US Operators Back to Basics

On our on-going pet subject of why Americans have not developed a deeper relationship with their mobile phones…look at these two ads which I spotted in a mobile operator store window in New York this week.

So here's one ad about mobile TV/streaming - and another one positioning the operator as the one with 'the fewest dropped calls'. First of all, I don't quite see how or why one would use a sector negative to build an ad around (surely the implied proposition'we're not great at what we do but our competitors are worse? isn't what we'd call hugely compelling...).

Secondly, how much faith would one have in a high tech service like mobile TV if the basics - ie voice communication - aren't sorted? And if the operator actually admits that in their ads? No wonder etc