What about the people?
Sometime later today, there is a good chance Amp’d, the beleagured mobile virtual network provider will turn off its service, leaving over 100,000 of its customers in the lurch. A few days ago, SunRocket shuttered its doors, leaving 200,000 subscribers in the lurch.
While creditors and carriers get their money, the poor sods who end up trying out these new services are left holding the bag – out of either phone numbers, or in some cases a livelihood. It is unfair and amoral.
The executives often fail upwards, and the common man pays the price. It is in fact become a ritual, common place in modern life. While today we have two telecom service providers going out of business, leaving people twisting in the wind, tomorrow it could be dozens of tiny start-ups who are asking us to trust them with our data that could be gone? What happens then? Where does our private information go? Does it become something creditors can pawn off for a few shekels?
And why limit it to start-ups? Yahoo decided to shut down its Yahoo! Photos and focus instead on Flickr. If you forget to switch or rescue your photos – tough luck, because Yahoo isn’t going to be there to help you out.
Is this the new reality of our modern digital lives?
Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.
umm, why are people doing important business with firms that have no track record? early adopters take risks, and the risk of provider fading to black is one of those risks.
It will be great if the mobile world is as open and free as the web, with equal freedom of choice.
You got the web one wrong however. Remember there is nothing called Free Lunch. Except Google maybe.
I dont know how to set a ping back here??
http://the100rabh.blogspot.com/2007/07/what-if-service-shuts-up.html
I don’t think the Yahoo! Photos reference is fair. They went our of their way to help users make the transition. They bugged me to death to transfer my photos when i knew good and well that i had none.
When finally telling them to just movem’ to flickr, one showed up: my profile picture.
Caveat emptor ?
Hi. I just found this great service that will allow you to keep your SunRocket or other numbers…..without having to sign up for phone service. You basically sign up for this service and all calls can be routed to te device of your choosing (cell phone, office phone, etc). Check it out:
http://www.phonenumberbank.com
James, I don’t think Om is mudslinging specifically at Yahoo! here. It’s more about who owns the data and what happens to the data. Big companies as well as small companies play a role here.
We have the same problem in the work force too. Companies don’t have loyalty to their customers, or employees they’ll do whatever they can to make money. I’ve known this since I was a child.
The question is what to do about it.
Um…no. Amp’d failed because nearly 50% of it’s 175,000 subscribers failed to pay their bills. Maybe if the “common man” did not have such a sense of entitlement to the newest technology that they choose to go in debt over their heads…guess that’s what you get for targeting hip, trendy, urban youth.
Stephen R.,
Amp’d as a company had to take care in who they wanted to sell their service to. They did not look into the financial viability of their customers, and went for growth and subscriber count instead of putting better business practices.