The deadline for applications for Ireland's third mobile telephone licence passed last Monday, so we can look forward to even more of these gadgets beeping in the urban undergrowth.
Coming up alongside Eircell and Esat Digifone, the two existing companies, are a consortium labelled Meteor, which features Western Wireless, a US company, and RF Communications, and separately a bid from the British contender, Orange - which must have chosen its name some time before it considered Irish ambitions.
Mobile phones are a booming business, as you will know unless you have been in a cave in the Knockmealdown Mountains for the past 10 years. Since the early 1990s the market has grown annually by around 30 per cent, and it is now estimated that there are about half-a-million mobile phone users in the State.
The award of the third licence will be announced in June, and then there will be even more enthusiastic efforts to sell these gadgets. Well, mobile phones are very convenient things, they make life easier in many situations. And yet. . .
For passengers who actually enjoy using public transport, the good old days when a drunken brawl on the last bus of a Friday night was the main hazard spoiling peaceful travel are only a fond memory. The invasion of the audio-snatchers started in the late 1970s with that irritating buzz from the cheap Walkman on the guy in the corner with his Iron Maiden tape going full-blast into his ears.
The Mobile Yeller
But the 1990s have brought a more intrusive beast, the Mobile Yeller, who sits beside you on bus or train and loudly discusses his/her sex life in a language that the clergy do not know. An in-the-flesh conversation between two four-letter fiends usually has some volume control; but as nobody really trusts the phone to negate distance (and mobile transmission is still patchy), the user just has to speak that much louder.
The American writer Bill Bryson has a nice passage in Notes From A Small Island - his book about travelling around Britain - in which he describes being on a train heading to some provincial city, listening to a man sitting behind him talking loudly on his mobile phone. The drift of the one-sided conversation, according to Bryson, goes something like, "Hi, I had no real reason to call you but I just wanted you to know that I'm a prat, and that I have a mobile phone."
Here in Dublin, Judge Terence Finn took an extremely dim view of a mobile phone ringing in his court last month, and placed its owner in custody. I'm not screaming "Lock 'em up." But I do want to enter a plea for good manners - and to draw attention to a really dangerous drawback to the love affair with the mobile phone - leaving aside the environmental and medical arguments about transmission masts. The issue here is when a mobile is used by a car driver - a concern already raised by several readers in the Letters columns. No-hands phones that you get in fancy vehicles are one thing - but the phones clutched to drivers' ears as they negotiate traffic are quite another.
Driving behaviour
Everyone has seen them, puttering along, one hand on the wheel, the other wrapped around the phone, faces beaming or horror-struck as they listen, then chatter in reply. One Dublin taxi-driver told me it is easy to spot mobile-chatting drivers even before the appendage to the ear is sighted, because of their driving behaviour - usually slower than the flow of traffic and tardy with responses such as indicating for a turn. Taxi-drivers are themselves accustomed to speaking to disembodied voices in the cab, but they don't use their hands, nor is it usually very engrossing talk.
But what if a mobile phone call is telling the driver that their spouse is leaving them? Or that they have won the lottery?
The possible consequences of split attention are truly frightening. Last year in Britain a little girl was killed by an erratic driver who, the subsequent court hearing was told, had been using a mobile phone. The driver escaped with an almost derisory penalty. The child is dead.
Such extreme cases, one hopes, will always by rare, but the consequences of mobile phone use by drivers are hard to quantify. The Garda Press Office in Dublin says it is impossible to identify the extent of misdemeanours involving phone use because these are not logged separately, but under Section 52 of the Road Traffic Act: not driving with due care and attention. There is also a section on not driving with due consideration for other drivers.
"People would be charged in circumstances where their driving could or had caused an accident, in the same way as if they were changing a tape or lighting a cigarette while driving," said a Garda spokesman.
Warning to customers
Both existing sellers of mobile phones, Eircell and Esat Digifone, say they warn customers about the risks of using their phones in such inappropriate circumstances. Esat says it sent out a circular at Christmas recommending correct use of the phone unit in various circumstances, including while driving. A spokeswoman said this gave a detailed warning of the results of holding a phone to an ear while driving. "In the time it would take to dial your number, about eight seconds, a car could veer across two lines of traffic, travelling at 30 m.p.h.," she said.
In England, where there has also been some debate about this, recent press reports suggested that the European Union might take some action. However, a Commission spokesman in Dublin says there is no sign of such a directive.
A journalist addressing the question came up with the helpful suggestion that, in the absence of any effective instruction for people to limit phone use while driving, it might be better if everyone learned to drive while sticking one finger in an ear.