Don't touch this -- Bridging the gap (circled) can drive your iPhone's signal bars into a ditch

The long lines are over.  The hype that drove some Apple fanboys to wait hours in line, even with an advance reservation for the phone, has died down.  The people in the office you irritated bragging about your conquest have moved on with their lives.  For a growing number of early iPhone 4 buyers, that exhilaration is now being replaced with a realization: you are a beta tester for a new product that has some nagging design problems and defects.  And you are still stuck with AT&T, the nation’s least favorite wireless carrier.  Only now, it’s not just AT&T dropping your calls — it’s the iPhone itself.

A growing number of buyers have discovered a flaw so obvious even the most rudimentary testing, even from the drunk guy who left his phone in that California bar, should have picked up — if you hold the phone in your hand a certain way to make a call, the iPhone has a tendency to drop it.  That problem has grown so significant, Apple had to lock the message thread discussing the matter because it was crashing the browsers of support forum visitors.

You didn’t buy the iPhone to actually make calls, did you?

Sorting out whether the dropped calls are Apple’s fault or just business as usual at AT&T is now underway.

Apple’s answer to this particular problem is to turn the potential marketing crisis into an opportunity — by selling you a $30 “bumper”-case to keep your hands from actually touching the phone’s side, which is part of the antenna system.  The case’s odd design, which only covers the sides of the phone, has some speculating Apple knew about this problem all along and designed a case to mitigate the problem, and pocket the proceeds.

A leaked memo from Apple includes talking points to calm customers who have concerns Apple thinks are non-issues.  Apple even insists its representatives take a moment to summon up the proper “tone” when dealing with customers:

1. Keep all of the positioning statements in the BN handy – your tone when delivering this information is important.

• The iPhone 4’s wireless performance is the best we have ever shipped. Our testing shows that iPhone 4’s overall antenna performance is better than iPhone 3GS.
• Gripping almost any mobile phone in certain places will reduce its reception. This is true of the iPhone 4, the iPhone 3GS, and many other phones we have tested. It is a fact of life in the wireless world.
• If you are experiencing this on your iPhone 3GS, avoid covering the bottom-right side with your hand.
• If you are experiencing this on your iPhone 4, avoid covering the black strip in the lower-left corner of the metal band.
• The use of a case or Bumper that is made out of rubber or plastic may improve wireless performance by keeping your hand from directly covering these areas.

2. Do not perform warranty service. Use the positioning above for any customer questions or concerns.

3. Don’t forget YOU STILL NEED to probe and troubleshoot. If a customer calls about their reception while the phone is sitting on a table (not being held) it is not the metal band.

4. ONLY escalate if the issue exists when the phone is not held AND you cannot resolve it.

5. We ARE NOT appeasing customers with free bumpers – DON’T promise a free bumper to customers.

The yellow blotch problem

This week, even more problems are showing up:

• The Glitchy Proximity Sensor: PC World covers the iPhone’s sudden activation of the menu screen while talking on the phone.  With one’s face next to the screen, customers are reporting calls suddenly switched to speakerphone mode, muted, or throwing blasts of touchtones at callers.
• AT&T “Still Sucks”: Customers in San Francisco and Los Angeles, among other large cities, report “Bermuda Triangle” reception zones where calls regularly drop and cannot be made.  Randomly dropped calls are also still a major problem, and some customers believe the latest iPhone is more prone to showing “no service” than earlier models.
• Yellow Screen Blotches: Yellow-tinted blotches are visible on several owners’ iPhone screens.  Apple claims this is residue from the manufacturing process to bind the glass to the screen and will disappear with use as the adhesive fully dries.  Gizmodo reports these phones were likely rushed through manufacturing and shipped in time for the iPhone release day.  While some customers confirm the blotches do seem to be fading, others have been instructed by Apple to return yellow-tinged phones for replacement.
• Easily-Scratchable: Despite the hype about breakthrough glass technology making the phone more scratch resistant than ever, folks on Engadget found it was quite easy to tear up the phone when placed in a pocket with keys or other scratchy things.

Engadget received photos of scratched iPods hours after being unboxed (click to enlarge)

A Sacramento law firm, Kershaw, Cutter & Ratinoff has already started looking for customers experiencing poor reception quality and dropped calls, presumably to consider a class action lawsuit against Apple, AT&T, or both.  As of now, the law firm has received more than 400 complaints.

The signal loss problem has the prospect of becoming the most notorious — for both Apple and AT&T — especially when it is easily reproduced by reporters on the local evening news (see below).  But Steve Jobs thinks the complaints are overblown, writing back to one complainer, “Non issue. Just avoid holding it in that way.”

Despite that,  Gizmodo launched a petition urging Apple to give free cases to all iPhone 4 owners.

Every product launch has its bugs. We’ve seen a lot this time. Many issues, like the yellow screens, will go away as manufacturing fine tunes and adjusts to solve the problems. But the antenna issue is a fundamental one, a design flaw, that won’t go away as easily without adjusting the product in a deeper way.

So with all these great things, it’s terrible that buyers should have this excellent phone ruined for them because of a single, but serious, design problem. And even worse that Apple should suggest users use their phones in unnatural ways or shell out $30—for what is essentially a double wide livestrong armband—to fix it.

According to some Apple-watchers, the company plans a software fix, suggesting the signal meter displayed on the phone is the real issue, not the actual quality of reception from AT&T.  If the software fix only re-calibrates the signal meter and consumers still see dropped calls and reception problems, additional complaints are likely.

After a week of made-for-TV-lines outside of Apple stores across the country, reality has set in and several stations are now turning their attention to the iPhone 4’s pesky problems.

We have a number of videos for you to watch below the jump!

… Continue Reading

The bill is pending in the House Ways and Means Committee, whose chairman, Rep. Bill Faison, sees the moratorium as an attempt to protect the powerful cable monopoly. Faison, a Democrat who represents Orange and Caswell counties, is meeting Wednesday with representatives of the telecommunications industry and local government leaders to discuss options.

Senator David Hoyle (D-Gaston) couldn’t get his Senate bill the time of day in the North Carolina House, so he attached it to a popular House bill to extend the e-NC Authority — North Carolina’s initiative to promote better broadband.  Now a good bill is infected, like a virus, by Hoyle’s tireless work on behalf of Time Warner Cable.

Hoyle, who has cashed checks from the cable and phone lobbies for years, is proud of sticking it to consumers in his state.

“I want my bill passed. They want their bill passed. So, if they want theirs, they’re going to have to take up mine,” Hoyle told WRAL-TV.

Hoyle, who plans to retire at the end of his term, faces no consequences from Gaston County voters, so he doesn’t care if his bill effectively protects incumbent cable companies who have raised their rates far above the rate of inflation for years.  Hoyle wants a one year moratorium to stop local communities from building their own broadband networks to improve service to residents and deliver lower pricing.

One community that escaped Time Warner’s relentless rate hiking is Wilson, where a municipal broadband project called Greenlight effectively forced a red light on Time Warner’s plans to increase rates in the community earlier this year.  Wilson was the only city we could find in the state where rates remained the same, and residents have Greenlight and city officials to thank for that.

Hoyle and his friends at the cable company are outraged at the thought of North Carolina communities stopping the rate hike gravy train.  After all, less money for Time Warner equals less money for campaign contributions to friendly politicians.

“Do we, as government, want to get in competition with private enterprise and my answer to that is no, and I am passionate about that,” Hoyle said.

If only his constituents could afford to pay him enough to be passionate about their interests.

Rep. Bill Faison, (D-Orange), is among the lawmakers sponsoring the broadband stimulus bill, which was a sure thing until Hoyle got his hands on it.  Faison called Hoyle’s amendments anti-competitive and pro-rate increase, both bad for North Carolina consumers.

“I decide what gets put on the agenda,” Faison told the Charlotte Observer. “It’s unlikely that any bill with a moratorium in it has a chance of getting through the House.”

Hoyle’s strenuous efforts to perform legislative gymnastics on behalf of cable and phone companies have not gone unnoticed by Faison.  He suggested Hoyle’s latest move represented an “interesting political maneuver,” but he doesn’t intend to sit still for it.  Faison and other pro-consumer legislators are meeting this week to consider how to strip Hoyle’s nonsense out of HB1840 and shove it in the nearest trash can.  For comparison purposes, here is the original bill.

Consumers show no love for Time Warner.  Charlotte residents had choice words for their cable company when they learned it was behind the push to stop municipal competition:

◊ Time Warner is about to pay for being jerks to their customers, and it’s high time.

◊ Time Warner cable: I hope they rot. It’s about dang time that municipal governments started providing free broadband to their citizens. The fact that multiple households need their own wireless routers, broadcast on different channels, is a totally inefficient use of technology. Companies like TW Cable want to keep citizens constrained, which runs totally opposite to the promise of the Internet. Find out which boneheads in the Senate are pushing for this and vote them out. They’re clearly more interested in money from the cable companies than in serving their constituents.

◊ For cable to argue unfair competition is laughable when they operate a virtual monopoly.

◊ Instead of fighting this legislation, why doesn’t Time-Warner Cable focus on making its service so reliable and reasonably priced that no city or county will seriously consider managing this themselves? I find it hard to believe any local government could actually run this type of technology more efficiently than a company with TWC’s resources can, but the threat of competition helps keep TWC on their toes. P.S. I lost my TWC signal for 90 minutes this past Sunday right in the middle of the US Open and Brazil-Ivory Coast World Cup game. Nice.

A vote on the House measure is imminent, so North Carolina consumers should be contacting the House Committee members listed below and urge them not to allow any part of Hoyle’s language to remain in HB1840.

[flv width=”576″ height=”344″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WRAL Raleigh NC Broadband Bill Debate 6-28-10.flv[/flv]

WRAL-TV in Raleigh discusses Hoyle’s language and how it ended up in a broadband stimulus request bill.  (2 minutes)

House Ways and Means/Broadband Connectivity Committee

This article contains the following correction since original publication: Our original article did not fully explain the bill to which Sen. Hoyle attached his municipal broadband moratorium. For clarification purposes, that bill is HB1840, legislation to extend the authority of the e-NC Authority. Our original article carried WRAL-TV’s language that said the bill provided for “$5 million in federal stimulus to help provide high-speed Internet access in parts of the state.” While that would be nice, it wasn’t an accurate characterization the bill’s intent.  Our apologies for the error.

Seoul, the capital city of the Republic of Korea

Seoul, the capital of the Republic of Korea, is the world’s most wired city with some 95 percent of residents enthusiastic users of the world’s fastest broadband networks.

While Americans cope with a broadband duopoly that holds us back, the 100Mbps world of broadband has already arrived in Korea, at prices a fraction of what Americans pay for service — with no limits.

A full 95 percent of households in South Korea have broadband internet access – the highest in the world. Singapore is second to South Korea, with broadband connection in 88 percent of homes. The U.S. ranks 20th, with broadband connection in 60 percent of homes.

Although densely populated cities in Korea, where residents live in multi-dwelling units, makes wiring fiber optic broadband easy, that’s not the only reason why South Korea is so far ahead of the United States.

Koreans consider broadband an essential part of life, a representation of their sense of freedom, as well as a tool to help Korea’s development in a global economy.

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/ABC News Seoul The World’s Most Wired City 6-25-10.mp4[/flv]

ABC’s ‘Good Morning America’ visited Seoul to learn how the world’s most wired city has been transformed by universal, inexpensive, super-fast broadband.  (5 minutes)

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/ABC News Why So Wired South Korea 6-25-10.mp4[/flv]

ABC’s Juju Chang sat down for an interview with Yongmann Park, chairman of Doosan Corporation, one of Korea’s successful business conglomerates.  (2 minutes)

A $24 million federal grant proposal to install 600 miles of fiber optic cable across the southern tier of New York has advanced to the “Due Diligence Phase” of federal review, making it a serious contender for approval.

The application for the “middle mile” project was submitted jointly by the Southern Tier East and Southern Tier Central Planning Development Boards to create a fiber-based backbone to facilitate so-called “last mile” projects which deliver connections directly to consumers and businesses.  If built, the project will make connectivity available to all-comers, from wireless providers trying to reach the most rural homes to cable and telephone-based broadband providers delivering enhanced speeds and service.

The Shequaga Falls, visible from W. Main Street in Montour Falls, exemplifies the terrain of many Southern Tier communities in New York.

Broome, Delaware, Otsego, Chemung, Steuben and Schuyler counties would be served by the fiber network if constructed.

The southern tier of New York, mostly defined as west to Lake Erie and east to Binghamton, is particularly lacking in broadband, in part because of very difficult terrain.  Steep sloping hills rising 1,000 feet or more, created from glacial movements, combine with level hilltops representative of the Appalachian Plateau.  In most of these areas, fields and pastures crown the high points while cropland and communities locate on the level valley floor.  Getting broadband to residents and farms involves winding cables around the hills through communities like Bath, Corning, Elmira, Hornell, Watkins Glen-Montour Falls, and Wayland.  Even larger communities like Binghamton and Ithaca have plenty of landscape to navigate.

Inside immediate town and city centers, broadband is usually provided by Time Warner Cable, Frontier Communications, Verizon, or one of several independent phone companies.  Where 30mph speed limits predominate, broadband is likely available.  Once the speed limit returns to 55mph, service becomes more spotty.

Prior efforts to expand broadband availability included:

• Public/Private Partnerships: Cooperative efforts to ease the way for private providers to extend service into previously unserved areas.  This had limited success, particularly when sufficient return on investment could not be achieved within a set time frame.  Most private providers will not wire sparsely populated areas because of the time it takes to recoup wiring and pole costs.
• Aggregation of Demand: This technical-sounding term simply means bringing neighbors together and getting them to jointly commit to sign up for broadband service if a provider will agree to extend service to their neighborhood.  This can achieve success in areas where a provider is assured of getting his initial investment back.  A few of these efforts have even shared or split the financing of some construction costs.  Mike McNamara of Haefele Cable Television, an independent cable provider serving 4,700 residents in rural sections of Tioga County, noted “last mile” access can be expensive, costing about $12,000 for them to extend cable service per mile.

The blue color represents areas in this section of the Southern Tier where no broadband service is available. (click to enlarge)

A decision on the grant is expected by September.

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WETM Elmira One Step Closer to High Speed Broadband Access 6-24-10.flv[/flv]

WETM-TV in Elmira explains the plan to expand broadband service throughout the Southern Tier of New York, if a grant can be awarded.  (1 minute)

Obama

President Obama signed a memorandum this morning that will free up 500Mhz of government and privately-owned spectrum over the next decade to double the amount of wireless broadband capacity in the United States.

The Obama Administration claims the newly available spectrum will throw a rescue line to overburdened wireless networks that are facing a spectrum crunch.  The White House estimates wireless data usage will explode — growing between 20 and 45 times in the next five years.

President Obama:

Few technological developments hold as much potential to enhance America’s economic competitiveness, create jobs, and improve the quality of our lives as wireless high-speed access to the Internet.  Innovative new mobile technologies hold the promise for a virtuous cycle — millions of consumers gain faster access to more services at less cost, spurring innovation, and then a new round of consumers benefit from new services.  The wireless revolution has already begun with millions of Americans taking advantage of wireless access to the Internet.

Expanded wireless broadband access will trigger the creation of innovative new businesses, provide cost-effective connections in rural areas, increase productivity, improve public safety, and allow for the development of mobile telemedicine, telework, distance learning, and other new applications that will transform Americans’ lives.

In practical terms, the reallocation of spectrum could spark a battle between the current spectrum holders — often government agencies and private UHF television stations — and the government.  Parts of the plan will require Congressional approval, a sure-fire guarantee that wireless providers will have to write some more checks to their astroturf and sock puppet friends to help sell the benefits of the plan to a wary Congress.

Since most of the spectrum would likely be sold at auction, the proceeds could deliver the administration a tidy sum to either reduce the federal budget deficit and/or fund broadband initiatives.

But what might seem at first like a win-win might not turn out that way in the end.

We have the following concerns:

Past spectrum auctions have largely benefited incumbent wireless carriers, especially companies like AT&T and Verizon who have the deep pockets that guarantee successful bids at auctions.  Both wireless carriers are not actually using all of the spectrum they already acquired in earlier auctions and have essentially warehoused those frequencies, particularly in rural areas, to keep them out of the hands of other companies that could deliver service.  FCC requirements that auction winners actually utilize their acquired spectrum have been so lax as to be laughable.  Carriers can easily satisfy FCC requirements building only in urban areas and leaving large swaths of the countryside unserved. The FCC must set rules that auction winners use their allotments in both rural and urban areas, or face fines or forfeiture.

Setting aside some frequency blocks for smaller providers and would-be competitors is critical.  In today’s mobile wireless marketplace two companies are superpowers and then there is everyone else.  Both AT&T and Verizon have the resources to outbid virtually anyone.  Allowing blocks of frequencies to be reserved exclusively for new competitors would bolster competition and give consumers more choices.  Those frequencies must be sold in a block that is identical nationwide — not leftover spectrum running through several frequency bands.

Providing additional spectrum for wireless broadband isn’t a problem, but with complaints about wireless service providers growing, along with consumers’ bills, now is the time to reform wireless for the benefit of consumers.  Let’s make it a “win” for everyone.

[flv width=”640″ height=”500″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Bloomberg Obama Proposes to Double Airwaves for Mobile Web Access 6-28-10.flv[/flv]

Bloomberg News explains the controversy behind the transfer of spectrum from the government and broadcasters to the mobile broadband industry.  (2 minutes)