wonder. Cell phones are arguably one of the most useful
gadgets ever placed into our hands. You can store your
address book in your cell phone; you can make to-do lists;
set reminders; play games; send text messages; take photos;
save and play music; send and receive emails; pay your
bills; and yes - even talk to anyone on the planet from
just about anywhere.
The wish to talk to others is, of course, where it all
started. The history of wireless long-distance (or at least
longish distance) talking devices reaches into the hazy
past, almost to the beginning of the last century, though
it took inventors about fifty years to take the leap from
the concept of radio telephony to the idea of cell phones.
Several more decades passed before the early prototypes
matured into operational practice. Japan launched the
world's first commercial cellular network in 1979. The
first SMS text message was sent in Finland in 1993. And in
2001, Japan was again first with a commercial 3G (Third
Generation) cellular network - the one that allows us to
use Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) access, Multimedia
Messaging Service (MMS), and internet communication
services such as email and World Wide Web access.
As for South Africa, the country's first in the cell phone
field occurred in 1994, when one national cellular network,
Vodacom, officially started commercial operation. In the
first month, the new operator attracted fifty thousand
subscribers.
A friend of mine was among those fifty thousand. His
imagination was completely fired up by the new toy. He
would not listen to us, his closest friends, who one and
all advised him against wasting money on a passing fad.
My friend still has the handset he acquired in 1994. It is
the size and weight of a brick. And he still regrets having
recounted to us, his closest friends, an incident that
amounts to his biggest cell phone-related embarrassment.
This is what happened. Shortly after acquiring his new toy,
my friend found himself in one big shopping mall. All of a
sudden he felt an irresistible urge to show off the mobile
communication device that was weighing down his jacket
pocket. With the confidence of an old hand at new
technology, he took the brick-like apparatus out of his (by
then seriously sagging) pocket, placed it next to his ear
and went on to play-act an important business conversation.
He stopped in his tracks in the middle of the mall, he
spoke clearly and loudly into the receiver, he carefully
threw in choice big words like "appointment",
"negotiation", and even (a stroke of genius) "portfolio".
All the while he beamed at the passers by, who slowed down
and even stopped to witness this technological miracle.
Then, at the pinnacle of his triumph, his cell phone rang.
For real. The faces that only a moment ago regarded him
with admiration and envy now began to eye him with
derision. To save what remained of his dignity, my friend
scrambled for the car park and neglected to respond to the
call, his first ever to the cell phone.
My friend's vanity smarts even today, though he tries to
hide this behind a veil of statistics. Whenever we, his
closest friends, need to check his ego by bringing up the
cell phone incident, he defensively reiterates with: -
Aha! Do remind me, would you be the guys who urged me not
to waste my money on a passing fad? And do you know....
Then he goes on to inform us about:
- the estimated number of cell phone users worldwide (4.1
billion at the end of 2008);
- the number of cell phone users in sub-Saharan Africa
(about 150 million at the end of 2008);
- the number of cell phone subscribers in South Africa
(about 45 million at the end of 2008);
- the positive economic impact of mobile telephony on
people in poor rural areas;
- and, to top it all, about the fact that South Africa is
one of the few countries where more people access the
internet from their mobile telephones (9.5 million, or 19
percent of the population) than from their computers (4
million, or 8 percent of the population), the figures for
the end of 2008.
Indeed, friends can be quite exasperating!
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