Talk About a Wireless Revolution
John Picard, a Los Angeles environmental-technology consultant, travels more than 200,000 miles a year and has perfected his routine. “I turn my phone on as I leave the plane, I hail a cab, get into the back seat and call my voice mail, call my office [and] call home. Then, when I get to my hotel room, I start returning calls. Most of the numbers are logged into my phone book, so I can jog dial. And if the line is busy, I use the ‘fast redial’ and boom! I’m in.”
The idea of sitting by a hotel phone, laboriously punching in a string of pin codes and long-distance numbers for each call is as outdated to Picard as the quill pen. “It’s all about time efficiency and ease of use,” he says. “This phone [a Qual-Comm with an Airtouch digital package] has been an enormous efficiency technology for me. This is the wireless revolution.”
The figures bear him out. During the past decade, the number of wireless users in the U.S. has grown from 1.6 million to 66.5 million, says the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Assn.’s Jeffrey Nelson. “That’s almost 25% of [all] breathing [people].”
On the leading edge of this wave are road warriors like Picard who rely entirely on cellular, are never away from their phones and, in the jargon, are “24/7 available.”
“They have cut the cord completely,” says Ken Woo, director of AT&T; Wireless in Seattle. At this point, he emphasizes, their numbers are not huge. “These are not average family profiles, but wandering people. Our customers include a woman with an international business . . . and a tree surgeon with crews in three states.”
But these numbers will grow. The cellular phone has become increasingly attractive since it was introduced in 1983 as the mobile car phone attached to a big battery pack. In the past few years it has metamorphosed from a sturdy black brick to a featherweight flip-top that fits in the palm, comes in colors and has a modem jack and more communications capabilities than the average household. It boasts lithium batteries that extend talk time, and plummeting costs, as companies such as AT&T; and Sprint offer single-rate packages with no roaming fees. “It has come to the point today where it is cheaper to use the wireless phone for a long-distance call than your home phone,” says Philip Christopher, president of Audiovox Communications Corp.
There’s another advantage to cell phones, which are essentially two-way radios communicating with a network of land-based radios with antennas that bounce the signals along. While the consumer originally had to choose between the older, analog cellular service and the newer, more versatile digital signal, today’s trendiest phones offer dual mode.
“The clarity of a digital signal is amazing,” says Alexander Garcia of Signal Hill. He was selling real estate in 1986 when his car broke down on Highway 14, near Magic Mountain. “I had no phone, no nothing. It was scary.”
Not only did he equip himself and his family with cellular phones, he changed careers. Now a sales manager for Quintex Communications, he travels and communicates with his staff via a pair of Audiovoxes. “I’m a lot more productive because I don’t have to look for a pay phone.”
Does the future hold a cell phone in every pocket? Jan Ahrenbring, vice president of marketing for Sweden’s wireless phone giant Ericsson, predicts a household with a cell phone for “every family member but the dog.”
