To reach a specific family member, a caller would need a different phone number on hand to contact each parent and child. And unlike land-line phones, the wireless user is billed for incoming calls, too. Any call from one cell to another would count for twice the minutes - an unfriendly statistic for most households, given that the majority of wireless calls are to the immediate family. For example, wireless services start billing outgoing calls from the minute the send button is pressed, not when or if the call goes through. Also, most companies charge by the minute, so a call that lasts for 1 minute and 1 second counts as two minutes.
Consumers also ought to be wary of the quality of service.
At times, signals collide, leading to dropped calls. It's one reason customer satisfaction has fallen from 70 percent to 53 percent in the past five years. The data show that, while more consumers now use cellphones, they trust them less for important calls. Not surprisingly, connection problems aren't trumpeted in cellphone ads. We're building additional towers where we can, and adapting technology, but it's going to take time before you can have a similar kind of coverage.