Cell phone madness

Further proof that the cellular telecommunications industry is out of its mind arrived this week by e-mail.

A reader sent me a note concerning the recent brouhaha about drivers who talk on their cell phones. She isn’t a business traveler. She isn’t a travel analyst or an industry executive. But she can see the future of wireless communications, and it’s not a pretty one.

How’s that? Well, my informant is in many respects an average American. She lives in a suburb of Indianapolis, is a full-time teacher and a part-time antiques dealer. Indeed, what makes her so unique is that she’s so…average.

“For some reason, market research firms seem to like me and my demographics and I’m asked to do a lot of market research studies,” she explains. “Coincidentally, just a few days ago, I was polled on my opinions of potential packaging and pricing options for unified messaging services. If you think that dialing up one’s e-mail on one’s cell phone while driving is dangerous, you should be aware of what other additions these companies are planning.”

When pollsters such as CFMC.com, Greenfieldonline.com, and Harrispollonline.com come calling they often unwittingly show their clients’ hands regarding their future plans, or at least their plans for future plans.

The reader, who agrees with my common-sense position that cell phone users shouldn’t be encouraged to type e-mails, talk and drive at the same time, is horrified by the questions she’s been asked.

For example:

Financial services: Unified messaging service companies plan to offer online banking, brokerage accounts and investment management from a wireless device, based on questions she’s seen. I can only imagine an army of multitasking road warriors driving, reading directions, listening to the radio and selling their Amazon.com stock simultaneously.

Shopping: Add to that a host of new catalog ordering, restaurant pre-orders and automated grocery ordering features. Some of the microbrowser technology on the market today would have to be fine-tuned to accommodate these new applications. Just think, soon ordering a pizza could get you killed.

Communication: How about the ability to set your home security system, monitor your family or pets or track down the physical location of the person you’re trying to contact? “Shades of ‘Big Brother,’” says my market research Deep Throat. Shades of insanity, I say. Do you really expect us to do all that from our cell phones – and survive?

“I was very disturbed when I read the survey[s],” she says. “I was amazed that the technology was this sophisticated and potentially invasive and that one would actually do these things with a cell phone – particularly while in the car.”

Same here.

If the market research is being done now, then expect these features to make it to the catalogs (assuming they’re voted ‘desirable’ by the other market research guinea pigs out there) within the next 12 to 18 months.

I’m neither a Luddite nor do I fear the future, but I can safely add one prediction to my informant’s: If the cellular industry doesn’t begin including Surgeon General’s-style warnings with their products, these new wireless devices will be our undoing.

For reader Carol Anne Gordon, who is quite possible more upset than I am about the potential abuse of wireless devices, this grim vision of the future is more than unsettling. Gordon has been collecting a body of evidence to prove that portable phones should be kept off the road.

The Independent Expert Group on Mobile Phones and Health in the U.K., for instance, recently determined that driving while talking on a mobile phone-either handheld or hands-free causes a delay in braking three times the delay caused by a blood alcohol level of 0.005 percent. “Current experimental evidence suggests there is little or no justification for the assumption that the detrimental effects of phone use on driving are ameliorated by hands-free operation,” the report says.

Gordon also notes that a variety of public and private initiatives, including the Network of Employers for Traffic Safety, have begun campaigning to educate people about activities that keep them from steering the vehicle, such as cell phone use, putting on makeup, eating or even talking to other passengers.

I can’t really fault the folks developing this technology – at least not completely – for this madness. Part of the problem is the consumers who say they want these features. Yet another problem is a mobile telecom lobby that makes the tobacco lobby look like the Salvation Army.

What’s going on? Well, I would say greed has something to do with it. With close to 100 million wireless subscribers, according to the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association, this $40 billion business hardly seems interested in sacrificing earnings on the altar of safety.

The other is stupidity. Whether it’s the end-users who are demanding these irresponsible add-ons or a cellular industry that’s all too eager to supply them, these people think that somehow they’re exempt from the rules. They look at the statistics – the hard evidence that multitasking at 80 mph can be fatal – and they sincerely believe it won’t happen to them.

For what it’s worth, they’re wrong.

Christopher Elliott is the author of Scammed: How to Save Your Money and Find Better Service in a World of Schemes, Swindles, and Shady Deals. Critics have called it “eye-opening” and “inspiring” — it’ll “grab your attention and won’t let go.” Order your copy now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble or iTunes.

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