Trump blamed AT&T for a bad call on Truth Social, but today’s complex telecom networks make assigning fault less clear
President Donald Trump had a quality problem on an important call, and he blamed AT&T on his social media platform, Truth Social. But was the problem really their fault? Telephone and wireless companies have a big job of linking all of us. Having a quality and reliable connection is key. When something goes wrong, who is to blame is not as clear as it used to be. Today, there are many competitors and technologies that all must link up flawlessly and work together in order to complete a call.
On Truth Social, he wrote: “I’m doing a major conference call with faith leaders from all over the country, and AT&T is totally unable to make their equipment work properly.”
Trump said they would reschedule the call, but how they would use another carrier next time.
Verbal battle between President Trump and AT&T
AT&T said on “X” that it contacted the White House and their initial analysis found “the disruption was caused by an issue with the conference call platform, not their network.” Fighting to disrupt the PR damage to their brand, the company said it is “working diligently to better understand the issue so we can prevent disruptions in the future.”
Either end of a call can be wireline, wireless, Internet based or VoIP, or even using one of the assorted social media connections or conference call services. The middle of the call typically travels over a one or more wire line data networks.
When a company goes to battle with a customer, their own brand suffers
In addition, the definition of an average phone call can have lots of differences. They can be an old-fashioned phone call, or they can be a video call, or a call carried over a data network, and more. Plus, there is a one-on-one call or a multi-person conference call.
So, when there is a quality or reliability issue, there can be many areas of potential problems. It is no longer correct to simply blame the phone company, when the problem could come from any number of different companies and technologies throughout the call.
And that is one key problem that needs to be corrected. Remember, there is the actual service issues and then there are the wrong perception issues.
Telecom uses many different technologies which need to work together
We should not expect the source of the problem is the carrier we use. It can be with any carrier used to complete the call.
As the telecommunications industry has moved forward in recent decades, it has increased the choices and availability of services we can use. This freedom of choice can also create numerous potential quality problems, which can be very difficult to quickly isolate and fix while not harming the calls.
Can AI help optimize network connectivity and quality?
Could Artificial Intelligence play an increasingly important role in increasing the quality and reliability of our varied communications?
AI agents can be continuously scouting for flaws in the connection. If there is a bad connection, it could be repaired before any caller knows there was a problem. If there is a problem, but not on the home network, AI can work with other AI on other networks to keep things humming along.
That means we not only have to use AI that understands our network, but can also communicate with other AI from other networks. It also means all the different networks need to be able to work together to keep quality top priority.
AI can be a solution, but can also create new problems
Of course, this mixing of competing AI can also open up new security concerns. Vital information from one competitor could be shared or stolen with another company.
So, as you can see, there is a real need to use AI to keep networks working and quality and reliability high. At the same time, we must create a secure environment where corporate secrets are safe and secure.
While this the simply a fact of life in todays communications landscape, the an important thing that matters to communications companies are their image and the perception around their brand.
Customer perception of who is responsible for quality and reliability
Even though customers do not understand how the world of communications operates today, a negative comment here and there in the marketplace, even though it is not accurate, can be very costly to any company.
This is a problem for AT&T with this President Trump comment on Truth Social. This is also a real problem for every communications company.
While I feel bad for AT&T trying to wrestle with a customer on quality and reliability, the truth of the matter is when they wrestle with a customer, whether right or wrong, their brand always suffers.
AT&T has reliable and dependable network
AT&T has an outstanding network. Sure, there are occasional problems where every carrier occasionally has these kind of interoperability issues. The truth is, using a competitor will not always solve every problem. The problem could be elsewhere.
Companies must not only play well in the marketplace, and play well with all other companies they work with, but they must also deflect the harm caused by non-communications-experts who put in their two-cents of dissatisfaction which could be harmful to their brand.
Telecom is confusing. So, should communications companies raise the profile of this problem to educate the marketplace? Or should they ignore it and hope it does not ultimately pick up steam and eventually become a monster they need to fix?
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