T-Mobile SMS Messaging Had a 40 Hour Service Impairment
Dave Aiello wrote, "On Wednesday afternoon, I was in Allentown, PA, when my mobile phone inexplicably stopped receiving SMS messages. This is a real problem because I have built a database application that I communicate with via SMS. As a result of the SMS network problems, I had to stop my work and return to my office in East Windsor, NJ, some 90 miles away."
"You'd think that T-Mobile, my mobile phone carrier, would have a good explanation for why this happened. All they could tell me when I called them was:"
- There is a problem with text message reception.
- We have no more details.
- We don't have an ETA for restoration.
- You can't determine the status of our text messaging service without calling us on the phone.
"This problem persisted until 8:00am Eastern Time this morning. That's over 40 hours from the time I first noticed it."
"Hey T-Mobile, this is unacceptable. You and your competitors advertise this service relentlessly. But when there is a problem, you treat text messaging as a non-essential feature. It's as if everyone is sending How RU? messages to their girlfriends."
"I sent a letter to Tim Wong, T-Mobile USA's Executive Vice President for Engineering and Technical Operations, telling him that the response to this outage was not acceptable, and that professional users of SMS need to be able to determine if there is a network problem without calling consumer-oriented Customer Care. We'll see if I get a response."