Cellphone Good Or Bad

There every where and their various tones can be heard ringing out from the blenchers of a little league game to the pin drop silence of a board meeting. What are these seemingly mobile music boxes you ask? Cellular telephones! Once only for the social elite the cell telephone have now become a common commodity. This little essentiality mobile personal communication device has transformed American the face of society. No long confined to the length of a cord, telephones are now able to go just about everywhere. With ever improving technological advancements in micro chip hardware the big bulky bag telephones of old are being traded in for sleek compact telephones what can fit in the palm of a child's hand. Now there is no such time as long distance if you're on a cell telephone.

Wireless communication as we know it today had it began in radio; actually a cellular telephone is a type of two-way radio. It wasn't until 1947 when AT&T propositioned the Federal Communications Committee (FCC) to allocate a radio frequencies did a mobile network become feasible. The research began with crude car telephone within the Chicago area. Despite the small number of radio frequencies set aside the research showed so much promise and potential However when one the enormous commercial opportunity was recognized AT&T could not maintain there monopoly on the market.

How cellular telephones work is really very simple, they use low-energy FM radio waves to transmit voice to the nearest antenna site connected with the local telephone network. The call goes through either a regular telephone line, or by radio signal to another cell telephone, depending on the service. Wireless technology uses individual radio frequencies over and over by dividing service areas into different geographic zones. These zones are called "cells." Cells can be as small as Madison Square Garden or as large as New York City. Typically, there are more cells in cities than in rural areas simply because there are more people trying to make calls in urban areas. Each has its own radio transmitter and receiver antenna linked to Mobile Telephone Switching Offices (MTSOs). As the caller moves from one place to the next, the call is handed off by the MTSO to the next cell site, providing a consistent, high quality signal. When a subscriber travels outside of a service area, calls can still be made by "roaming" on the systems of other wireless carriers. These carriers take up the call signal and allow calls to be made or received within their coverage area. Roaming works because carriers like Cellular One network with other carriers throughout the country to provide broad coverage areas.

When the market was first developed it constitutes only included the social elite, however it has evolved into a multi-billion dollar a year industry. Once, only catering to the well off wireless telephones have become so affordable that consumers are picking them up instead of landline telephones at a greater rate than expected, but they still have serious concerns about quality and coverage, according to a report published by the Better Business Bureau in February 2000. Problems with service; though some may be perceived rather than real, could hamper future efforts for mobile business, concluded Eune Signi, an analyst the Bureau who helped coordinate the annual survey of 2,910 mobile-telephone users. "If a user is not confident enough to make a call why would they be confident enough to make a transaction?" asked Signi. "It's a barrier, but it's not something that can't be overcome." The survey points out glitches in wireless usage, but it is still bullish on the future. Wireless penetration in the U.S. is 37 percent today and The Bureau expects that to grow to 62 percent by 2005. By those estimates, wireless subscribers would grow from over 100 million today to 177 million by 2005. Seventy-two percent of wireless calls are made for personal reasons and 28 percent are business-related. Most wireless calls, 61 percent, are made in the car or other transportation; 6 percent are done from "the primary workspace," and 12 percent in the home. The percentage of calls made from the car has gone down since 1999, leading the authors to conclude that people take their wireless telephone along with them to more places. "People are used to having wireless as part of their lifestyle; it's not just inside the car," Signi said. "Now people take it with them everywhere." Almost 95 percent of the respondents to the Boston-based consulting group's survey use a wireless telephone. 29 percent said that they sometimes use wireless telephones instead of landline telephones. But consumers are not likely to give up landline connections entirely. Seventy-five percent of respondents feel that wireless and home telephones will always be separate, a figure that is up from 67 percent in 1999. "They haven't developed the same level of comfort with wireless," Signi said. Between 5 and 7 percent of the respondents said that they "very often" experience poor sound quality, poor coverage, dropped or disconnected calls, or blocked or incomplete calls. Those numbers have increased from 1999 when they ranged from 2 to 3 percent. And while 75 percent of respondents said they are generally satisfied with service based on such things as voice quality, coverage, value for the money and customer service, only 41 percent said they are very satisfied with those things. Twenty-three percent of respondents with children say that at least one child under 18 uses the wireless telephone, up from 5 percent in 1999. Fifty-four percent of respondents cite emergencies and security as the prime reasons. Parents are responsible for bearing the costs, according