The Shocking number behind cellphone usage, trends and statistics.
Mobile phones are used for a variety of purposes, including keeping in touch with family members, conducting business, and having access to a telephone in the event of an emergency. Some people carry more than one cell phone for different purposes, such as for business and personal use. Multiple SIM cards may also be used to take advantage of the benefits of different calling plans—a particular plan might provide cheaper local calls, long-distance calls, international calls, or roaming. A study by Motorola found that one in ten cell phone subscribers have a second phone that often is kept secret from other family members. These phones may be used to engage in activities including extramarital affairs or clandestine business dealings. The mobile phone has also been used in a variety of diverse contexts in society, for example:
* Organizations that aid victims of domestic violence may offer a cell phone to potential victims without the abuser’s knowledge. These devices are often old phones that are donated and refurbished to meet the victim’s emergency needs.
* Child predators have taken advantage of cell phones to communicate secretly with children without the knowledge of their parents or teachers.
* The advent of widespread text messaging has resulted in the cell phone novel; the first literary genre to emerge from the cellular age via text messaging to a website that collects the novels as a whole. Paul Levinson, in Information on the Move (2004), says “…nowadays, a writer can write just about as easily, anywhere, as a reader can read” and they are “not only personal but portable.”
* Mobile telephony also facilitates activism and public journalism being explored by Reuters and Yahooand small independent news companies such as Jasmine News in Sri Lanka.
* Mobile phones help lift poor out of poverty. The United Nations report that mobile phones—spreading faster than any other information technology—can improve the livehoods of the poorest people in developing countries. The economic benefits of mobile phones are go well beyond access to information where fixed-line or Internet are not yet available in rural areas, mostly in Least Developed Countries. Mobile phones have spawned a wealth of micro-enterprises, offering work to people with little education and few resources, such as selling airtime on the streets and repair or refurbishing handsets.
* In Mali and some of African countries, villagers sometimes had to go from village to village all day, covering up to 20 villages, to let friends and relatives know about a wedding, a birth or a death – but it is no longer necessary anymore since signal of mobile phone cover them. Like many African countries, the coverage has better than landline networks, and most people own a mobile phone. However, small villages has no electricity, leaving mobile phone owners to have to charge their phone batteries with accu from motorcycle.
