Monday, July 19, 2004

Strange advice from T-Mobile

I have recently been having some problems with one of the GSM phone on my T-Mobile family plan -- it stopped receiving SMS messages. It could make and receive calls, send SMS messages but never received messages. So I called T-Mobile customer support.

I was quickly passed the dummy script of solutions and was passed on to technical support. The technical support person asked me to shut off the phone and wait while he "adjusted some settings." In a minute he asked me to restart the phone. Sure enough messages started coming through. That was strange enough in itself but the next part was stranger.

The tech support person asked me how often in a 24 hour period did I power cycle the phone. I told him that I never turn the power off. He then recommended to me that I shut off the phone at least twice per day! He assured me that he did this himself, and that this would give me much better service. He explained that when you turn your phone on, it registers with a particular cell tower. Throughout the day you may roam around and connect to multiple towers, but the first tower remains your registration point and the way the network finds you. However, as the day goes by, more and more people register at a given tower. The most recently registered devices get the best service...

Is this making sense to anyone out there?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

That sounds utterly ridiculous. Throughout your travels your phone makes itself "known" to the nearest towers and they, in turn, "know" that you're in their zone. I wonder why the first tower even plays into the equation after you head out of its area....