Rob's Rants

The sub-title of this post should be “T-Mobile is (edit 10/13/2009) Possibly Screwed.”

Breaking news that I found on TechCrunch.com just now about a major screw-up between T-Mobile and Danger (maker of the Sidekick device and a subsidiary of Microsoft) affecting T-Mobile Sidekick customers. And if the reports are correct I think this could actually spell the end of at least one or both of these companies at least as they currently exist. There is simply NO EXCUSE for the report that Danger (a wholly-owned subsidiary of Microsoft) has apparently lost nearly 100% of Sidekick customer’s data and has no backup. No backup … I’ll write that again: NO FUCKING BACKUP. [Edit: as of 10/13/2009the New York Times reports that T-Mobile says some data might be recovered after all.]

For those not aware of what the Sidekick is or does, it is a smartphone-light device in the same way that a netbook is a notebook-light device. Sidekicks are very popular among young people. And the Sidekick was one of the very first mainstream “cloud-computing” devices, because it relies almost entirely on the cloud to store information, keeping almost nothing locally. That means that users’ contact lists, e-mail stores, IM/SMS histories, etc. are entirely stored on Danger’s servers. And Danger apparently just lost almost all of it. Let the lawsuits begin.

To quote from a T-Mobile announcement (posted at http://forums.t-mobile.com/tmbl/?category.id=Sidekick):

Regrettably, based on Microsoft/Danger’s latest recovery assessment of their systems, we must now inform you that personal information stored on your device – such as contacts, calendar entries, to-do lists or photos – that is no longer on your Sidekick almost certainly has been lost as a result of a server failure at Microsoft/Danger. That said, our teams continue to work around-the-clock in hopes of discovering some way to recover this information. However, the likelihood of a successful outcome is extremely low. As such, we wanted to share this news with you and offer some tips and suggestions to help you rebuild your personal content. You can find these tips at the T-Mobile Sidekick Forums (http://www.t-mobile.com/sidekick ). We encourage you to visit the Forums on a regular basis to access the latest updates as well as FAQs regarding this service disruption.

Sidekick LX

Why does this hit home for me right now? Well, I have moved a significant portion of my data to “the cloud.” All of the e-mail for my domain is handled by my Google Apps account. I use Google Docs — for moderately important documents like my resume and other similar things. And I am just now recovering from a major, major disaster with my laptop which made me appreciate the value of a good backup. (Short version — a mandatory encryption program upgrade at work fried the boot sector of my laptop, bricking it. But I had taken a complete full image of my hard drive the night before knowing failure was always a possibility, so recovery was possible and I have lost nothing except the time to restore the drive.)

I’d like to put some perspective on the potential impact of this but T-Mobile USA is a privately-held subsidiary of Deutche Telekom and so doesn’t report full numbers the way Verizon or AT&T do. But for a carrier already seeing very reduced growth, this isn’t going to end well.

For some context:

T-Mobile USA adds that 2.1 million 3G-capable converged devices, including the Android G1, the Sidekick LX and Samsung’s Behold and Memoir, were active on its network at the end of the second quarter.

Various other sources also note that T-Mobile is increasingly dependent on data charges, which I’m sure are partly due to Sidekick plans. Nope … this isn’t going to end well.

About the companies: