Everyone's Doing It: Going Mobile
Sydney Morning Herald
Saturday February 12, 1994
Girls on trains do it, boys in pain do it, even educated brains do it. Let's do it, let's fall in love with the mobile phone.
Gadget-mad Australians are deciding that the mobile phone is no longer a yuppie toy.
With prices of standard phones dropping to $500 and both Optus and Telecom offering inducements, mobile phones are selling at the rate of 10,000 a week, according to Telecom, which dominates the billion-dollar industry.
The millionth mobile network subscriber 1 should be signed on this month, and it could be anyone.
It may be someone like Miss Rose Vescio , 25, of Pymble, a single mother living on a pension, who bought her second-hand mobile four months ago partly because of her son, Perry-Joe .
"I could be out on the road with my son and break down somewhere and with this I could call for help," she said. "It's so practical it's fabulous."
Mr Nick Kouhi , a salesman with one of the largest retailers of mobile phones, Strathfield Car Radios, has been overwhelmed by customers in the past year.
The six sales staff in his Concord showroom sell 100 a week.
"We tend to sell a lot to housewives for the shopping, in case their car breaks down," Mr Kouhi said. "There's the security thing too with kids coming home at night.
"Even criminals are buying them. They're the ones updating them all the time."
Away from the criminal class, the mobile is as much a tool of trade for plumber Peter Mountford as his electric eel.
Mr Mountford values its ability to put him in instant contact with his customers when they want him, even if he is down a drain somewhere. "You can organise your work instead of reorganising work," he said.
"A lot of people like to speak to you directly and if they have to leave a message you miss out."
While the mobile is a moneysaver for Mr Mountford, for one mobile user, Mr George Quigley , it is literally a life-saver.
As the Waverley Council beach supervisor, Mr Quigley is responsible for Bondi, Bronte and Tamarama beaches and is never without his phone.
"Communication is an essential part of a rescue service," he said. "I've actually been talking to a doctor while we've been with a patient and you can handle the whole situation.
"You wonder now how we got by without them."
Jeremy Heimans, 16, a student at Sydney Boys' High School, is coping without his mobile now but for a while last year it was a constant companion.
Jeremy, who was one of the organisers of the Voice Of The Children Day, rented a mobile phone and put up with the jibes of his mates because "it was really the best way to communicate with the real world from school".
And for those techno-junkies already bored with the new digital mobile phones, a spokesman for Optus predicts that a mobile phone fax facility will be available on the digital system within a year.
There will be no place to escape then.
© 1994 Sydney Morning Herald
