Our Afternoon with Aliant

Don Bonnell, from Aliant Mobility, dropped by the mediaplex this afternoon to meet with a group of seven of us, all but one current Aliant Mobility cell phone customers. This meeting stems from an email I sent back in October to Chuck Hartlen, Vice President, Aliant Mobility, in which I said:

I’m one of a group of perhaps half a dozen Aliant Mobility customers in Charlottetown that would like to attempt to engage your company in a discussion about your products and services. We are all longtime cell phone customers; most of us work in the technology industry. We are seeking an avenue to bring forward our concerns in a venue that would actually be helpful to Aliant, and, we would hope, ultimately helpful to us. Would you be willing to meet with us, at your convenience, in Charlottetown?

Don, who is the product manager for data and handsets at Mobility, was Chucks’ designate, and he kindly came over from New Brunswick this afternoon and spent three hours in a room talking about cell phones with us.

I think we all came away having learned something from the meeting: Don was very open about explaining how things worked, why things work the way they do, and how they might change. He talked to us about AMPS and CDMA and 1xRTT, about handsets, customer service, the Mobility website and broken antennas.

I was impressed with his openness and his attitude, and encouraged by what he told us about plans for the future.

In my experience, Aliant has many people like Don lurking inside; too often their efforts and ideas get obfuscated by the beastly nature of the organization. It’s nice, as a result, when you can sit across the table from them and have an honest dialogue.

So thanks to Chuck for taking my original request seriously, and thanks to Don for visiting, and putting up with our barrage of questions and criticisms.