Audio By Carbonatix
A San Francisco company called Telephia (which, oddly, was my stripper name in the late ’70s) says it’s the world leader in providing “performance measurement information” to the mobile communications business; I believe ’em, only because I don’t know why you’d want to make that up. Anyway, Telephia today released a survey comparing how folks in 10 cities used their cell phones in the first quarter of this year versus the first quarter of 2005. No surprise here: Dallasites used their phones to make voice calls (which means this doesn’t include e-mail or Web use) an average of 824 minutes during the first three months of 2006, as opposed to 738 minutes during that same time frame in 2005–for an increase of 13 percent. All ya gotta do is look at the schmuck in the car next to you to know this stat’s a no-brainer; that dude, who may or may not be me, will not shut up. But there was one surprising stat on the survey: New Orleans residents cell-phone use is way up, from 761 minutes to 1,072–a whopping 41 percent. Then again, maybe it’s not so stunning at all: Says Tamara Gaffney of Telephia, not only does it “reflect the ongoing disruption that many residents of these cities still face, but also suggests a more lasting change in consumer usage patterns born out of the hurricane experience.” And then she sai…wait, gotta go. Cell phone’s ringing. –Robert Wilonsky
