Gripe Line: On the day AT&T was supposed to turn on a reader’s company’s new T3 telecom service, he found that the carrier “has so many people involved that no two of them have a clue what is going on.” Mixed signals started early, to be sure. AT&T fails to communicate. Two weeks before the big day, AT&T documents stated the previously identified frame relay circuits were to be ATM. After myriad confirmations, the reader doesn’t even get frame relay, but PPP. And the disasters keep on coming, such that days later only part of the new service was up. “It’s not just AT&T. IBM contractors are giving me the same types of headaches — six people on a conference call and none of them actually DO anything. They are all project managers that don’t really get it.”Best of the blogs: Google’s Android mobile development platform is ambitious, yes, but the odds for success are long. “Android’s mission is so astonishingly broad that it will likely take years before it is realized in a handset,” Tom Yager asserts in this Tech Watch post. The early SDK addresses a significant pain point for cross-platform mobile application developers: the GUI. Of course it’s still young and, as such, has a somewhat limited set of widgets. “Google’s aspirations are admirable, but the likelihood of Android succeeding as a full metal-to-screen platform, while parallel efforts are being worked by vendors with traction and experience, is fairly slim.” The news beat: Microsoft readies the Stirling console for managing all its Forefront enterprise security products for desktops. At Oracle OpenWorld, Cisco announces the RDS (Reliable Datagram Sockets), a protocol it developed with Oracle to run databases over large server clusters. Apple and a Chinese telecom are in talks to sell the iPhone in China, though China Mobile’s CEO does not like handset makers’ desire to share revenue with operators. And Microsoft and the GSM association promote 3G laptops by hosting a contest challenging companies to design mobile phone-like connectivity into easy-to-use notebook PCs. Technology Industry