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DoChara's Ireland Blog
Random Writings about Ireland and the Irish
Saturday
September 3 2005
Yakkity Yak
I got a spam email this morning from Euphony Telecom trying to interest me in network marketing their products (ie selling them door to door).
According to their website I need no special skills and it could "significantly expand your circle of friends" and enable me to " travel and have fun as well as enjoy the lifestyle that extra income can provide."
Now I admit I have never tried knocking on people's doors at dinner time trying to sell them something they don't want as a method of making new friends, for all I know it is highly effective. But I have difficulty in seeing it as fun and the travel part is even more puzzling. I suppose I could go and annoy people in Waterford or Carlow instead of just sticking to boring old Kilkenny.
Anyway selling mobile phone accounts at least must be a particularly thankless task in a country where there are 3.6 million people and 3.59 million mobile phones in use already. The words 'market saturation' spring to mind. Practially everyone capable of pushing the keys already has a mobile account and for the most part they are already quite savvy about choosing the best account for them.
Apparantly Irish people not only own more mobile phones than just about any other nation, they use them way more too. The last bit is not surprising I suppose, we are not exactly known for being stuck for things to talk about.
Comments on "Yakkity Yak"
Posted by: Nick
3 Sept 2005
Its funny, during my last trip to ireland I saw little children chatting on cell phones. Are cell phones so cheap there that its the norm for kids to have them?
Posted by: Katherine
4 Sept 2005
Yes, they are I suppose. Unlike some places incoming calls are not charged to the people receiving them, so parent often give their kids phones so they can call and yell at them!! Also the kids can buy credit for the phones in advance in units of €10. They text each other a lot though rather than calling, as it is extremely cheap.
Posted by: Winds and Breezes
4 Sept 2005
I'm guilty of having three separate mobile phone accounts - my private one, my work one, plus a French prepaid as I spend quite a bit of time over there.
I'm not, however, quite in tune with the idea of kids having mobile phones. Maybe it's just bitterness on my part - I remember when I was a child, I desperately wanted a phone in my room like they all appeared to have on American television series. I felt very hard done by.
But I've mixed feelings about it now. There's a growing trend of phone slapping in the UK. And schools are up in arms about banning phones or trying to prevent kids from using them during school hours. Text messaging appears to be the new way of passing notes. Schools that have banned them have run into problems with parents, less so the kids - some parents appear to assume that having given their little darlings mobile phones they should be able to contact them at all times, including during class. In a lot of ways, it's very thoughtless and self centred.
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