Fucking Cingular

I’m normally not a violent person, but I’m on the verge of some minor property destruction. My wireless carrier, Cingular, has added some “features” to my mobile phone service which are anything but useful or necessary.

It all started on Saturday after I had finished my poker game. While half of the competitors huddled around the table, I was going to post to the moblog with a picture of a vanity plate that I’d taken earlier in the week. The email seemed to go through correctly, but a check of the moblog upon my return home showed no photo. I chalked it all up to user error and slight drunkeness and went about my business.

Now today, I’m reading engadget in my office while I eat my lunch and I come across a very interesting post. Apparently someone who keeps a wireless data blog wrote a story about GPRS outages on the Cingular network. The conspiracy theory du jour held that Cingular wanted to force users to send MMS messages exclusively in an effort to collect larger fees.

So I did a little experiment: I posted a moblog photo via email and was pleasantly surprised and head-shakingly disappointed by the results. It now seems that Cingular is appending a Hotmail-style footer to all email sent on it’s network. I can only imagine how many other Cingular mobloggers are as peeved about this as I am. The whole thing reeks of corporate arrogance and largesse.

Here’s the text of the footer, which does seem to lend credence to the rumor that Cingular favors MMS:

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Photo Messaging brought to you by Cingular Wireless http://www.cingular.com.
You can send the sender of this email a Text Message by simply replying to this message.

Stay tuned for updates. Cingular customer service will definitely be getting a call from me.

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