CNN today picked up a story that every other news agency has been running for a while now: Making easy-to-use wireless phones is tough. I beg to differ.

Let me give you some background. I’ve been in the wireless industry for 8.5 years now. I started at a small, regional carrier and have worked my way through national and international carriers. I’ve been on focus groups, I’ve been in test groups, and I can explain to you the subtle nuances of why CDMA (Sprint) is better than GSM (T-Mobile) and why iDEN (Nextel) flat out sucks. I’ve always been in customer-facing environments, so I’m the first guy you come to when you have a problem with your phone. In my time I’ve activated or been responsible for the activation of well over 12,000 new lines of service. So when I say that an easy-to-use feature-laiden cell phone — let alone an easy-to-use feature-barren cell phone — is easy to make, I know what I’m talking about.

The biggest problem is that carriers don’t necessarily see humans as capable. They figure that if they don’t over-stupidify (that’s a word, really) their devices, the average consumer won’t be able to do anything with them. The result is that modern devices are spaghetti messes of over-simplified menus. And since the carriers themselves represent the largest percentage of sales for wireless handset manufacturers, it’s the carriers that have absolute control over the device’s interface and, ultimately, design.

Now, it is true that the general public is not necessarily tech-savvy. The carriers certainly do have a point there. And if you were to survey 100 average consumers right now, I’d bet that at least 80 of them would say they don’t know how to use their cell phone to its fullest potential. But the problem is not that we’re not tech-savvy. When I show a customer how to use their features, they remember. Suddenly they’re phone experts, sending video mail and downloading their own Java apps with the best of them. They started out their wireless life not knowing how to save a number in their phone book, and suddenly they’re coming back to ask about adding a Blackberry to their account. This tells me that the phones are, in fact, usable.

Think about visiting a strange country for the first time. Imagine the roads are unlike anything you’ve ever seen before. On-ramps are at right angles, “80 east” actually runs north, and it’s considered rude to get out of your car without tapping yourself on the head first. Would you consider yourself inept at directions if you failed to get from point A to point B without a map? Certainly not — you’re simply attempting to work with a system that was designed without regard for effeciency or end users.

It’s pretty much the same thing with wireless phones. Carriers have deemed you unfit to operate your wireless phone. As a result, you often suffer through a ridiculous number of steps to do something simple like delete a text message. A sequence like “Menu -> Messaging -> Text Messaging -> Inbox -> Select A Message -> Options -> Edit -> Delete -> Confirm -> Confirm Again”. Want an online weather update? Try “Menu -> Web -> Portals -> Yahoo! -> Local -> Information -> Weather -> Current Weather -> ZIP Code -> Downloading, Please Wait -> Press OK To Continue -> Here’s The Weather”. And God help you if you want to synchronize your phonebook between two phones.

No, the problem isn’t consumers. And the problem isn’t the addition of features. The problem is the carriers’ flat-out refusal to make intelligent interfaces. The real reason that wireless service is considered the second-worst (next to cable) industry for customer service is because our phones, in a nutshell, suck.

Carriers spend an inordinate amount of time scratching their collective head and wondering why consumers aren’t adopting the latest & greatest features. When the average consumer can’t figure out how to do a basic task like forward a text message, let alone do it in under four steps, well … I think we have our answer.

Verizon Wireless has taken an initiative to standardize the user interface on all of their handsets, and this is good. But the interface they’ve chosen is horrible. There is no logic to the design, nothing is where it should be, and it’s ugly to boot. Sprint has announced their own forthcoming standard interface, which users will be able to customize to their liking. T-Mobile and Cingular are, for the moment, leaving it up to the handset manufacturer, but retain final veto power.

Carriers need to re-examine their feature placement strategy. Sprint actually has a research facility where these things are tested out on real human beings (as opposed to Verizon Wireless, who presumably tests them on employees who are desperate to retain their jobs). It’s therefore not surprising that Sprint has consistently posted some of the highest average revenue per user (ARPU) figures in the industry; when customers can actually USE their phone, they’ll happily sign up for the extras.

Don’t blame the consumers. Don’t blame the increasing feature load. Blame the carriers. Their prevailing logic has always been that if they push hard enough and long enough, consumers will stop complaining and just accept whatever shortcomings are present. I find it humorous, therefore, that the carriers are now complaining about customer shortcomings when it comes to extra features.