I want my landline back

(Note: Our MobileBeat 2009 conference is now completely sold out. We hope you got your ticket!)

Back to my post: The mobile beat here at VentureBeat doesn’t belong to me, but like everyone else here I got sucked into the world of smartphones. And MobileBeat 2009 planning here at the office often devolved into talking about the current state of the industry. It also got me to pay more attention to the quality of my calls.

The quality of calls on both my Verizon BlackBerry and my AT&T iPhone is bad enough to make me use Twitter instead. There are four problems I can point to that I’m sure the folks at AT&T and Verizon are familiar with:

1. Dropped calls. At least twice a day I realize I’ve been talking to myself for half a minute.

2. Delays in voice transmissions. Try this sometime: Sit side by side with a friend and conduct a cellphone conversation. You’ll be surprised at how long the delays on you speech in both directions is. That’s why cellphone conversations always feel frustratingly not engaged.

3. Echo, echo, echo. This is the one I don’t get. How could the digitized phone signal develop an echo? Someone should explain this to me.

4. No premium grade calling. For some calls, I’d pay for better quality with none of the problems above, and none of several others. Why can’t I buy that?

These will be my questions to executives at MobileBeat 2009 tomorrow. Bring your answers. Please.

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