can you hear me now?

One of my pet peeves is cell phones.  I swear to God, those damned things may be the greatest fraud ever perpetrated on humanity.

Don't get me wrong -- nobody wants a wireless communication system more than I do.  And while the cell phone system is certainly wireless, calling it "communication" is still no small exaggeration.

It's all about costs vs. benefits.  Portability is a huge, undeniable benefit, but I wonder if everyone's understating the costs of frail cellular connectivity.  I wouldn't mind seeing a proper accounting of all the time we spend saying "I missed that last part, can you please repeat it?", or all the time we've wasted in one-sided conversations before realizing we've been disconnected.