I've said this for a very long time and I'll say it again: all cell phone providers suck! Period! There's no debate, there's no argument. Much of the fact can be attributed to that they simply service a vast number of people. Even the lesser known providers still service millions of people! Try serving millions of people one of three different types of cookies, you'll find that many people will be dissatisfied. To take the analogy further, try serving them those cookies while they're brittle and past-expiration while charging 4 times as much per month than the guy selling brownies down the street.

That jumbled mess of an example is a prime exhibit of why cell providers are pummeled to oblivion in the court of public opinion. It's not that they do that horrible of a job, it's just that the pool of people to please is so large that it's easy to anger hundreds, thousands and, most times, tens of thousands of people with one misstep. But the missteps are a plenty!

AT&T has dropped hints here and there of desires to follow their european brethren and start charging tiered rates for mobile data access. That is to say, offer plans for varying amounts of data usage, similar to how they grossly overcharge today for SMS usage. Yep! Think America is still the land of the supersized and excessed? It won't be for long. The proof is in the pudding as they say.

It actually started a year or two ago with the "Hey, me too!" goldrush of luggage fees with the airlines. Did you like the American concept of you-paid-for-a-ticket-your-bag-is-free? Too bad. We're going to take a lesson from the Europeans and every little thing is a nickel-and-dime-me-to-death extra! This is all done of course under the guise of lower base costs. And that is all bullshit as it's all smoke and mirrors. For years, American airlines watched as carriers in other countries charged fees for -any- baggage customers have. Camouflaged by outrageous gas prices in the summer of '08, the American airline industry made their move. One by one, they all instituted fees for the most basic of things including soft drinks and carrying a bag of stuff with you. The push from the airline industry to the communications industry is thinly veiled but is very much of the same vein.

Cable operators have wanted to do the same thing. They've been actively engaged in test pilots of tiered usage models and excessive usage cut-offs for years. All the while they advertise their service as unlimited. It seriously makes me physically ill. The whole point of this post however, is to tell you that unsurprisingly mobile operators are now making this very same push. The marching drum beats the same rhythm in all of the above cases. They tell you: "It's for your own good", "People will only pay for what they use", "It gives every one a higher quality of service". Again, it's all bullshit. The point of caps is to cut you off when you drink too much from the fountain because you'll cost them more than you may be giving them. All under the promise of 'unlimited', mind you. People under the employ of AT&T have dropped hints as to the intent of doing this at some point in the future.

"Operation Chokehold" as it is being called started as a lark. "Fake Steve Jobs" is a satirical column by Newsweeks' Dan Lyons. In last week's edition, he tells would-be readers that in order to teach AT&T a lesson for providing sub-par service, we must co-ordinatingly use as much bandwidth as we can at a certain point in time. This will proposedly show AT&T that their customers will not be intimidated into submission and that they vehemently oppose any such restrictions. AT&T and the FCC, for their part, is crying foul, noting that any such intentional attempts to disrupt communications are dangerous to the public good.

There certainly is some truth to their statement. Realistically though, right now there a few thousand Facebook "fans" of the operation. If a few thousand people (out of the many tens of millions AT&T subscribers) can completely or even in isolated locations take down the network, AT&T seriously has bigger problems. They need to think about their network design as a whole in that case and make in far more resilient than it is now. Think about it for a moment! If another disaster strikes the U.S., be it terrorist or not, what is the first thing 75% of ALL citizens are going to do? If you guessed "reach for their cell phone and communicate (through voice or data which AT&T says is the same thing essentially) with their loved ones", then congratulations, you're the big winner!

With everything in mind, who is right in this case? The people who just want what they are promised and are tired of greedy corporations that squeeze the last cent out of every customer that crosses their path or the corporation that has built their business model on specific constants of mob mentality that mustn't be broken for fear of structural collapse? When is it okay to say enough is enough and display some civil disobedience? How far can that disobedience go? What if it can potentially endanger a few lives for the trivial complacency of thousands, if not millions?

I leave that to you and whether or not you participate in "Operation Chokehold".