Monday, November 4, 2002		Feature

Forced to face cellphone music
Gaurav Sood

A few days ago when Pandit Hari Prasad Chaurasia and Shubha Mudgal were rendering music of classical kind on two different occasions, music lovers were also forced to act as captive audience for music of a different kind. That of ring tones emanating from the cellphones of those who were not courteous enough to switch it off before the concert.

So you had a senior UT Administration officer’s gizmos breaking the concentration with Sare jahan se acha mobile tune. Another woman used her screen display light to let her acquaintance(s) know about her bearings.

A national newspaper reported that a chorus of cellphones repeatedly interrupted former President K.R. Narayanan’s customary address to a joint session of Parliament.

The increasing number of mobile users, tempted by the decrease in rates of handsets, service, better improved network coverage and quality has resulted in mobiles ringing while driving, during public performances, in classrooms, libraries, restaurants and at all possible places. According to a survey by St. Petersburg Times, with a new signing up service every two seconds and more than 1.26 billion projected users around the world by 2005, the problem is likely to get worse. We are becoming a nation of cellphone fanatics. In India alone, the number of mobile users is likely to rise to 120 million by 2008, because it has the cheapest call rates in the world.

Due credit to the corporate giants who have thoroughly convinced the buyers that there is no time, no place and no reason for pressing the cellphone buttons to start talking. Be it a cheerful occasion like marriage or a sombre one like bhog. The cellphones don’t cease to ring at cremation ground even. Sorry to say but we are still in a mode where we consider mobile phones expensive toys. Something to flaunt, that is. It wouldn’t be wrong to state that it is a stage where slowly mobile phone have surpassed the popular TV remote as the instrument of choice held most often.

Some still use it as a fashion accessory. Once upon a time, mobile phones were considered status symbols. Today flashing one only sends a wrong signal that you haven’t had a cellphone for long.

Members of Parliament have installed jamming systems, only after requests not to bring or switch on the mobile phones inside the Parliament Chambers were repeatedly ignored. The decision to installed jamming devices in the houses got trigged after a chorus of cellphones repeatedly interrupted former President K.R. Narayanan’s customary address to a joint session of the Parliament. UK tabloid, Sun, reported that the Queen has forbidden her servants from carrying mobile phones because the constant ringing drives her crazy. Quoting David Almstrom, vice president, Ericsson China, from CNN, " We think people have to learn to use the phone in a right way. You’re in a meeting, you switch off the phone. You can get reached in an alternative way. Mobile phone etiquette needs to be done a lot more."

However mobile phone blocking is illegal in the USA, where regulations prohibit the use, sale and also manufacture of signal blocking technology. In US public relation programmes to educate cell phone users began in early 2001. These campaigns like Nokia’s cellphone courtesy week in California are more polite and gentle.

Such efforts have yet to begin in Asia where the ringing of mobiles in public is a norm. In India the service providers provide no basic list of cellphone manners to their new users.