Day: June 6, 2021

I spent over an hour on the phone with various representatives of AT&T Wireless. I had made a somewhat belated decision to try to set up my voicemail on my phone – now that I’ve had an AT&T plan for almost exactly 3 years, it seemed like the right time to set up voicemail, right?

Once I got to talking to the right person – the fast-talking but competent and sincere Isabella of the Philippine Islands – we got my voicemail working. I guess if you don’t set up your voicemail right away when you get a new phone plan, they assume you don’t want it, and deactivate it. So she had to activate it – which was more complicated than seems entirely necessary.

So now I have voicemail. That’s useful, maybe. We’ll see who wants to leave me messages.

But, meanwhile, there was a very strange issue. AT&T is going to be ending their support for “3G” cellphone signals. Since most people have 4G or 5G, this makes some sense – why keep supporting the old technology when most of their customers have moved on?

The problem was that two of the representatives, including Isabella, where quite aggressive in warning me that my phone would no longer be supported once the 3G service was “sunset” later this summer. “Sunset” is the term they use in corporate-speak for ending a service. And yet… there at the top of my phone, it says, “4G.” They simply insisted it couldn’t be true that my phone supported 4G, because their records showed otherwise. “I think your records are incorrect,” I said. “I’m talking to you on a 4G connection right now.”

“No, that can’t be… you’ll need to upgrade your phone.”

Well anyway, color me skeptical. I just think they’re wrong. Here is the screenshot from my phone. See there, in the uppermost right?