AT&T Asks Users To 'Mark The Spot'

I can't believe AT&T is taking this step. It is officially asking its customers to tell them where coverage is less than optimal with a new application for the iPhone called "Mark the Spot." As in, mark the spot where AT&T failed you.Personally, I think this is pathetic. AT&T is asking its customers to become unpaid network testers. Ridiculous. It's AT&T's responsibility to provide a working wireless network. That's what its customers pay for month in and month out.

In a new move that I can hardly believe is real, AT&T has created a new application for the iPhone called "Mark the Spot." The free application (OMG, could you imagine if AT&T charged for it?), "provides customers a means to provide feedback on network user experience to AT&T." In other words, if you have a call failure, or other network weirdness, you can use this application to tell AT&T about it.

The application lets AT&T customers report dropped balls, er, calls, failed calls, zero coverage, poor coverage or data failure for a given location (GPS coordinates included). Users can note if those issues are experienced once, seldom, often, or always. Customers can also choose to add their own comments (that's asking for trouble), and will receive an SMS to acknowledge that AT&T received the report.

On one hand, it will let AT&T know exactly where it is weakest. In theory, this might lead to network improvements in those areas. On the other, AT&T should already know this. It's AT&T's network, after all. Asking customers to provide this sort of feedback will surely let AT&T know when it fails its customers, but that it has to ask them in the first place is an even bigger failure.