Drive and Deal : Car Phones: From Toy to Valued Tool
Time was, rancher J. W. Golla would have to go after poachers himself because it would take so long for the law to get there.
Being out in the country and all, he’d have to drive maybe 20 miles just to get to a phone and, more likely than not, the poachers would be gone before the deputies or the game warden arrived.
Golla doesn’t go after the poachers by himself any more. Instead, he reaches for the cellular phone in his pickup truck, dials the Sheriff’s Department and waits for someone to show up.
“They’re great,” said Golla. “My wife told me the other day, ‘I don’t know what you’d do without that thing.’ ”
Many Uses on Ranch
Not that Golla uses his cellular telephone just to collar crooks. When the motor on one of his wells broke down not long ago, he called a mechanic on the spot. After loading cows into the trailer, he calls the auction barn to tell them he is on the way. And Golla handles business calls from prospective duck and deer hunters as he drives about the 6,000 acres that he owns or leases.
So much for the image of the cellular phone as a rich man’s toy.
The cellular telephone, once confined to luxury cars and limousines, is rapidly becoming a tool of the middle class throughout the country. In January, 1985, there were 91,600 cellular telephone subscribers in the United States, most of them in major markets such as Los Angeles and New York. By the end of 1987, industry analysts predict, there will be more than 1 million in 128 cities nationwide.
“We’re barely into the consumer market,” said Robert Maher, executive director of the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Assn. “The technology is there to make this the ultimate personal communications system.”
Cost Coming Down
The cost of a cellular telephone is dwindling rapidly, making it affordable for more and more people. A few years ago, such phones sold for $3,000 and up; now, one can be purchased in many markets for as little as $700.
The cellular telephone derives its name from the way geographical areas are divided into “cells” that range in size from two to 20 miles in diameter. Calls go to the cell switching system, which connects to the regular telephone service. Callers can move automatically from cell to cell as they drive through a city. While older car radio-phones could accommodate as few as 12 calls at a time, cellular systems can have as many as 100,000 subscribers.
Once it was a rare occasion to see someone driving down the road with a telephone at his ear; now it is a commonplace event. “People used to just stare, but now it’s no big deal,” said Betty Melton, a Houston real estate agent who is constantly using her cellular phone to make house-showing appointments. Sixteen of the 22 people in her office use them.
Houston mortgage loan officer Clay Brawner recently was talking on his car phone while stopped at a red light. He looked to his right and saw another man doing the same thing. Then, in his rear-view mirror, he saw that the driver behind him was also on the phone.
“It’s the most effective tool I have in my business,” he said in a telephone interview from his car. “It picks me up an additional $1,000 a month in commissions. It more than pays for itself.”
While the majority of cellular telephone subscribers are people in sales or owners of small businesses, those are not their only uses.
The steps of the New York state Supreme Court building in Manhattan looked like a cellular phone convention earlier this month, as the verdict was reached in the case of Bernhard H. Goetz, who gained national attention when he shot four youths on a New York subway in 1984. Where once news reporters would fight for a pay telephone, radio and television reporters covering the Goetz trial reached into their briefcases for cellular phones to call their stations.
At a recent charity golf tournament in Wilmington, Del., scorekeepers called in their tallies at each hole with cellular phones.
During court hearings in Houston that pitted oil giants Texaco and Pennzoil against each other in late 1985, stockbrokers routinely used cellular phones to relay the latest developments to their home offices. Chicago lawyers used the phones in open court last winter to field calls during a primary election dispute. Lobbyists in Austin walk the halls of the state Capitol, setting up appointments on their portable, wireless telephones.
Most of the squad cars of the St. Petersburg, Fla., police department are equipped with their own phones, as well as portable computers for filing reports. The cars of the Yolo County Sheriff’s Department in Northern California all have cellular phones, and Lt. Jerry Shadinger said they have changed the way officers go about their duties.
“It’s the difference between day and night,” said Shadinger, whose deputies have been using the phones since March 1. “It’s revolutionized our work habits and schedules.”
He said that deputies can now call in and dictate their reports instead of driving to the office. They can be on the telephone immediately to people in trouble, telling them what to do until help arrives. Shadinger said it gives those on the other end of the line a sense of immediate response and that, in several cases, deputies have learned enough over the phone to spot and arrest a fleeing criminal.
“People are satisfied,” he said. “It’s a public relations tool.”
In Cleveland, Cuyahoga Community College uses a 22-foot Winnebago van equipped with cellular telephones to register students for the coming semester. The van goes from fairs to shopping malls, where prospective students sign up for courses via a computer that sends information back to campus via the wireless phones.
While the cellular phone has made great strides since it was introduced in Chicago in 1983, there are some drawbacks and problems, as well as misuse.
Art Brodsky of Communications Daily, an industry trade publication, said that while the cost of doing business over the cellular telephone has gone down, it is still not uncommon for a monthly bill to be $300. One reason for that, Brodsky said, is that cellular subscribers must pay not only for calls they make, but also for calls they receive.
“It’s still going to be a business device, primarily, until the cost of the equipment and time go down,” he said.
The Federal Communications Commission has allotted two cellular systems to each market, and Brodsky said that several large population centers are approaching capacity. Meanwhile, cellular users can not just pick up the phone anywhere and dial their homes or offices. Most rural areas are out of range of the cells that pick up car telephone signals, and subscribers in some places can drive for hours before they may dial again. Brad Miles, a spokesman for Telecator Network of America, said that 423 “rural service areas” are only now beginning to be licensed.
As for misuse, there is the question of eavesdropping, using scanners that pick up cellular calls. So great was the concern in California that the Legislature two years ago passed a law making it a crime to intercept cellular telephone calls maliciously, and banned devices manufactured solely to monitor such calls. Congress last year passed legislation with even tougher wording, making it a felony to eavesdrop intentionally on cellular conversations.
More recently, the California Public Utilities Commission ordered cellular phone companies to include with its bills a warning to subscribers that their conversations may not be private. Cellular phones in California will also have to carry labels advising callers to tell the party on the other end that the call is from a cellular phone and there is no guarantee of privacy.
Bid-Rigging Alleged
There also have been some allegations that lotteries used to decide who will get the license to operate a cellular system have been rigged to favor particular groups around the country.
Perhaps the greatest fear expressed about the use of car phones concerns safety, and the question of whether a driver using one is paying less attention to the road.
A controversial study, released in 1985 by AT&T;, Bell Atlantic Mobile Systems and the American Automobile Assn., found just the opposite. The report said that drivers with car telephones spend twice the average time on the road, but are only half as likely to be involved in an accident.
That idea seems to be backed up by another study recently completed by the California Highway Patrol, which, on balance, gave the cellular phone high marks.
“Generally speaking, we found that cellular phones are safe,” said CHP spokeswoman Susan Cowan-Scott. They also found, she said, that over an 18-month period, the number of 911 emergency calls made from cellular phones increased 700%. She said that most of those callers were reporting highway accidents and drunk drivers.
“They have definitely increased the eyes and ears of the highway patrol,” she said.
Cowan-Scott said that, in fact, cellular phones might be a deterrent to reckless driving, because people can call ahead if they are running late in heavy traffic. And Dancie Perugini Ware, who runs a Houston public relations firm, said there is great security in having a telephone within reach as she drives the city’s highways.
“It gives me a good feeling of security,” she said. “When I’m on the road, 99.9% of the time I’m alone and I’m out at night a lot. It’s a real safety factor. I can let my family know when I’m going to be late and I can get help if there’s car trouble.”
Cellular phones of the future will probably be smaller and better. Maher said that wireless phones roughly the size of a checkbook are already being developed.
One certainty, though, is that the cellular telephone is not a passing fad for the rich. Said Melton, the Houston realtor: “You just can’t do without them once you’ve got one.”
