This post is a mobile-free zone

There is a spot up the back of the Qantas Club in Melbourne which has signs exhorting people to turn off their mobile phones. Not coincidentally, it’s also about the easiest spot to get a seat in the late afternoon. But given that I’m rarely expecting important calls before I jump on a flight, it’s often where I’ll be found. It’s actually nice to get away from the noise of mobile phones for a while. So it’s not terribly surprising to see that a city in Austria (not Australia) is legislating to quiet phones on public transport.

This comes soon after some airlines announced that they would be allowing mobile phones on flights, one of the last bastions of mobile phone silence. Qantas has taken something of a middle ground (but one which arguably maximises profits) by only allowing data calls, which includes internet access through tethered mobile phone (probably for about a billion dollars a minute). Other European airlines are allowing full mobile dialling, although the US is proposing banning this on flights to the US.

Certainly there are arguments for and against mobile phones on planes, but air travel is painful enough as it is without having to listen to some wanker babbling on for three hours in the seat next to you, shouting to be heard over the noise of the engine. Sure, I can think of things important enough that you need to know right away, but they’re rare enough that one can hardly argue that a mobile blackout for the duration of a flight is life-threatening. If anything, subjecting me to your call all the way from Melbourne to Perth is likely to be life threatening for you.

One of the problems with mobile phones is that they became ubiquitous so quickly that we never really had a chance to establish a comprehensive etiquette about their use. I’m sure that it’s illegal to use here, but mobile phone jammers are readily available to purchase, so I’m surprised that there aren’t more mysterious blackspots. If I was running a theatre, for example, I’d be sorely tempted.

Anyway, I like this trend toward mobile-free zones, and I hope it makes its way from Europe here. Even areas in which mobiles are allowed to be on, but have to be muted, as the ring is often more annoying than the conversation which follows. But this is certainly one area in which the younger generation, who communicate largely by SMS messages, has an advantage, as texting can be done in relative silence. Unfortunately, such a system might be unworkable, because most people are jerks.

Last May, Sweden’s Stockholm Transport did away with “cell phone free zones” on subways, buses and commuter trains just 10 months after launching the spaces… “It relied on people showing respect, but it didn’t really work,” spokesman Bjorn Holmberg said: Too many passengers wanted to use their commute to catch up on work calls, and some just felt safer with cell phones in hand.

And if you’re one of those fuckwits who has a loud and annoying ringtone, and carries on loud conversations on your mobile in public, I’m one of those people who glares at you as if I wished I was carrying an axe. Be careful — one day I will be.