Panama has pretty good cellular services. GSM/GPRS 850 from Cable and Wireless and CDMA 1xRTT service from Bell South Movil .

But where the technical side is good, the sales and marketing is horrible. Both of them have excellent advertising, but as we all know that aint everything. Both have made it as hard as it possibly could be to get information about the products and even buy it. Now why would that be? I have no idea, but let me step you through the situation one by one.

Bell South and Cable & Wireless both started their newer high end services around spring to summer 2002. Now go look at their web sites today and look at the models… What do we find? (Hint “Equipo” means Equipment in Spanish)

Bell South has not updated the phone models on their site since they day they went live in 2002. How embarrasing? What happened did they down size the web site department?

Cable and Wireless arent a lot better allthough it seems like they just updated their site with the models of half a year ago. The SonyEricsson T616 which they do sell is not on their site, neither are the T316 or T306 which they have been selling for more than 6 months. The T306 featured in a little ad on their front page, but no where in their product listing. However this is a definite plus on their site 2 months ago, when they were no better than Bell South.

Now besides information on what phones are available, what other information might be usefull from a mobile phone operators web site? Perhaps up to date rate plans? Both sites have personal rate plans available, but do we get any real description of what they include? Not really. I dont know what they tell you when you go to Bell South, but at C&W they always recommend the business plan as the best deal. However this isnt even listed on their site.

Prices of phones you ask? Besides their special offers that they may splash at times on their front page, nothing.

Now one thing is for the latest “cool” movie site not to work in my favorite browsers, another is a multinational telecommunication companies. C&W’s site does not work in Opera , Konqueror nor I’m guessing Safari neither, due to their funky dhtml menu system. I can verify the site works in IE and Mozilla. Why dont we just add a non funky menu system as well or debug the one there is to follow standards, for some of us non Windows users, who would like to spend money on new phones?

Ok lets say I’m tired of finding 2 year old information on the web. I might get impatient and start calling customer service. I remember once calling 3 times the same day in October asking about availability of the T616 (I am a geek after all).

• Operator one: “Hold please I will call and ask the Movil Shop…. That phone doesnt exist!”
• Operator two: “Hold please I will call and ask at Mundo Movil… It will be available in 2 weeks.”. Asked about price? “You need to visit the Mundo Movil Shop in Obarrio for that information.”
• Operator three: “You need to stop by the Mundo Movil Shop in Obarrio and ask.”

I have a phone on CW Movil, which is why I have no experience calling support for Bell South.

So how does this Eldorado of Phones “Movil Shop”, which is a secretive yet fountain of knowledge of mobile phones, work? Do you go in to the shop and see all the phones available in the shop for display, with prices handly available for each rate plan, like you might see in any mobile phone shop in Europe?

Are you kidding me? In both C&W and Bell South, they have a wonderful collection on display of 1 year old phones without prices. To get prices and actual information of available phones, you have to request a ticket and wait and wait and wait and wait… zzzzzzz Uh, where was I? Thats it … and wait. Oh, when you get there they dont always know of the products available.

The only way to get information is from the old fashioned way of filtering it through sales people, who of course make you wait. It is a very old fashioned way of thinking, that your products are so bad that you can only entrust the actual facts with the sales people and not with the public at large. Are they that insecure of that problem.

C&W historically bought Intel the old public company, and have in many carried on the culture of a government agency. But they are private now and need to change if they want to make money. Bell South??? Last I heard they were a public company NYSE:BLS in the US, why would they they think like that???

Hmm, here is hoping that they might learn about proper modern marketing. Not think their customers are simple peons, but actually people who might want to enjoy the experience of shopping for a new phone.