What value a mobile number?

My second post in as many weeks based on what I saw on Question Time.  This week, despite being a ‘regular’ programme, it had a very much end-of-term feel about it.

Margot James, vice-chair of the Conservative Party and a prospective parliamentary candidate had some difficulty defending as a serious proposal an earlier announcement that young people who committed anti-social behaviour would have their mobile phones taken away. The audience and other panel members rubbished the idea, likening it Tony Blair’s much lamented suggestion that yobs could be made to pay on-the-spot fines by marching them to the nearest cash machine.

But one question led me to think about the relationship that young people have with their mobiles, and how it differs from older people. An audience member asked “Won’t they just replace the phone?”.  Yes they might, said Margot, but they won’t have their sim card.  Now, with the obvious caveat that this is not a definite rule, most of the young people I’ve dealt with are on pay-as-you-go, and it’s not just devices that are replaced regularly.  The sim card, effectively the number and the contacts contained on it, has no value to them beyond the credit it has on it.

I’m old enough to be of the generation where you’d answer your home phone with your number “Hello, Bedford 55122*” (I’ve never quite understood why we all did that). 25-years-on, I can still remember one of my neighbour’s number, and if I thought about it hard enough probably another couple of numbers as well. And yet, I can only remember three mobile numbers; and they pretty much the first friends I knew who had mobiles.

Mobiles allow you can store numbers by name in your phone, in a way you never really did with landlines (you could set preset buttons, but it was often limited to 10 numbers). You also don’t have the problem of remembering the number when you are away from your house. Therefore, once you’ve programmed the number in, you don’t have to ever worry what it is. With mobiles, you often swap numbers by allowing others to type it in to your contacts, or text you.  You may never actually look at the number. And increasingly, mobiles are integrating with services such as Gmail or Facebook so your friends’ details automatically drop into the address book.

I’ve had the same mobile number since I first got a phone in 1997, and when I changed network I took my old number with me. But actually that’s a fairly irrational choice to make; although I’ve got friends (and family!) who have known me since that time, the vast majority of calls/texts I get on my mobile are from colleagues or people who I’ve seen within the last month. It wouldn’t be that difficult for them to get my updated number.  In the same period I’ve been through five primary personal email addresses (and three work ones), and although there may be people I’ve lost contact with as a result, they wouldn’t have any trouble finding me again if they needed to.

So apart from the obvious practical issues of removing a mobile, unless it was going to be illegal to have a mobile during that time, I can’t see how confiscation would be in any way effective.

* that’s not my number, btw.

Images courtesy of Flickmor. Used under licence.