If you were to list the greatest inventions ever, you might choose the car, or the PC, or even birth control, as many experts do. However, one invention that gets overlooked, perhaps because it is so ubiquitous in today’s society that we can’t even think about doing without it, is the mobile phone.
If you compare the way we communicate today with the way we communicated twenty or even ten years ago, you would find a vast difference. The evolution of mobile phones has had a dramatic impact on our communications. In western society, almost everybody has a mobile phone. Even in countries where there is no electricity, people have mobile phones.
If you compare the mobile phones from as little as ten or fifteen years ago, you’d see a huge difference. Before, only rich people or super powerful salespeople had phones. They were considered a luxury. And you could only use them to talk, and only if you were standing next to a mobile phone tower.
Nowadays, they have tons of useful features. They can even tell you where the nearest 7-11 or church is, even down to the specific denomination. Video conferencing via cell phone is an accepted practice today.
One major roadblock for some people to getting a mobile phone is the all important credit check. If you don’t pass a credit check, you can’t get a phone. If you are lucky, you can put up a huge deposit, usually over a thousand dollars. But most people can’t afford that.
Today, that is all changing. Today more and more people are discovering that a pay as you go plan is a much more viable option. You pay for you phone use up front. You no longer need any lengthy contracts. Not everybody has good credit. With the recent crisis, more and more people are finding that companies that offer solutions to those of us with sub standard credit are worthy of our business. It’s good for them, and it’s good for us.