06.23.13
The new Shoeshine kiosk
At the core of the iCracked business is a network of iTechs who promise to fix your phone in a flash. Currently their network has 340 iTechs spread over 11 countries. Forsythe said thousands apply, but only 2 percent are accepted. The firm adds 50-70 new iTechs every month.
“We are extremely diligent in who we bring on and who represents us as a company…we background check every single one of them,??? Forsythe said. “We have a five-step interview process.
“One thing’s for sure, the potential market is enormous, the world has more than 1 billion smartphones in use, and researchers estimate the next billion smartphone users to be online by 2015,” it reads.
And still there are 48 million people on foodstamps, many of whom have smartphones that, somehow, make no difference at all to mobility in the US economy.
Chuck said,
June 24, 2013 at 9:44 am
I still think it’s funny that cars stop by my back driveway to use their cellphones before descending into a valley of million-dollar homes with no cell coverage at all.
It seems that high-speed broadband here in the US is defined as anything over about 750Kbps.
The US isn’t as technologically developed as some city-dwellers think. I know for a fact that copper and a 20-year old modem is the only way a sizable portion of the rural US gets access to the intertubes. No cell coverage, no cable, no DSL.
George Smith said,
June 24, 2013 at 10:03 am
Yes, that’s verifiable by going to the local Target and picking up the brochures on their pay-as-you go smartphone plans. They all furnish maps of their coverage and the rural US is mostly no go. Often, surprisingly the coverage is also lousy or spotty in cities where you would not expect it to be so.
So it has also divided into the privileged and non-privileged. Occasionally someone from the FCC gets interviewed and talks about the necessity of bringing up broadband status to everyone who doesn’t have it but things just never really develop. Anyway, progress isn’t really visible, if there is much, irrespective of various Google pr initiatives like Fiber or the balloon thing.
AT&T DSL is also wretched.