ROME (AP):
IN ITALY, where ruins, churches and artwork have stood for thousands of years, traditional telephones appear to be falling by the wayside.
Italian families are increasingly replacing land lines with cell phones, and by last year three-quarters of Italian households had at least one mobile, according to a study released yesterday by the national statistics bureau Istat.
Nearly 2.9 million households, or 13.1 per cent of Italian homes, used only cell phones as of November 2002, a leap from 1.8 per cent in 1997, Istat said. And 43.8 per cent of families had two or more cell phones, up from just 8.5 per cent in 1998.
Cell phone usage in Italian families has tripled in the past six years, the report said. By November 2002, 75.4 per cent of Italian families owned a cell phone, up from 27.3 in 1997.
The report did not give any reasons for the increased usage. But Italians young and old are notoriously attached to their "telefonini," sporting the newest models including the new photo-capable phones and brandishing them as if they were chic accessories.
Not everyone has caught onto the cell phone craze, or phones of any sort for that matter. About 3.8 per cent of Italian households were without a telephone of any type, down from 7.7 per cent in 1997. Most of these families live on Italy's islands, in the southern part of the country or in towns with populations of fewer than 2,000 people, Istat said.
In the United States, 43 per cent of all telephones are cellular, according to the International Telecommunication Union. Cell phones are even more ubiquitous in developing countries like Cambodia, where almost 90 per cent of all phones are cellular.
