T-Mobile doesn’t get modern mobile business

When T-Mobile’s PR rep called a few weeks ago to set up an interview about the cellular carrier’s business mobile strategy, I was interested. Although T-Mobile is a second-tier carrier not known for its business focus, it’s also introduced some innovations in mobile, such as creating phones and in-home routers that switch between Wi-Fi and cellular networks automatically and being the first to offer an Android smartphone (the G1 from HTC). In recent years, T-Mobile has drifted to the background as AT&T and Verizon Wireless have aggressively marketed smartphones for both consumer and business users; hearing that T-Mobile might be back in business got my attention. And it’s upgrading its cellular network this year to a much faster version of 3G called HSDPA, giving it a speed advantage for a few months in at least a handful of cities.

A woeful tale of cluelessless Unfortuately, the call with T-Mobile exposed the carrier’s cluelessness when it comes to business needs beyond phone plans. The sales guy on the line had no inkling of a business’s mobile data needs or issues, and that’s where the action and promise is in mobile today. (I won’t embarrass him publicly by sharing his name.)

For him, what counted as “business” was the fact that companies could save money by making calls over Wi-Fi and those doing business overseas could get better rates with T-Mobile because of its parent company, Deutsche Telekom. But when I asked about Asia, he admitted the Deutsche Telekom advantage only applied to some European countries and wasn’t as global as he wanted me — and, thus, you — to believe. If you conduct lots of business in Europe, you might get better pricing via T-Mobile, but that’s not guaranteed. Anyhow, any business will take the time to understand the complete rate picture, not swoon over the fact that T-Mobile’s parent company is German.

As for Wi-Fi calling, I have nothing against it, and unlike AT&T or Verizon, T-Mobile’s approach doesn’t require a separate number to make the calls as you would if you used a service like Skype, nor does it require installing a unified commnunications server such as Agito Networks’. So it could save you some money based on your plan’s cellular usage limits and could be more convenient than other carriers’ options. But that’s icing on the cake, not the cake itself. Also, it’s old icing: T-Mobile has been offering variations of Wi-Fi calling for a decade.

The most naive comment was that some of T-Mobile’s Android phones support Microsoft Exchange and, thus, are business-oriented. (BlackBerrys offered by T-Mobile also support Exchange, if you use BlackBerry Enterprise Server or BES Express, as do its few Windows Mobile devices, but we were talking the new generation of devices such as iPhone and Android.) The sales guy didn’t know that the Exchange support is only for unsecured email connections, those that don’t use Exchange ActiveSync policies. It’s true that many small businesses don’t secure their email access, but if you claim to target “business,” you have to understand the issues in at least midsize firms, many of which will need some basic access security and on-device encryption capabilities. T-Mobile doesn’t seem to understand this.

It probably sounds like I’m picking on a hapless sales guy, and I am. But this is the representative T-Mobile sent out to convince you (through me) that it’s a serious provider of business mobile services. What does that tell you? The embarrassed PR rep did connect me with someone more senior a few weeks later, who admitted that T-Mobile is relying on third parties to fill in the Android security gaps, such as using a Good server, and that businesses should look instead to the standard BlackBerry line that like everyone T-Mobile offers as well as a Windows Mobile model or two. But I had to push to get him to say it. And he tried to palm off T-Mobile’s latest Android phone offering as a business phone, though it too lacks business connectivity capabilities.

The downside to consumer tech This little exchange with T-Mobile points out a larger issue that business and IT managers are increasingly facing: The onslaught of consumer technologies (a good thing, I believe) comes with an onslight of naïveté. Many consumer technologies lack key attributes necessary for many businesses — the first-generation iPhone is a great example, as are current-gen Android devices. They’re perfectly suited for consumer usage, and they offer novel capabilities that many businesses could and should take advantage of. But they lack one or more business must-haves.

Smart providers figure out this gap and move to fix it. Case in point: Apple. It’s been steadily closing the security and manageability gaps in the iPhone with each iPhone OS rev, and the forthcoming  fourth version of its iPhone OS looks to finally offer the required business capabilities that will allow all its consumer goodness to be widely adopted in enterprise environments. Likewise, Microsoft’s forthcoming Windows Phone 7 OS won’t jettison its corporate connectivity features, even though the OS is being retooled to appeal to 20-somethings. And just yesterday Google finally announced support for Exchange and policy management in the Android OS.

Rather than try to claim its business-as-usual is somehow a new focus on business needs, T-Mobile should have told me to pass this message to you: “We know that businesses want to adopt the new generation of mobile devices, so we’ve worked with HTC and others to offer a series of Android devices that meet real business needs, including Exchange ActiveSync support. We offer BlackBerrys for organizations that need higher-level security, and we expect to offer Windows Phone 7 devices when they ship this fall so that customers have a third choice for business-capable modern mobile devices. By the way, we offer Wi-Fi calling and cheaper European rates as an added incentive. And we have that high-speed HSDPA network being rolled out, already available in a few cities and planned to cover half the population within a year.” (Well, at least they did in fact tell me that very last item.)

But such a statement would require T-Mobile actually putting some technology skin in the game to make its smartphone offerings go beyond what the mobile OS and device makers do, or insist that the mobile OS and device makers do more (that means you, Google and HTC). Listen, T-Mobile: Wi-Fi calling was a great idea when you introduced it a decade ago, but what have you done lately?

Until T-Mobile or any carrier can answer that question meaningfully, you know it’s not really in the business of modern mobile business. It’s just selling you phones, phone minutes, and phone numbers.

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This article, “T-Mobile doesn’t get modern mobile business,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Read more of Gruman et al.’s Mobile Edge blog and follow the latest developments in mobile computing at InfoWorld.com.