I tried out the free wi-fi at Starbucks this morning. It works. The good news is that Starbucks is practically every where. The bad news is that when I usually need wi-fi, I’m not inside a Starbucks. I really need free wi-fi inside Costco, Target, and Ranch 99. Now that would be good.

“Your World. Delivered.” Or, so they say. Anyone try to get a FamilyTalk plan that includes cell phones with phone numbers from different area codes? I think this can be done, but after spending 50 minutes talking to various customer service people within AT&T, I have run out of patience. I don’t need this that badly. I don’t think there’s a technical reason it cannot be done, just a marketing excuse. And that is the lamest reason to turn down a cash-paying customer.

For some reason, the telecommunications industry is locked into a bizarre old world mentality. Tell me how does forcing an established customer to surrender a long-held phone number breed customer loyalty? It doesn’t. It just reminds me how behind the times your business practices and perspectives are. Sure, AT&T forced us to all have phone numbers from the same area code now, but every time I’m dialing that phone, it reminds me that my world wasn’t delivered. AT&T probably spent some big bucks to come up with their marketing slogan. Instead, I just wished they had hit a few keystrokes (which is probably all it would have taken) to let all of us be on the same FamilyTalk plan with our original phone numbers, even if they were from different area codes.

So I just received my first wireless phone bill book from AT&T. Talk about not being able to teach an old dog new tricks. Despite all the time AT&T spent working with Apple, none of Apple’s minimalist design philosophy rubbed off. I mean a 35 page bill? I’m waiting for Greenpeace to ding Apple again for selecting such an environmentally unfriendly partner. A big chunk of the bill was the itemized list of all data transfers over the (lagging) EDGE network. Since the iPhone plan provides unlimited domestic data transfers, why itemize it? 8:41 AM – 1 KB. 8:49 AM – 24 KB. 9:08 AM – 23 KB. 9:23 AM – 49 KB. 9:42 AM – 23 KB. 10:00 AM – 31 KB. Talk about worthless information. Save a tree.