“Communism is like one big phone company.” Lenny Bruce
I want land lines back. And I want a phone from Bell Telephone. I want the kind of phone that hung on the wall in our kitchen and had a cord that could wrap around the block three times. I want a phone to use while hiding in the pantry with the door closed, to talk to friends about things like strategy for asking Linda Castellano to dance at the junior high mixer. In case you forgot, going to a dance always required a strategy and you never, ever went alone without your own personal A-Team to back you up. But dancing with a pretty girl with big hair and a pink bow is not today’s topic.
Right now I am buried in information about cell phones. I’ve been using an iPhone and I love it, even though my model is obsolete and only connects to the 1G network that runs through Istanbul and the Cayman Islands. The problem is not the phone, the problem is the BS&S network that it runs on. Once the king of the communications world, BS&S was vivisected during the 1980’s. Up to that point you could call anywhere in the world without using a 73-digit code and they had pleasant operators who actually spoke English.
So the iPhone and all the new smart phones are really cool. I think it’s fun having a GPS on the phone, even if the screen is so small it’s quite a challenge to use while driving. It’s also neat having email so I can get my spam mail when not home, and the Nook app let’s me read my latest novel one sentence at a time no matter where I am. The good news is that my indentured servitude to BS&S is finally over and I am free to find a new master. The bad news is that there seem to be several thousand carriers out there now. Some are big and have familiar names, others are run by little old ladies from their basements. It’s a huge choice and there is very little objective information to go by.
To make this even more complicated, Apple now has the iPhone Mark VI or whatever that apparently has features you need for extended stays on a space station, certainly something I need, but Consumer Reports recommends not to buy it because they will have a Mark X version out this summer (apparently it’s cool to skip version numbers now) that will answer itself, translate voice to text while driving (didn’t that used to be called just plain “talking on the phone?”) and call you a cab if you’re lost in a strange city. Also, the iPhone is now available through another carrier so I don’t have to use BS&S. But if I sign up now for another two-year long chain gang, I can’t get the newer phone when it comes out. What to do, what to do.
There is now something called a no-contract service that seems appealing, at least until the iPhone Mark X arrives. These plans work by pre-paying for minutes that you never see again, even if you don’t use them within thirty days. Well that’s pretty much like the non-rollover minutes advertised by BS&S so I guess we can live with that. But it turns out that these services also offer ultra-slick smart phones that use the new Gooble android system and have similar features to the legendary iPhone. Compared to basic phones, these things are right out of a Flash Gordon story. If this was a younger audience I would have referred to Star Wars, but frankly I think Flash was cooler than Luke Skywalker. Also, Flash used a proper blaster and not some silly light-up sword. If you have technology for a spaceship you don’t need swords. Geesh.
So it’s decision time again, and having way too much choice is yet another thing that the new millennium has brought to us. Every aspect of our daily lives now hinges on deciding what to use from an array of goods and services that would astound even the grandest of ancient kings. No wonder many of us boomers walk around in a fog, befuddled by all we see. Just go to Blessed Buy and look around. The sensory overload is amazing. If we’d had stores like that in the ‘60’s there would have been no use for drugs. An entire wall of 50-inch LCD television screens? Farrrr out.
I’ve narrowed my search down to a mere 73 carriers and I’ve discovered that there really is only one set of actual wires and cell towers in place that are leased by all of them. I’ve no idea who owns the actual hardware. I did read somewhere that Al Gore invented cellular service after he got bored with the internet, but I suspect it’s actually built on the remnants of the old Bell Telephone system.
There is also a rumor that the BS&S monopoly never really broke up, and that one day they will re-emerge with a new phone that attaches to the wall, has a rotary dial, and includes a cord for the handset that stretches around the block three times. If that happens, you can find me in the pantry sorting out a strategy for asking Sarah Wykowski to dance at the seniors mixer.
Note: According to Nielsen, there are over 223 million mobile phone users in the U.S. over age 13, and nearly 17 million users also use cell phones to access the web. 18% of mobile devices currently in use are smartphones, and that should increase to around 25% this coming year. Total wireless minutes used in the U.S. was 2.3 trillion by the end of 2009, with 1.56 trillion text messages during the same period. Final usage results for 2010 are not in yet but are expected to show significant growth over the previous year. Don’t text and drive!
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