Unit 10

Task 1. Answer the following questions to the teacher:

1. Do you have a mobile phone? How much is your monthly mobile bill? How much have you paid for your phone set? What features does it have? Do you need all of them? Would you like a new mobile? Why?

2. Can you give up your mobile phone? Why do you need it?

3. How many mobiles are there in your family?

Task 2. Read the text and sum up its main ideas in 10 sentences. Express your own opinion. (orally to the teacher).

Mobile phone Part 1 From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A mobile phone, also known as a cellular phone or cell phone, is a portable electronic device which behaves as a normal telephone whilst¹ being able to move over a wide area (compare cordless phone which acts as a telephone only within a limited range). Mobile phones allow connections to be made to the telephone network, normally by directly dialing the other party's number on an inbuilt keypad. Most current mobile phones use a combination of radio wave transmission and conventional telephone circuit switching, though packet switching is already in use for some parts of the mobile phone network, especially for services such as Internet access and WAP².

Mobile phones are often packed with features that offer users far more than just the capability to text message and make voice calls. These may include internet browsing, music (MP3) playback, personal organisers, email, watch/alarm, built-in cameras, ringtones, security measures (e.g. pin codes), SIM blocks, games, radio, Push to talk and call registers.

Worldwide deployment3

Mobile phones have a long and varied history that stretches back to the 1950s, with hand-held devices being available since 1983. Due to their low establishment costs and rapid deployment, mobile phone networks have since spread rapidly throughout the world, outstripping the growth of fixed telephony. Such networks can often be economic, even with a small customer base, as mobile network costs are mostly call volume related, while fixed-line telephony has a much higher subscriber related cost component.

In most of Europe, wealthier parts of Asia, and Australia, mobile phones are now virtually universal, with the majority (in some countries and age groups up to 100 percent) of the adult, teenage, and even child population owning one. They are less common in the United States — while widely used, market penetration is lower than elsewhere in the developed world (around 66 percent of the U.S. population as of 2003). Reasons advanced for this include incomplete coverage, a mixture of incompatible technical standards (the GSM standard was designed for Europe-wide interoperability, and all European nations and some Asian nations chose it as their sole standard for this reason, while in Japan and South Korea another single standard, CDMA, was selected; in the United States and Canada there was no such standardization), relatively high minimum monthly service charges (around $30), and the availability of relatively low-cost fixed-line networks (around $30 for unlimited local calling). Prepaid or pay as you go services, common elsewhere, are far less common in the U.S., and are much more expensive than comparable services in other countries. Furthermore, text messaging was not a standard feature in North America until recently, and unlike in most other countries, the ability to use international roaming is still rare. The shortage of telephone numbers in the North American Numbering Plan (NANP), and the lack of non-regional special telephone numbers for mobile services, means that the pricing system used elsewhere (calls cost more to make to a mobile, but are free to receive) cannot be used, and as a result users pay to receive calls, discouraging cellphone use. The same technical issues affect mobile telephony in Canada, as it uses the same mix of incompatible standards as does the U.S., and is also part of the NANP.