle town following the Dutch model of bike/car separation, with very encouraging news from St Paul ...

Behind the Bicycle Boom - JAY WALLJASPER

People across the country were surprised last year when Bicycling magazine named Minneapolis America’s “#1 Bike City” over Portland, Oregon, which had claimed the honor for many years....

... This year the city is adding 57 new miles of bikeways to the 127 miles already built. An additional 183 miles are planned over the next twenty years.  By 2020, almost every city resident will live within a mile of an off-street bikeway and within a half-mile of a bike lane, vows city transportation planner Donald Pfaum...

... it boasts arguably the nation’s finest network of off-street bicycle trails. It was chosen as one of four pilot projects (along with Marin County, California; Columbia, Missouri; and Sheboygan County, Wisconsin) for the federal Nonmotorized Transportation Pilot Program, which aims to shift a share of commuters out of cars and onto bikes or foot...

... Minneapolis features two “ bike freeways,” that are the envy of bicyclists around the country. The Cedar Lake Trail, and the Midtown Greenway both connect to numerous other trails, creating an off-road network that reaches deep into St. Paul and surrounding suburbs. Intersections are infrequent along these routes, which boosts riders’ speed along with their sense of safety and comfort. In a good sign for the future of biking in the Twin Cities, Minneapolis engineers recently reversed a stop sign to give bikes priority over cars where the Midtown Greenway meets 5th Avenue South...

... While only a quarter of riders are women nationally, the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey reports 37 percent in Minneapolis...

... Since the 1970s Dutch planners have separated bicyclists from motor vehicles on most arterial streets, with impressive results.  The rate of biking has doubled throughout the country, now accounting for 27 percent of all trips. Women make up 55 percent of two-wheel traffic and citizens over 55 ride in numbers slightly higher than the national average. Nearly every Dutch schoolyard is filled with kids’ bikes parked at racks and lampposts.
The Dutch also that as the number of riders rises, their safety increases.  Statistics in Minneapolis show the same results. Shaun Murphy, Non-Motorized Transportation Program Coordinator in the Public Works Department, notes that your chances of being in a car/bike crash in the city are 75 percent less than in 1993...

... Steve Elkins, Transportation Chair of the Metropolitan Council, highlighted his efforts as city council member in suburban Bloomington  to push the idea of Complete Streets--meaning that roadways should serve walkers and bikers as well as cars...

..City workers clear snow from the off-road bikeways just the same as streets, sometimes doing them first. Studded snow tires and breakthroughs in cold-weather clothing makes year-round biking easier than it looks, Clark said...

.. Local bicyclists would have howled at the idea of Minneapolis being named America’s best city 30 years ago. It was a frustrating and dangerous place to bike, crisscrossed by freeways and arterial streets that felt like freeways. Drivers were openly hostile to bike riders, some of them going the extra step to scare the daylights out of us as they roared past. Bike lanes were practically non-existent at that time....

I wager Portland cyclists are happy we took the crown. I suspect their officials were getting complacent. Maybe they'll win it back, but that will only motivate Minneapolis. It's the kind of battle nobody loses.

Really, Portland's not a natural bike town either. It's bloody icy and hilly in January. So the success of Minneapolis and Portland shows the power of the Dutch model of bicycling, amply championed by David Hembrow and Mark Wagenbuur.

Alas, though the distinction seems academic beyond Minnesota, I can't claim to live in the promised land of Minneapolis. I'm a St Paul resident, the older of the Twin Cities. We're not quite as advanced. So it was good to recognize how much Minneapolis has changed in 20 years. With the help of the Saint Paul Bicycle Coalition, and the example of the younger Twin, we might get there yet.

Why does Apple suck at calendars?

Apple can produce decent software. There are, for example, some nice improvements in Lion. Lots of bad stuff too of course, but eventually we'll see 10.7.4 as a good OS. iWork is buggy and into heavy duty data bondage, but it shows some thought. iOS is elegant.

Calendars though - they are really bad at Calendars. 

There was a brief time when Apple did Calendars well. Ok, not Apple, but Claris - which has been in and and out of Apple over the years. Claris Organizer was pretty good. It was, I believe, during the Apple 2.0 era, when Jobs was gone.

During Apple 1.0 and Apple 3.0 though, when Jobs was around, every calendar app Apple did was unspeakably bad. iCloud sounds no better than MobileMe calendar -- and they were just bad. iCal for OS X is beyond miserable. iOS Calendar? Try setting a two week alarm so you get a birthday gift in the mail. Right. You can't.

I haven't read Jobs bio yet, but I've read the excerpts. My guess is the man hated, from the very depth of his soul, boundaries. Being told what he had to do when. I suspect the only way he ever made an appointment was because he was rich and powerful enough to have people whose entire mission in life was to manage his time.

I think that's why Apple sucks at Calendars.

Apple 3.0 was a reflection of Jobs. His virtues, and his defects.

Apple 4.0 is a different show.

Maybe they'll do better at Calendars.

I killed RSS

Ok. Ok!

I'll talk.

It's true. I killed her. Oh god, I swear ... it was an accident.

I didn't mean to do it. None of us did.

Of course I wasn't alone! You think I could have killed her all by myself? She was huge. Powerful! Millions of users. We all loved her. We loved her to death.

How? How did we do it?

It's obvious buddy. Staring you in the face. Just look. Look!

Ok, do I need to spell it out? I mean, how did you read this?

Yeah, I thought so.  Google Reader user eh? Yeah, the hard stuff. Jacking the info stream right to the cortex. RSS junkie you are.

You killed her too.

I mean, did you pay for this? No, you didn't. There's no way to pay. Free beer.

Did you read the ads? 

Yeah, trick question. There are no ads. At most you added a cookie. Worth a nano-dollar to someone.

You got the full feed ad free. You spent your time here instead of making someone money. You used Google Reader to steal money from Google.

Google doesn't like that. That's why G+ doesn't have an RSS feed.

Facebook doesn't like that. They turned personal page RSS feeds off a year or so ago.

Twitter ... Yeah, you get it. I see it in your face.

RSS was too good for this world.

That's why she had to die.

We loved her to death.