No more cell phone
For over a year, I have had a cell phone from Rogers. Just recently, I decided to cancel it, for a number of reasons. In approximately decreasing order:
Dangerous
The dangers of holding a 1-6 watt microwave oven next to your head is somewhat of a theoretical slash unproven concern, but cellular towers themselves are pretty nasty microwave emitters and lots of them are being put in very questionable spots (like on top of apartment buildings) which is only encouraged by cell phone use. Whether these cause health problems is ``unknown'', but then again it was officially ``unproven'' that cigarettes cause any health problems until recently.
``In a 1993 "Talk Paper," the FDA stated that it did not have enough information at that time to rule out the possibility of risk, but if such a risk exists "it is probably small." The FDA concluded that there is no proof that cellular telephones can be harmful, [..]''
The FCC permits up to 500 watts per channel for high towers, which is about half the power of a typical microwave oven (usually somewhere around 700-1200 watts, apparently). Roof-top type transmitters are usually around 100 watts. While they certainly claim these are ``perfectly safe'', cigarette manufacturers also claim that their products are ``perfectly safe''.
Whatever the case, lingering doubts remain about the safety of microwave-based cellular communication. Points off.
Stupid Infrastructure
Cellular phones are not designed to enable person-to-person communication. Instead, they are designed to enhance the revenue stream of two large near-monopolies in Alberta: AT&T and Telus.
If cell phones were actually meant for communication, they would not utilize a centralized design (which is a pernicious and endemeic problem in our society, but that's a longer rant); instead, they would have developed with the aid of explicitly temporary somewhat-centralized infrastructure which would slowly be phased out as a critical mass of cell phone users accumulated.
Like the Internet, cellular phones could easily cooperatively share bandwidth amongst themselves and relay communications to the appropriate phone. This wouldn't be feasible for nation-wide communication, but would easily suffice for intra-city calls.
One might discount this as ridiculous blue-sky-type dreaming, but SRI (for example) has developed software they believe could be utilized by existing cell phones to talk to one another. Given that cell phones aren't designed to talk to each other (they're short-range, line-of-sight devices), it's not hard to extend this, especially if cell phones used a more appropriate piece of spectrum (i.e. one which isn't quite so line-of-sight as microwaves).
Cellular news reports about Mitsubishi development of a prototype peer-to-peer cellphone-type system.
In London, hackers have set up a local peer-to-peer wireless network (between computers) using 802.11b wireless equipment which shares existing Internet connections. Similar systems exist elsewhere.
Of course, the reason cellular phone networks were not developed in this manner was so that a stupid billing paradigm could be implemented: per-minute charges. This makes zero sense, even with centralized cellular infrastructure and would make no sense with a decentralized system; most people in a city with enough phones could just buy a phone and use it as much as they liked. Perhaps charges would need to be applied to access bridging equipment which would allow inter-city or inter-country calls, although presumably most of the expense here would be from long-distance carriers.
Charging per-minute for cellular access with centralized tower infrastructure has only a vague relationship to costs; it doesn't really cost the phone company any money at all to let a particular person talk for a minute. The real cost is in building the infrastructure. After the cell towers exist, it's basically free (minus maintenance costs) to allow people to use them. A more costs-based approach to billing would share all the maintenance costs and depreciation (which is to say amortized capital costs) of the cell-phone system over all subscribers. Of course, this doesn't enhance revenue for the cell phone company so it is rejected so long as subscribers accept per-minute billing.
With centralized infrastructure, the phone company can (and does; read your contract) track your calls and listen in on (or record) them.
Redundancy
Since we've privatized our phone company (Telus) -- which has basically just resulted in greatly increased local phone rates with slightly reduced long-distance rates -- it is necessary to build and maintain redundant cellular infrastructure. This is completely unnecessary, even if we (by which I mean society) decides a cellular network is a good idea. Ideally, we would build exactly enough cellular towers to cover all users (actually, we would ideally use peer-to-peer based radio-frequency phones with the occasional tower in low-concentration areas, but I've already mentioned that). How many resources we have wasted building this redundant infrastructure is not clear, but what is clear is that it is a direct result of a centralized paradigm and desire to control the network.
If, instead, a standard cellular phone system were agreed upon in the early stages -- there are at least three standards in North America, whereas Europe standardized on one years ago although the North American standards by the same name (GSM) is subtly different from the European standard, which means incompatible phone hardware -- then it would have been far more feasible to share costly tower hardware. To be fair, some companies do share hardware and many have agreements to allow ``roaming'', which greatly enhances revenue by charging even more per-minute than normal (even though the costs are the same).
Social Effects
I found myself far less likely to plan ahead, knowing that I could ``always'' be reached via cell phone. I'm not exactly a huge fan of planning, of course, but this didn't help at all, and it is a Good Thing to plan ahead at least a little. ;)
Cell phones are also annoying to others, however. Ideally, one would be perfect at turning phones off during meals, concerts, movies, speaking presentations and so on, but the reality is that we're not. Even with relatively low concentrations of cell phones, rare is a large public event where someone's cell phone doesn't ring. I've certainly forgotten before.
Having a cell phone also produces a slight implicit pressure to leave it on all the time and -- more importantly -- to answer it all the time. While one may certainly choose not to answer a phone or choose to turn it off from time to time, this tends to happen less than with a house phone (in my experience). I certainly did ignore my phone on many occasions, but in hindsight this pressure always existed.
Perhaps this is just a reflection of my personality rather than any effect of a portable phone, but I'll choose to blame the phone ;)
Expensive
As I've already hinted at, I think cell phones are far, far more expensive than they should be. The billing system makes no sense and shows no signs of changing. Hardware costs are enormous for devices which are completely useless without a cell tower. Networks charge the same for services which cost nothing (call display) as for services which actually do cost something (voice mail); this makes no sense.
Conclusion
Lost of redundant and possibly-harmful infrastructure is being built; if it turns out that there is (already?) cause for concern over health effects, will entrenched business interests with investments to recoup slash profits to make aggressively oppose the exposure of such risks? (The precedents of car makers and cigarette manufacturers suggest the answer is, ``yes'').
Cell phones are an annoying, poorly-implemented system for interpersonal communication; they are a great system for collecting money from subscribers.
Cell phones subtly affect social behavior in unwanted ways.
Anybody want to buy a Nokia 8290 used with Rogers AT&T in Calgary? [Update: it's really gone now...]