Wireless

INQ Mobile's new phones: the INQ Chat 3G and INQ Mini.

(Credit: INQ Mobile)

Cellphone maker INQ Mobile is launching two new low-cost cellphones optimized for social networking applications to give mobile subscribers alternatives to more expensive smartphones.

INQ, which is owned by Hong Kong's Hutchison Whampoa, launched its first low-cost, "smartphone-lite" device earlier this year. And now the company is expanding its portfolio with two new devices, one of which has a full QWERTY keypad.

The phones do not run full browsers and the operating system used on the device is Java-based and not nearly as sophisticated as smartphone operating systems used on devices such as the Apple iPhone or Research in Motion's BlackBerry.

But INQ has integrated many of the most popular Web services, such as Facebook and Twitter, onto their handsets to give consumers a smartphone-like experience at a much lower price point. And because the device is not considered a smartphone, subscribers can typically sign up for less expensive data plans using the INQ phones.

In addition to tight integration for one-click access to Facebook, Twitter, and other Web services like Skype, the new INQ devices can also sync with unprotected music stored in iTunes and Windows Media Player.

Just how cheap are the INQ phones? Well, if AT&T can sell the Apple iPhone for $99 with a two-year contract, INQ CEO Frank Meehan believes that U.S. operators could afford to offer the INQ mobile devices for anywhere between $25 and $50 with a two year wireless service contract. And in many cases operators could even offer the phones for free in exchange for a two-year service commitment.

The two new phones announced this week are the INQ Chat 3G phone, which has a full-QWERTY keypad and looks like a colorful BlackBerry, and the INQ Mini, which is shaped like a candy-bar and comes with a standard cell phone keypad. The devices are expected to go on sale in six countries on Hutchison's operator 3 later this year. These countries include the U.K., Ireland, Sweden, Italy, Australia, and Hong Kong.

The Mini, which will cost less than $150 without a carrier subsidy, will go on sale in September. And the INQ Chat 3G, which will retail for less than $200 without a carrier subsidy, will go on sale in October.

Meehan said the company is still working on a deal with a U.S. operator. But the phones could end up on this side of the Atlantic next year.

Want to find out why you suddenly don't have Internet access or cell phone service? You might want to check out the social-networking site Twitter.

It seems that Twitter was one of the main ways that phone company AT&T has been communicating with customers and updating the public about the fiber cut that caused thousands of people in Silicon Valley and the San Francisco Bay Area to go without broadband, phone, and wireless service for most of Thursday.

Janine Popick, CEO of VerticalResponse, whose company has been affected by the outage, said the only way she has stayed on top of the situation has been through Twitter.

"All of my real time updates have been coming from the AT&T Twitter feed," she said.

Indeed, she isn't alone. Nearly 2,400 people have been keeping tabs on the situation via AT&T's Twitter feed.

Twitter is a Web-based social-networking service that lets people send messages to a group of followers in 140 characters or less. It's been around for a couple of years now. I have to admit when I first heard about it, I thought it seemed like a service only narcissists would be interested in. After all, who really cares what I am doing or where I am going or even what I decide to eat for lunch. But the service has taken off in the past year, and it's now hitting the mainstream as everyone from doctors to restaurants are using the service to update patients and patrons.

And it appears that large companies, such as AT&T, are using the service to keep their customers and anyone interested in the company, informed in real time about a crisis.

AT&T began "tweeting" updates about the massive service outage in California around 7 a.m. PDT. With the first message saying:

"CA customers: We are aware of a cable cut situation impacting services in Santa Clara and San Jose areas."

From then on the company has sent about eight more "tweets" or messages informing customers that technicians have been on the scene and service would be restored as quickly as possible. The company apologized for the outage and also informed its followers that the outage was likely caused by vandals who had cut the fiber cables.

The company's most recent "tweet" actually notified its Twitter followers that AT&T is offering a reward for anyone responsible for vandalizing the company's infrastructure:

"AT&T offering $100,000 reward for info leading to arrest/conviction of those responsible for CA vandalism. Call 408-947-STOP."

The outage has affected thousands of people throughout the Bay Area, even non-AT&T customers. Because AT&T provides the fiber connections that link cell phone towers to their respective networks, wireless subscribers from almost every carrier were also affected by the outage. Some Verizon Communications DSL customers also saw service disrupted, because their service uses the AT&T fiber-optic cables to send its data traffic to its own nationwide network.

Sprint Nextel, whose wireless customers experienced service interruption, hasn't provided official updates via Twitter, but the company's spokeswoman Crystal Davis has also been updating customers and reporters via her Twitter feed. Davis' most recent tweet indicated the company still had no idea when service would be restored.

"Still working w/ our network and disaster recovery team on fiber cut issue in CA."

An earlier message tried to offer encouragement to those affected:

"Assessing fibercut issue in CA w/ network + emergency response team. We're all in this together folks. Let's have a day of peace in telecom."

Jeffrey Nelson, a spokesman for Verizon Wireless, has also sent updates with links to news stories about the outage. He even sent a message to AT&T's media relations representatives asking who reporters should call for updates.

"@ATTNews Understand spokesperson has been tough for reporters to reach at AT&T on Silicon Valley outage. Who should they call for info?"

While hundreds of messages were sent back and forth on Twitter throughout the day among angry customers looking for more information on what has been happening, some affected business customers were also using Twitter and other social-networking forums to keep their customers updated on the outage.

For example San Francisco-based VerticalResponse has been following AT&T's updates via Twitter, and it's also been updating its own customers using Twitter. VerticalResponse works with roughly 56,000 small-business customers to distribute direct email marketing campaigns. And even though the company is based in San Francisco, its servers are collocated in Palo Alto, which was affected by the outage.

For most of the day, VerticalResponse was unable to send marketing campaigns on behalf of its customers. And because the company was disconnected from the Net, it also had no way to communicate with its customers through its corporate e-mail system.

So instead the company leveraged several social-networking platforms, including Twitter, to get the word out to its customers about what was happening. Instead of coming into the office, most of the company's employees stayed home, or went to coffee shops in San Francisco where they could get Internet access.

"Our clients are pretty pissed," said VerticalResponse's CEO Janine Popick. "And rightly so. When something like happens you just have to throw your hands up. There's nothing you can do. But the good news is we have been building up a Twitter base, and we have nearly 4,000 people as part of our online community, so we can communicate directly with them through Twitter or Facebook or some other social networking medium."

Amen for Twitter. But the big question still remains, "When will AT&T fix this mess?" I guess you'll have to check Twitter to know exactly when. VerticalResponse's most recent tweet indicates that its servers are up and running. And the company has sent all its email campaigns for the day.

A number of Telstra's major broadband rivals have said they have no immediate plans to follow the telecommunications company's lead and use the Twitter microblogging service to monitor service outages and contact customers about support plans, though a closer look shows Optus to be one of the only large carriers not using the tool.

Telstra launched the offering over the past several weeks, garnering a mixed response from Australian users of the service, but rivals Optus, iiNet and Internode said they weren't as keen to offer an official Twitter-based service.

iiNet did admit that it had already dabbled in the tool and had an unofficial Twitter account. But the Internet service provider didn't intend on extending the channel to offer Twitter support in an official capacity, according to a company representative.

"For now, we're interested in informally participating in the commodity-free, open-conversation platform that Twitter encourages," iiNet said.

Despite its unofficial nature, answers to iiNet customer queries have been posted on the Twitter stream since the first post, on September 30. In reply to one tweet on whether responses would be coming 24-7, the company said, "Not at this stage, no. For now, it's proof of concept, hurtling towards a greater destiny! We hope."

The iiNet account's opening follows that of competitor Internode, which existed despite the ISP's managing director, Simon Hackett, saying the company was happy with its current use of broadband information site Whirlpool to communicate with customers.

"We're quite open to the idea (of using Twitter), but to date, we're finding that being open and accountable on Whirlpool has served us well for many years and continues to do so," Hackett said.

He said many senior staffers, including himself, were active on Twitter. Recently, when Internode had an outage, Hackett made multiple posts on threads discussing the problems.

Internode's Twitter stream has been in operation since midway through last year. Optus, however, seems to be the odd one out, with no Twitter account, official or otherwise.

"At this point in time, we're not using Twitter. However, we are always looking at emerging technologies and tools to improve the way in which we communicate with our customers," an Optus representative said.

Suzanne Tindal of ZDNet Australia reported from Sydney.

A 5.4 earthquake hit Tuesday while Verdell Wilson was having an exam in her gynecologist's Los Angeles office.

Given it was her first earthquake experience, Wilson did what comes naturally--she twittered it.

"As soon as I got dressed, I twittered my experience from my cell phone," Wilson said. "I usually twitter to 80 friends, but I now have 274 messages from people commenting on it."

Twittering and texting may be the way to go in an emergency, given landline and cellular phone networks were heavily congested as callers jammed the lines, creating frustration for some users who had difficulty getting calls through.

"If you're on a wireless network and you can't get a call through, often the texting network won't be as congested," said John Britton, an AT&T spokesman.

He also advised users to forgo making non-emergency calls when natural disasters strike, in order to free up network resources for emergency calls.

The earthquake not only created network congestion for AT&T callers, but for Verizon customers, too.

"There were no outages, but what we did see was a big spike in calls. It was about 40 percent higher than our projections of what we might experience in a natural disaster," said Ken Muche, a Verizon spokesman.

Other tech companies, however, were more fortunate.

Security software giant Symantec, for example, was able to escape any damage to its nearby research lab in Culver City, Calif., said a company spokesman.

Despite a "good long shake," nothing fell in the facility and cell and phone services were not interrupted.