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Oct. 15, 2009

On October 2nd, when the T-Mobile Sidekick started having data problems, it became particularly annoying for deaf wireless users more than others. Some deaf people that depend on the Sidekick said that their general loss of independence was frustrating to them.

Overall, deaf people rely on their Sidekicks to manage some very simple everyday tasks such as emailing friends and relatives, browsing the Web, etc.

However, both Microsoft and T-Mobile USA appear to be making some kind of progress at restoring some of the data that appeared to be gone permanently but was not...

Even a simple network outage of less than an hour can be frustrating for deaf people that use the Sidekick as something of a communications lifeline because of their condition.

The T-Mobile Sidekick became a popular MID (mobile internet device) in some deaf circles because of its easy-to-use keyboard, better instant-messaging abilities and its ability to connect to specific relay services.

T-Mobile even tried to improve things a bit more by simply adding a data-only option so that deaf users weren't paying for voice minutes they simply could not use.

Because the T-Mobile Sidekick didn't evolve as fast as other main-stream smartphones some users (deaf and hearing alike) simply moved to the BlackBerry and even the iPhone. But now after their recent network outage experience, many of the remaining Sidekick users in the deaf community have said they are really considering switching wireless providers once their T-Mobile contracts end.

Some in the deaf community say the recent T-Mobile network outage has been very annoying as friends and/or relatives may think they are ignoring them, when in reality they didn't even get the e-mails in the first place.

It simply places the deaf community at a kind of a disadvantage, more so than for hearing people since a deaf person is more reliant on email service to keep in touch with others, whether the users they are trying to reach are deaf or not.

It will be interesting to see if other large wireless carriers such as AT&T and Verizon quickly address this issue by offering a competing product to the Sidekick, minus the network outages...

In fact, this might even be looked upon as a new opportunity for them.

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    This article was featured on Business 5.0 and on Tech Blog.

Source: NAMN.