Dear Telcos: Cut the 3G Map Crap, Just Give us the Data
Another day, another stupid round of “Maps vs. Apps” commercials between AT&T and Verizon. I admit to liking the first pass, but this is all getting really stupid now, isn’t it? And while it may seem like the two big telcos are only kneecapping each other, in reality this whole back-and-forth is one prolonged insult to the prospective-customer public. We, the customers, are no better informed about real network performance now than before all this started. So what’s the point?
How about this idea: If you, Verizon and AT&T, really want to prove whose network is the best — instead of these dumb commercials, how about plowing all that ad-agency cash into producing live, searchable databases with actual network deployment data — simple stuff, like number of cell towers and channels per zip code — and we’ll take it from there. Trust me, there’s enough smart and interested folks out there who would probably have a searchable Google map with the numbers ready in a day or so. Then we could all really tell, square mile by square mile across the U.S., whether the red network or the blue network was truly the best in the land.
Who knows? Maybe in some places it’s Sprint (yellow?) or T-Mobile’s pink that should take the honors. But we won’t know until one carrier has the guts to step up and stop pushing out crap and instead points at the scoreboard. Any takers?
