As being one of the millions of people in America who fell victim to the AT&T outage, I can reflect on that experience and honestly say that I rely too much on technology and my phone. Before the outage, I never truly realized how much I relied on my phone; I use it for my alarm, the GPS, my music, social media, checking my emails, texting/ phone calls to my friends and family. Since I was not able to use it for any of these purposes, my phone almost felt worthless to me. That day I had to go somewhere I had never been before so I felt like I was back in 2006 when I would have to print out the MapQuest to go to places before leaving the house. I had to actually look up directions of how to get to this place before I was off Wi-Fi and hoped I remembered how to get there.
Since then, AT&T has said they are crediting every account $5 for the inconvenience of the outage. AT&T said that the outage was their fault due to a faulty software update, so the credit is appreciated, however, it also almost feels like a slap in the face. It's from my understanding that it is $5 per account, not phone (correct me if I'm wrong). There are 5 people on my account, so it feel like our time lost is only worth $1 each. I also feel like since 911 services were out as well during this outage for some, serious emergencies could have occurred and only being offered $5 off your next bill is a bit insulting in that case. I guess I'm not sure what else they could do because they would never give everyone a free billing cycle for this, but $5 feels like nothing to them for the inconvenience this caused.
Those 6 hours without my phone working affected me more than I'd like to admit it did and has made me realize I need to learn how to do some basic things without relying on technology.
I read about this in the news but I did not realize how long the outage was. Six hours is crazy, and I did not even think about what would have happened if there was an emergency. It definitely shows how much reliance we all put in this technology.
ReplyDeleteThe outage was about 12 hours long from roughly 4 a.m to 4 p.m. Eastern time. I was not affected (I use the Spectrum Mobile MVNO which runs on Verizon's network). However, I know I could be affected the next time this happens. I am thinking about buying a set of maps to stuff in my glove compartment (which also raises the question: Does anyone actually put gloves in their glove compartment?)
ReplyDeleteI was not affected but I had the same thoughts when I heard about this! It was really eye opening to me that I would have no idea how to do certain things without access to my phone or other technology.
ReplyDeleteAs being an AT&T customer myself, luckily I was only inconvenienced by this issue by having to redial multiple times to get a call to go through and was not really hamstrung by the issue. While technology is a great benefit, I try not to let it control my everyday, I carry some cash incase some issue with my card and I can remember area's very well, even if I have only driven through there once before, even if a long time ago(knocking at those who put in directions to places they visit somewhat regularly haha). While i can sympathize with you on having to go to a new place you've never been before, luckily you knew of an alternate way albeit technologically oldschool - MapQuest! My dad is old-old school and has an Atlas in his vehicle that I know how to use, and would suggest everyone getting one to put under their backseat or something for emergencies in the future.
ReplyDeleteVirginia,
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed reading your post and getting your perspective on the outage. I am not an AT&T customer so I did not experience this outage myself. However a couple of months ago I did experience this for a couple of hours with my phone provider. I was also going to an appointment when this happened at a place I was not familiar with and realized how difficult it was to get somewhere without relying on maps on my phone. One thing that stood out to me was on my way to the appointment I drove past one of the stores of my provider and there were easily 30 people with a line wrapped out the door and it had only been about 30 minutes without service at that point. This made me really realize how many people rely on their phones for a majority of tasks during their day and I wondered how many more customers showed up at the store before the issue was resolved about an hour later.