State of Telecom Industry in Pakistan

Phones have become a major companion for many people and there’s a lot of useful information kept on these phones: numbers, addresses, notes, files etc. There are a number of services which promise to safeguard that info, in caes the phone gets lost or stolen. A recent incident in the US highlights the vulnerability of relying too much on the phones and on the “data center”. Read more below.

Owners of Sidekick phones may have lost all the personal info they put on the device – including contact numbers – because of the failure of high-tech computer servers that stored the data.

The incident is a huge blow to the reputation of the Sidekick and is a reminder of the dangers of trusting a single provider to safeguard personal files.

The phones are made by a Microsoft subsidiary and sold by T-Mobile USA. The companies said many Sidekick owners’ information is “almost certainly” gone.

“This has been a terrible experience,” said Mary Boyle, of Silver Spring, Md. She said she lost more than 500 contacts, 100 pictures, a to-do list and dozens of Web passwords. She also spent eight hours on the phone last week with T-Mobile tech support, she said.

Boyle switched Monday to a BlackBerry and said she has no intention of paying T-Mobile for quitting her contract early. “As far as I’m concerned, they very much broke their contract with me before I broke theirs,” she said.

Although Sidekicks’ underlying data services were working again Monday, T-Mobile warned customers not to remove their battery, reset their phone or allow it to lose power.