I live in New York and cell phones are everywhere. I always travel by bus or subway, and the strangest thing is that I still rarely see someone reading an old-fashioned paper newspaper or a book. It seems almost everyone is glued to their phones.
That's exactly the situation as more and more people on the streets are glued to their tiny cell phone screens. There was a time when people talking loudly in public places were considered weird, but nowadays, people are talking loudly on the street, bus or subway in the 21st century.
What's even stranger is that couples often find themselves in cafes or restaurants across the street, not talking to each other and constantly checking their smartphones. This is the new standard.
You can pick up a "phone" anywhere in the country, landline or wireless, and call your friends, family, coworkers, police, or anyone, anytime, anywhere (mostly). The wireless mobile phone is both an anchor and a grounding technology and the lubricant of the electronic devices that make postmodern 21st century life possible.
The modern era of mobile phones began inauspiciously on April 3, 1973, when Martin Cooper of Motorola made the first phone call to Joel Engel of Bell Labs. "Hi Joel, I'm calling from a cell phone, but it's a real cell phone. It's a personal cell phone."
More and more people, including young people, use their mobile phones to talk, send messages, email, watch videos and socialize. Hand-held and finger-controlled mobile devices, etc. And by "everyone," I mean everyone, regardless of age, gender, race, or economic status. What appears to be the absence of such devices is the growing number of very young, very old and missing children wandering the city streets.
Postmodern 21st century America is a nation of interdependent communication. We have more subscribers than the entire population of the country. There are 518 million telecommunications subscribers (wireless, wired, cable). According to the wireless industry trade association CTIA, 469 million wireless mobile devices will be in use by 2021, of which 190 million will be connected devices such as smartphones, laptops, tablets, watches and cars. According to the 2020 US Census, the population is 331 million, with 1.4 wireless devices per person.
In 2023, the number of smartphone users worldwide is expected to reach 6.92 billion, or 86% of the world's population. ***
Almost 150 years ago, on June 2, 1875, Alexander Graham Bell addressed assistant Thomas A. Watson “Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you. These words are believed to be the first words transmitted over an electrical wire between two telephones. In 1876, Bell demonstrated the telephone to the public, and the following year he founded the Bell Telephone Company, which became the American Telephone and Telephone Company (AT&T), also known as "Ma Bell".
100 years ago, AT&T introduced the first nationwide telephone system. This was the country's "modern" era, defined by innovations such as the light bulb, the typewriter, the sewing machine and the phonograph, following the introduction of railways and photography. During this period, the country's population doubled and it became an industrial center.
Initially, telephones were a luxury service and gradually appeared in businesses and luxury homes. Now, 100 years later, telecommunications services have become essential and, like water and electricity services, most Americans take them for granted. If it works - no matter how bad or expensive - we'll use it. We complain about slow download and upload speeds, static reception, high costs and poor customer service, but we pay our bills every month. Sometimes we look for a better deal but end up getting the same poor and expensive service.
Today, America's communications system is a vast enterprise that functions as the nation's nervous system. It mediates and facilitates virtually every aspect of postmodern communication, be it personal, business, health, educational, commercial or governmental. It allows users to read the latest news, watch presidential speeches, consult a doctor, accept advertising offers, pay bills, sign up for dating services and watch pornographic films. It enables voice, video, internet, social media, movies and streaming services over wired and wireless networks.
Few Americans realize that the United States is a second-rate telecommunications country. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) ranked the fiber optic penetration rate of the United States 32nd out of 38 OECD countries. The United States ranked 15th for mobile speeds (110.07 Mbps) and 13th for broadband speeds (203.81 Mbps). As of April 2022, only 43% of US households had access to fiber broadband, compared to over 80% in Norway and South Korea and over 90% in Spain, Portugal and Japan.
To make matters worse, Americans are paying more for poor telecommunications service. The monthly fee for Internet service in the United States (60 Mbps) is $70.06, compared to Canada ($64.29), the United Kingdom ($38.72), France ($32.23), and Japan ($33 .45 USD). Americans also face bogus service charges (Ramming, Summing, Slamming and other scams), as well as hidden charges such as "local transfer charges" and "domestic transfer charges" and various charges such as "call on hold', 'caller id' and 'caller ID'. "Call forwarding").
Next, there is the "digital divide" in the telecommunications sector. In our postmodern nation, millions of Americans lack even a basic broadband and Internet connection. The FCC found that approximately 15 million Americans still do not have access to fixed broadband service at the lowest threshold speeds (ie, 25 Mbps download and 3 Mbps). In rural areas, almost a quarter of the population (14.5 million people) does not have access to this service. But John Kahan, Microsoft's chief data analytics officer, warned that the FCC would significantly underestimate the actual numbers. He said Microsoft data showed that about 162.8 million people were "not using the internet at broadband speeds".
The inability to build communications infrastructure creates the so-called "digital divide". This has resulted in areas of low or poor quality telecommunications service across the country in urban and rural areas. Millions of school children do not have access to the Internet or broadband learning devices, and their parents are deprived of advanced employment opportunities, digital health services and entertainment experiences. That telecommunications companies track every call, email, web search, Zoom session, social network connection, streaming session or download, turning postmodern users into digital assets whose personal data can be sold to marketers or third parties. Few Americans know. . A party whose interests and goals are unknown.
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Over the past half century, wireless media technology has gone through five stages, or "generations," that represent how media technology has evolved. The current 5th generation "5G" was developed in Korea in 2008. Samsung announced its 5G network in 2013, and Verizon launched its 5G network in the United States in 2019. Today, 5G is slowly replacing 4G LTE in many urban areas, and 6G continues to evolve. The telecommunications industry is promoting "5G" wireless technology, which uses higher frequency wireless bands (3.5 GHz to 26 GHz and higher) than 4G to provide greater signal capacity. But deploying 5G will require installing more mobile transmitters and receivers closer to the ground and closer to customers' homes. The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), part of the Koch brothers' network of corporate organizations that support a "liberal" free-market agenda, plays a key role in influencing telecommunications policy. ALEC's 5G campaign has been enthusiastically embraced by FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr. "5G will create jobs, improve education and improve security," Carr promised in a 2018 speech in Indiana. But if you want to update the network, you have to update the rules," he added:
Policy makers will not see success if 5G is limited to big cities like New York or San Francisco. These "must serve" cities will have access to the next generation of mobile broadband no matter what we do. Success means every community has a fair shot at 5G. "To achieve this," he argued, "we must apply our rules to this revolutionary new technology."
For nearly a decade, health and social activists have been raising concerns about 5G technology. Devra Davies, PhD, MPH and president of the Environmental Health Trust (EHT), is one of the biggest critics of 5G technology. "The EHT Trust has been working to protect the public from radio frequency (RF) radiation for more than a decade, testifying before Congress and publishing critical research about why children are vulnerable," he said.
Unfortunately, 5G wireless technology has few real societal benefits, especially as a "mobile" service that enables today's busy postmodern lifestyles. Rather, 5G is just a marketing term we're familiar with.
It heralds the bright future that new technologies promise and, in particular, ensures legal and regulatory obstacles to the deployment of large numbers of 5G small cell antennas.
The telecom sector's continued push for 5G has led major phone and cable companies to block or scale back fiber rollouts. AT&T is completing its fiber rollout, reaching 14 million homes in 2019. Verizon is primarily focused on wireless ("5G") communications and will identify where the use of fiber can help facilitate wireless traffic. Cable companies Comcast and Charter/Spectrum typically use hybrid fiber-coaxial (HFC) networks. As a result, Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH) supported 23% of all homes last year, according to one estimate.
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Telephones, especially mobile phones, have a long and distinguished history. Its evolution over the past hundreds of years has transformed social life around the world. From Bell to Jobs, he built powerful industries. This fosters the electronic connections that enable what we know as “big tech”: Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) commented:
As these companies have grown larger and more powerful, they have used their resources and control over how we use the Internet to stifle small businesses and innovation, substituting their own financial interests for the greater good of the American people. Take a moment to pick up this small and relatively light smartphone and realize that you have a great example of technological progress in your hands. It supports a postmodern life. It is a key that opens many doors. More and more parts of people's lives, both personal and social, are mediated through digital connections enabled by mobile phones. This makes you a postmodern person of the 21st century.
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