F.C.C. to Weigh Allowing Cellphone Use on Flights

Any change, which was placed on the agenda for the commission’s Dec. 12 meeting, is still months away, requiring a public comment period of weeks and a final draft of the rules. But it would constitute a major shift for airline passengers.

The use of cellphones during flights has been vigorously opposed by many passengers and by flight attendants, although some airlines in Asia and Europe already offer cell service. In the United States, the flight attendants union immediately urged the F.C.C. not to proceed with the proposal.

An F.C.C. official said airlines in the United States would be given the option of outfitting their planes with equipment that would allow the use of cellphones once a plane climbed above 10,000 feet, but the airlines would not be required to provide the service.

Tom Wheeler, the F.C.C. chairman, said the new rules, if adopted, would “expand consumer access and choice for in-flight mobile broadband,” meaning the commission thinks both Wi-Fi and wireless cellphone data plans could be used.

“Modern technologies can deliver mobile services in the air safely and reliably, and the time is right to review our outdated and restrictive rules,” Mr. Wheeler said in a statement. “I look forward to working closely with my colleagues, the F.A.A. and the airline industry on this review of new mobile opportunities for consumers.”

A swift negative reaction came from the Association of Flight Attendants, a union representing airline workers.

“Flight attendants, as first responders and the last line of defense in our nation’s aviation system, understand the importance of maintaining a calm cabin environment,” the union said in a statement. “Any situation that is loud, divisive and possibly disruptive is not only unwelcome but also unsafe.”

The union said polls and surveys conducted over many years found that “a vast majority of the traveling public wants to keep the ban on voice calls in the aircraft cabin.”

“In far too many operational scenarios, passengers making phone calls could extend beyond a mere nuisance, creating negative effects on aviation safety and security that are great and far too risky,” the union said.

Several airlines already provide in-flight Wi-Fi service, enabling passengers to use the Internet, email and text messaging. The F.C.C. measure would allow voice calls through the use of what is called a picocell, a small cellular base station that would be installed on a plane, collect all cellphone activity during the flight and send it down to the ground.

Airlines in the United States already have the technical ability to allow in-flight phone calls using voice connections over an onboard Wi-Fi network, but so far none have done so.

It is all but certain that vast waves of airline passengers in the United States will tell the F.C.C. their feelings about the proposal. Last month, the Federal Aviation Administration changed the rules to permit airlines to allow the use of electronics during takeoff and landing, and passengers generally rejoiced at the ability to be able to read an e-book or play a game on their tablet or smartphone.

But sitting next to someone who is chatting away for hours could quickly outweigh the common complaint of sitting next to a crying baby for the duration of a flight.

“I don’t want to have to sit next to someone who is talking on their phone the entire flight,” said Greg Pritikin, a screenwriter who lives in Los Angeles. “That would be a nightmare.”

On Twitter, people also complained about the potential new rule.

“Really bummed to hear that news,” wrote Randi Zuckerberg, author of the book “Dot Complicated” (and sister of Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook). “Airplanes were the last socially acceptable place to require people to unplug.”

The F.C.C. proposal would permit calls and data connections, which would allow people to surf the web on their smartphones and other devices. Airlines and a number of companies, including Gogo, have spent millions of dollars outfitting planes with Wi-Fi connections, and that business could suffer with the allowance of cellphone traffic.

But Steve Nolan, a spokesman for Gogo, said the company’s business would not be affected by the change. It already has the ability to provide in-flight phone service through its Wi-Fi connections, he said, but the commercial airlines have not permitted it so far. Gogo provides the service on some private jets.

If the F.C.C. approved the use of the cellphone equipment on airlines, the F.A.A. would still have to permit the equipment installation to ensure it did not affect passenger safety, officials said.

If the F.C.C. goes ahead with its plan on Dec. 12, it will solicit public suggestions on the proposed new rule.

After reviewing the comments, the commissioners will decide whether to approve the new regulations, either as proposed or with revisions.

The initiative comes less than three weeks after Mr. Wheeler took over as chairman of the F.C.C., but it has been in the works for months, agency officials said.

Warrantless Cellphone Tracking Is Upheld

The closely watched case, in the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, is the first ruling that squarely addresses the constitutionality of warrantless searches of historical location data stored by cellphone service providers. Ruling 2 to 1, the court said a warrantless search was “not per se unconstitutional” because location data was “clearly a business record” and therefore not protected by the Fourth Amendment.

The ruling is likely to intensify legislative efforts, already bubbling in Congress and in the states, to consider measures to require warrants based on probable cause to obtain cellphone location data.

The appeals court ruling sharply contrasts with a New Jersey State Supreme Court opinion in mid-July that said the police required a warrant to track a suspect’s whereabouts in real time. That decision relied on the New Jersey Constitution, whereas the ruling Tuesday in the Fifth Circuit was made on the basis of the federal Constitution.

The Supreme Court has yet to weigh in on whether cellphone location data is protected by the Constitution. The case, which was initially brought in Texas, is not expected to go to the Supreme Court because it is “ex parte,” or filed by only one party — in this case, the government.

But the case could renew calls for the highest court to look at the issue, if another federal court rules differently on the same question. And two other federal cases involving this issue are pending.

“The opinion is clear that the government can access cell site records without Fourth Amendment oversight,” said Orin Kerr, a constitutional law scholar at George Washington University Law School who filed an amicus brief in the case.

For now, the ruling sets an important precedent: It allows law enforcement officials in the Fifth Circuit to chronicle the whereabouts of an American with a court order that falls short of a search warrant based on probable cause.

“This decision is a big deal,” said Catherine Crump, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union. “It’s a big deal and a big blow to Americans’ privacy rights.”

The group reviewed records from more than 200 local police departments last year, concluding that the demand for cellphone location data had led some cellphone companies to develop “surveillance fees” to enable police to track suspects.

In reaching its decision on Tuesday, the federal appeals court went on to agree with the government’s contention that consumers knowingly give up their location information to the telecommunications carrier every time they make a call or send a text message on their cellphones.

“That means it is not protected by Fourth Amendment when the government goes to a third-party service provider and issues something that is not a warrant to demand production of those records,” said Mark Eckenwiler, a former Justice Department lawyer who worked on the case and is now with the Washington law firm Perkins Coie. “On this kind of historical cell site information, this is the first one to address the core constitutional question.”

Historical location data is crucial to law enforcement officials. Mr. Eckenwiler offered the example of drug investigations: A cellphone carrier can establish where a suspect met his supplier and how often he returned to a particular location. Likewise, location data can be vital in establishing people’s habits and preferences, including whether they worship at a church or mosque or whether they are present at a political protest, which is why, civil liberties advocates say, it should be accorded the highest privileges of privacy protection.

The decision could also bear implications for other government efforts to collect vast amounts of so-called metadata, under the argument that it constitutes “business records,” as in the National Security Agency’s collection of Verizon phone records for millions of Americans.

“It provides support for the government’s view that that procedure is constitutional, obtaining Verizon call records, because it holds that records are business records,” said Mr. Kerr, of George Washington University. “It doesn’t make it a slam dunk but it makes a good case for the government to argue that position.”

An important element in Tuesday’s ruling is the court’s presumption of what consumers should know about the way cellphone technology works. “A cell service subscriber, like a telephone user, understands that his cellphone must send a signal to a nearby cell tower in order to wirelessly connect his call,” the court ruled, going on to note that “contractual terms of service and providers’ privacy policies expressly state that a provider uses a subscriber’s location information to route his cellphone calls.”

In any event, the court added, the use of cellphones “is entirely voluntary.”

The ruling also gave a nod to the way in which fast-moving technological advances have challenged age-old laws on privacy. Consumers today may want privacy over location records, the court acknowledged: “But the recourse for these desires is in the market or the political process: in demanding that service providers do away with such records (or anonymize them) or in lobbying elected representatives to enact statutory protections.”

Cellphone privacy measures have been proposed in the Senate and House that would require law enforcement agents to obtain search warrants before prying open location records. Montana recently became the first state to require a warrant for location data. Maine soon followed. California passed a similar measure last year but Gov. Jerry Brown, a Democrat, vetoed it, saying it did not strike what he called the right balance between the demands of civil libertarians and the police.

App Smart: In Case of Emergency: My Cellphone Knows What to Do

The American Red Cross has an app that can alert you to common natural disasters so you can prepare in advance. The free Earthquake app for iOS or Android, for instance, has a main page with a big “alert” button that brings up information on global earthquake activity or notifies you about areas you have programmed in. This makes it handy for warnings about your own location or that of a relative living elsewhere. If an alert is issued, your phone can inform you automatically. The app’s “prepare” menu tells you what to do when you get an alert, during an earthquake and immediately after. If you are inside a building, for example, it will tell you to “drop, cover and hold on.” The sections are clearly written and easy to follow.

This app and its peers are specific to one disaster type — there’s also one for tornadoes, one for hurricanes, another for wildfires and more. This means if you live in an area vulnerable to more than one kind of natural disaster, you may have to set up several apps.

Among apps that can help you deal with a medical emergency, one of the most comprehensive is the $2 iOS app Army First Aid. This app contains information on a wide range of first aid situations, including injuries, shock and snake bites. It is set up in chapters, like a book, and each section is written in plain English and illustrated.

While the app covers a large number of first aid situations, it could take a while to dig through its pages to find what you need in an emergency. You may also dislike its brusque military style. A great alternative is the Pocket First Aid & CPR app, $2 on iOS, which covers fewer emergencies but offers quick access to step-by-step instructions for more everyday situations, like an allergic reaction.

Knowing someone’s medical information can be critical in an emergency, and many apps let you store this data. A useful one is called ICE Standard-Auto Edition, a $1 iOS app. Enter personal details, like your name, emergency contact and important allergies or medical ailments, and the app automatically displays the information in an easily read format. The app can also generate an image of the data for use as your phone’s lockscreen. Emergency responders can read this without unlocking your device.

This app includes an auto section where you can enter data about your car, and a large “I’ve been in an accident” button guides you through what to do in that situation. There’s even a form for entering accident data like vehicle IDs and weather conditions.

The Android edition of the app is free, but does not contain the auto accident section.

For an emergency that forces you to seek shelter, food or water, Britain’s elite special forces unit offers the SAS Survival Guide, a $6 iOS and Android app. The app’s main page is a grid of icons that take you to subsections filled with survival information, covering essentials like drinking water and finding “wild food.”

The app is expensive, however, and while it does have information on first aid, you may find a dedicated first aid app more sensible. These apps may contain more up-to-date information based on current guidelines.

Your smartphone can also act as a signal beacon in case of an emergency, whether through its bright screen or a built-in photo flash. On iOS, the free app Flashlight O can send out a bright light or the internationally known S.O.S. message in Morse code, and it has a built-in compass. On Android, the free app Flashlight SOS FlashText is similar. If your device has no flash, it can turn your screen’s brightness to the maximum, and it can send short messages in Morse code.

Quick Call

Weathertron is a new and novel weather app that costs $1 on iOS. It combines up-to-date information and forecasts into a neat-looking infographic. The idea is to present a lot of weather data at a glance.

Bits Blog: With Montana’s Lead, States May Demand Warrants for Cellphone Data

The law rarely keeps up with technological advances – except in Montana.

Legislators in that state recently passed a bill that requires the police to obtain a search warrant, based on probable cause, before they can use a cellphone carrier’s records to establish a suspect’s location.

That kind of “metadata” can be incredibly valuable, as law enforcement agencies discovered long before the rest of us. The cellphones we carry everywhere establish a clear log of our daily travels and can go a long way in telling the story of our lives.

In recognition of that fact, the Montana Legislature this spring passed a location information privacy bill, which requires a search warrant for location information recorded by an “electronic device.” There are exceptions to the warrant requirement, including when the cellphone is reported stolen or to respond to a cellphone user’s emergency call.

Steve Bullock, the governor of Montana, signed it into law on May 6. The American Civil Liberties Union, which tracks cellphone tracking laws across the country, called it the first such state legislation.

In so doing, Montana stole California’s thunder: that state’s Legislature had passed a warrant law for location tracking last year, but Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed it, saying that it did not “strike the right balance” between the needs of citizens and law enforcement.

Over a dozen other states have eyed similar measures just this year. In Maine, a location information privacy bill went to the governor’s desk last Wednesday. In Texas, a similar bill failed to muster enough votes in the Statehouse. The Massachusetts Legislature is scheduled to hold a hearing next Tuesday on a measure that would require search warrants for location records as well as content of cellphone communications.

Congress has been slow to act on the issue. Bills have been introduced in both the House of Representatives and the Senate, with little movement. The courts meanwhile have rendered mixed verdicts on how law enforcement can extract location history from telecommunications carriers.

Among the most remarkable is an armed robbery trial in Maryland, where the police obtained 221 days of cellphone location data for the suspects. The law enforcement authorities obtained a court order from a magistrate, but not a warrant.

The A.C.L.U., along with several other groups, filed an amicus brief in the case this week in the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, arguing that at a minimum, the police should obtain a warrant, based on probable cause, to gain access to cellphone location records.

The Supreme Court has yet to weigh in on the legal limits of location tracking using a cellphone, though it ruled in a landmark 2012 case that the police must obtain a search warrant before placing a GPS tracking device on a suspect’s vehicle.

Myanmar Awards Cellphone Licenses

Telenor Mobile Communications of Norway and Ooredoo of Qatar won the 15-year concessions for mobile phone networks. France Télécom and Marubeni Communications of Japan were selected as backups if the winners failed to meet “post-selection requirements,” a government statement said.

At a time of severe tension between the Buddhist majority in the country and the Muslim minority, the selection of a company from a Muslim country, Qatar, drew immediate criticism from a growing anti-Muslim movement that is openly calling for a boycott of all companies and products associated with Muslims. Buddhists posted angry comments on Facebook questioning why the government had selected a Muslim company.

Ashin Wimala, a Buddhist monk and one of the leaders of the 969 movement, the nationalist Buddhist group advocating the boycott, called for a boycott of Ooredoo. “Did the government have such little choice?” he said. “Why did they award this to a Muslim company?”

U Ye Htut, a government spokesman, said religion was not a factor in the selection. “We selected them for a license on the basis of their services — they have a good telecom service in Singapore,” he said, referring to Ooredoo.

After decades of oppressive military rule, during which the government deliberately kept mobile phones in short supply, the licenses are a potent symbol of Myanmar’s opening to the world and the newfound freedoms for the country’s 55 million people.

Only 3 percent of the population had a mobile phone in 2011, the last year for which data are available, a startlingly low number at a time when mobile phones are ubiquitous even in the poorest corners of the world. Three years ago, when Myanmar was still under military rule, a mobile phone SIM card cost the equivalent of about $2,500, making the phones a preserve of the rich. In neighboring Laos, a country with similar levels of grinding poverty, mobile phone penetration is 87 percent.

Although analysts in recent weeks said they had been generally impressed with the way the bidding process had been carried out, the hours before the announcement were cloaked in confusion. The lower house of Parliament, asserting itself in ways that are novel for a country still recovering from decades of rule by military fiat, voted Wednesday to delay the awarding of licenses until a telecommunications bill was passed into law.

The government ignored the resolution, and on Thursday a senior official appeared to persuade some members of Parliament to change their minds and allow the awarding of the contracts, according to local media accounts.

The government’s eagerness to push ahead with the licenses may derive partly from President Thein Sein’s desire for voters to feel tangible results from the country’s economic liberalization and democratization before general elections scheduled for 2015. Mr. Thein Sein has repeatedly told foreign investors of the need for speed in implementing their projects.

The conditions of the license call for a swift rollout of both voice and data networks: Coverage must reach a quarter of the population within a year. Within five years, half of the population must have access to cellular data services, and three-quarters must be able to make voice calls.

The mobile phone carrier contracts are seen as crucial for Myanmar’s economy as a whole because they will allow for things like banking or payment applications in an economy that is almost entirely based on cash. Smartphones will also potentially bring millions of consumers to the Internet.

But the task for the winners of the auction is gargantuan. Only 13 percent of the population has access to electricity in Myanmar, a logistical challenge for the placement of cellular transmission towers, which need steady access to power.

Security is also an issue in borderland areas where there is still sporadic fighting between armed ethnic militias and the Myanmar army.

Gadgetwise Blog: Cellphone Case Helps to Alleviate Wi-Fi Woes

Absolute Technology says the Linkase can bolster Wi-Fi reception by 50 percent.

Cellphone cases are designed to provide protection, but Absolute Technology thinks they should offer something more: better Wi-Fi reception.

The company recently introduced Linkase, a $50 cellphone case for the iPhone 5 that uses electromagnetic waveguide technology to enhance the Wi-Fi signal.

When a smartphone is being used, the hand blocks the phone’s internal antenna, restricting its capacity. Absolute claims that the sliding antenna in the Linkase resonates with the device’s antenna to bolster Wi-Fi reception up to 50 percent.

The Wi-Fi network at my office is surprisingly weak, so I thought it would make a good testing ground. Arriving at the office on a Friday, I slipped the case on my iPhone and extended the antenna. After a moment, the bars on the Wi-Fi icon jumped to four from three. Internet radio worked well and posting photos on Facebook was quick, but when I tried streaming video, the service was spotty.

So I downloaded an app from Speedtest that checks the strength of Wi-Fi and cellular networks. The app recorded a significant improvement in the upload and download speeds of the network in the office, but nowhere near the 50 percent increase that Absolute boasts. Thinking heavy traffic during the work week might affect the results, I returned on a Sunday morning to try again, but the numbers were about the same.

The Linkase comes in five colors, but the simple design is a little bland when you consider other options on the market. I used a white case, but it started to turn ashy after picking up too many smudges. The case is made of a durable polycarbonate material that felt stiff and cheap and made it difficult to access the phone’s buttons.

The Linkase does increase Wi-Fi reception, but it seems as though Absolute paid a lot of attention to the technology and not enough to the design.

30 More New York Subway Stations Get Cellphone Service

But more than a century after the founding of New York City’s underground subway, technological progress has layered a new din over the relative tranquillity of traveling preachers, fussy children and mariachi bands with loose change in their hats.

New Yorkers on cellphones.

On Thursday, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo announced that 30 more underground stations would have cellphone service, bringing the total to 36, all in Manhattan. At some of the city’s busiest hubs, including Times Square and Rockefeller Center, riders will be able to make and receive calls, send text messages, and access Wi-Fi. Mr. Cuomo said the change would also bolster security, allowing travelers to call 911 in an emergency.

Another consequence of the improvements, though, was discussed little: With many of the newly connected stations bunched closely together, officials said that riders might be able to find cellphone signals not just on platforms but on moving trains themselves.

“It’s an added bonus,” said Jared Leavitt, a spokesman for Transit Wireless, the company behind the project. “It’s all just radio waves bouncing around.”

A handful of trial rides on Thursday yielded mixed results. While signals were often spotty, some riders were able to complete calls and exchange text messages on trains, particularly along the No. 1 train line between 14th Street and 59th Street — where all stops but one, 34th Street, have been brought online.

Even among the offending chatterers, there was ambivalence about the prospect of onboard calls.

“If you don’t get reception, that gives you peace of mind,” Leo Bruce, 44, from Maspeth, Queens, said as he waited for a train at 18th Street.

But when it arrived, Mr. Bruce tested the new system, placing a call as the doors closed. “Hey, how you doing, hon?” he shouted into the phone. “You going to be there by 2:30?”

About a dozen passengers turned toward him, displeased, as the train hurtled toward 14th Street.

On an uptown train, Neicy Castro, 21, from Yonkers, said that she could already sustain short phone conversations on sections of the underground No. 1.

“I don’t like being bothered sometimes,” she said, as a text message reached her phone between 23rd and 28th Streets. But she always answers, she added.

Kevin Ortiz, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, noted that many IRT stations, including much of the Lexington Avenue line, were not very deep, allowing some riders to find a signal from above ground long before the networks were established at the stations.

Though officials have discussed plans for extending phone coverage into tunnels, the idea is not included in the existing agreement between Transit Wireless and the transportation authority. AT&T and T-Mobile USA customers can already use their phones at the 36 stations; Verizon and Sprint are expected to join by the end of the year, officials said.

Warren Sackman, 26, from the Upper West Side, said that cellphone service of any sort threatened perhaps the city’s most relied-upon excuse: attributing a missed call to being underground. He lamented, too, that a phone call from a platform or train “takes away from the social interaction” with other riders.

“I’m not really attached to my cellphone,” he said, looking up from his phone, where he had moments earlier been thumbing through pictures.

At Times Square, Juan Castillo, 44, who plays Andean and classical music on his guitar and flute for passing travelers, acknowledged that increased phone use in the system had made it more difficult to draw a crowd. But he remained optimistic.

“There are so many people in New York,” he said. “There’s still people who pay attention.”

DealBook: Alfa Group to Offer Rival Bid for Russian Cellphone Operator

LONDON — A bidding war has broken out for the cell phone operator Tele2 Russia.

The Russian investment firm Alfa Group said on Thursday that it would offer up to $4 billion to buy the cell phone operator, the Russian unit of the Swedish telecommunications company Tele2. The Alfa Group announced the bid after Tele2 agreed to sell the unit to the VTB Group, a Russian bank, for $2.4 billion, plus debt.

The Alfa Group, whose chairman is the Russian billionaire Mikhail Fridman, said VTB’s offer for Tele2 Russia undervalued the cellphone operator, adding that it was also considering an offer to buy the rest of Tele2’s operations.

The Alfa Group “is interested and willing to agree to a purchase price for the remaining assets of Tele2 over a very short period of time,” it said in a statement on Thursday. The Alfa Group also holds a majority stake in the Russian cellphone company VimpelCom.

Shares in Tele2 rose 3.5 percent in morning trading in Stockholm on Thursday.

F.C.C. to Study Health Effects of Cellphone Radiation

It’s going to take a stronger push from the public to demand that Congress not duck gun control.

It is in America’s interest that Congress ratify proposed changes to the International Monetary Fund.

Innovation: Who Made That Cellphone?

After the stunt, Cooper — who was head of the communications-systems division at Motorola — met with journalists inside the Hilton. The first cellphone, weighing more than two pounds, had all the sex appeal of a doorstop. Still, it was a triumph of engineering. To prove that the phone wasn’t an elaborate fake, he handed it around. One reporter called Australia and was astonished when her mother’s voice came out of the plastic-covered device.

“I have a mantra that people are naturally, fundamentally and inherently mobile,” Cooper says. While working on car phones, he imagined a world in which people would carry the devices on their bodies — and he liked to joke that “when you were born, you would be assigned a phone number.” That idea seemed wildly futuristic in the 1960s, when car phones needed 30-pound batteries. But by the early 1970s, “the electronics had improved,” he says. “We could get by with a small battery and very small parts, and you could actually carry the phone with you.”

It would be another decade before you could actually buy one. The Motorola DynaTAC 8000X, left, went on sale in 1983 for about $4,000 — and became a symbol of yuppie excess. In the 1987 movie “Wall Street,” Gordon Gekko strolls on the beach at sunrise and snarls into his brick-size phone, “This is your wake-up call, pal.” Soon enough, everyone else would get the wake-up call, too.

SPYING ON YOURSELF

Alex Pentland, director of the Human Dynamics Lab at M.I.T., studies cellphone data for clues about our behavior.

The phone tracks our movements, as well as our calls and texts, so it can reveal a lot about our daily lives. What did you learn about yourself by studying your own cellphone data? That I’m very predictable. We tend to pay attention only to the new things in our lives. Meanwhile, our habits are invisible to us. You may say you don’t always eat Tex-Mex food, but if you’re always at the Tex-Mex restaurant, I’d have to disagree.

If you were to look at my cellphone data, could you predict where I’ll be next Tuesday? Probably.

In a recent study, you looked at people’s cellphone data and found that their behavior changed just before they reported feeling sick. Yes. It turns out that all of us have very consistent responses when we’re getting the flu. We move around more before we come down with the illness — it’s that last gasp of activity before you get really sick.

You asked the people in your study to tell you how many hours they slept. Did you discover anything when you put together the sleep logs with calls, texts and other cellphone data? It turns out that there’s a strong correlation between social stimulation and good sleep. If you don’t sleep well, you are more likely to be a hermit. Some of the people in our study discovered that the correlation was very strong for them — they needed good sleep in order to be social.

Cellphone Records, Officer? In Texas, You May Soon Need a Warrant

Last month, Representative Bryan Hughes, Republican of Mineola, filed House Bill 1608, which would require law enforcement agencies throughout the state to obtain warrants and prove to a judge there was a probable cause of illegal activity before obtaining cellphone records in their investigations. It would also lift the seals on court orders for the data after 180 days. A companion bill has been filed in the Senate by Juan Hinojosa, Democrat of McAllen, and others have signed on.

Privacy advocates like the A.C.L.U. say the bill is necessary because cellphone companies are now able to determine and transmit customers’ specific locations. But some police officers and prosecutors say that the higher standard of proof would make it harder to catch criminals in certain long-term investigations. In response to a Congressional request last year, wireless carriers reported that they received thousands of requests a day from law enforcement agencies for cellphone information, including text messages and caller locations. Privacy advocates in Texas said they were startled at how common the practice is.

“Right now we’re just guessing on the numbers,” said Matt Simpson, a policy strategist with the Texas branch of the American Civil Liberties Union, “but they seem very high.”Current technology has eroded “traditional conceptions of privacy,” said Scott Henson, the writer of the criminal justice blog Grits for Breakfast, who shopped the bill around to lawmakers. “This bill ensures that government can’t track your daily movements without a good reason.” In certain situations, said Mr. Simpson, the police might track an individual simply for going to an Islamic mosque. That would be a violation of the right to freedom of worship, he said, but under current laws no judge would need to consider the issue before the cellphone records were obtained.

Steve Baldassano, a Harris County prosecutor, said that although the policy change would affect only “historical” investigations — the police already need to establish probable cause in “real time” situations involving kidnappings and chases — it could make it harder to catch certain criminals. Mr. Baldassano said that cellphone data might be the only evidence supporting or disproving an alibi at an early stage of an investigation. With this new barrier, he said, “you’d just have to let it go.”

Donald Baker, a commander with the Austin Police Department, took issue with Mr. Hughes’s requirement that the court seal be lifted after 180 days, because many investigations last longer than that.

“You don’t want that information out there,” he said.

Mr. Henson said prosecutors and the police could still keep records sealed under public information laws, which allow for information to be kept from public disclosure if “release of the information would interfere with the detection, investigation or prosecution of crime.”

Slipstream: Legislation Would Regulate Tracking of Cellphone Users

THERE are three things that matter in consumer data collection: location, location, location.

E-ZPasses clock the routes we drive. Metro passes register the subway stations we enter. A.T.M.’s record where and when we get cash. Not to mention the credit and debit card transactions that map our trajectories in comprehensive detail — the stores, restaurants and gas stations we frequent; the hotels and health clubs we patronize.

Each of these represents a kind of knowing trade, a conscious consumer submission to surveillance for the sake of convenience.

But now legislators, regulators, advocacy groups and marketers are squaring off over newer technology: smartphones and mobile apps that can continuously record and share people’s precise movements. At issue is whether consumers are unwittingly acquiescing to pervasive tracking just for the sake of having mobile amenities like calendar, game or weather apps.

For Senator Al Franken, the Minnesota Democrat, the potential hazard is that by compiling location patterns over time, companies could create an intimate portrait of a person’s familial and professional associations, political and religious beliefs, even health status. To give consumers some say in the surveillance, Mr. Franken has been working on a locational privacy protection bill that would require entities like app developers to obtain explicit one-time consent from users before recording the locations of their mobile devices. It would prohibit stalking apps — programs that allow one person to track another person’s whereabouts surreptitiously.

The bill, approved last month by the Senate Judiciary Committee, would also require mobile services to disclose the names of the advertising networks or other third parties with which they share consumers’ locations.

“Someone who has this information doesn’t just know where you live,” Mr. Franken said during the Judiciary Committee meeting. “They know the roads you take to work, where you drop your kids off at school, the church you attend and the doctors that you visit.”

Yet many marketers say they need to know consumers’ precise locations so they can show relevant mobile ads or coupons at the very moment a person is in or near a store. Informing such users about each and every ad network or analytics company that tracks their locations could hinder that hyperlocal marketing, they say, because it could require a new consent notice to appear every time someone opened an app.

“Consumers would revolt if this was the case, and applications could be rendered useless,” said Senator Charles Grassley, the Iowa Republican, who promulgated industry arguments during the committee meeting. “Worse yet, free applications that rely on advertising could be pushed by the consent requirement to become fee-based.”

Mr. Franken’s bill may seem intended simply to protect consumer privacy. But the underlying issue is the future of consumer data property rights — the question of who actually owns the information generated by a person who uses a digital device and whether using that property without explicit authorization constitutes trespassing.

In common law, a property intrusion is known as “trespass to chattels.” The Supreme Court invoked the legal concept last January in United States v. Jones, in which it ruled that the government had violated the Fourth Amendment — which protects people against unreasonable search and seizure — by placing a GPS tracking device on a suspect’s car for 28 days without getting a warrant.

Some advocacy groups view location tracking by mobile apps and ad networks as a parallel, warrantless commercial intrusion. To these groups, Mr. Franken’s bill suggests that consumers may eventually gain some rights over their own digital footprints.

“People don’t think about how they broadcast their locations all the time when they carry their phones. The law is just starting to catch up and think about how to treat this,” says Marcia Hofmann, a senior staff lawyer at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights group based in San Francisco. “In an ideal world, users would be able to share the information they want and not share the information they don’t want and have more control over how it is used.”

Even some marketers agree.

One is Scout Advertising, a location-based mobile ad service that promises to help advertisers pinpoint the whereabouts of potential customers within 100 meters. The service, previously known as ThinkNear and recently acquired by Telenav, a personalized navigation service, works by determining a person’s location; figuring out whether that place is a home or a store, a health club or a sports stadium; analyzing weather and other local conditions; and then showing a mobile ad tailored to the situation.

Eli Portnoy, general manager of Scout Advertising, calls the technique “situational targeting.” He says Crunch, the fitness center chain, used the service to show mobile ads to people within three miles of a Crunch gym on rainy mornings. The ad said: “Seven-day pass. Run on a treadmill, not in the rain.”

When a person clicks on one of these ads, Mr. Portnoy says, a browser-based map pops up with turn-by-turn directions to the nearest location. Through GPS tracking, Scout Advertising can tell when someone starts driving and whether that person arrives at the site.

Despite the tracking, Mr. Portnoy describes his company’s mobile ads as protective of privacy because the service works only with sites or apps that obtain consent to use people’s locations. Scout Advertising, he adds, does not compile data on individuals’ whereabouts over time.

Still, he says, if Congress were to enact Mr. Franken’s location privacy bill as written, it “would be a little challenging” for the industry to carry out, because of the number and variety of companies involved in mobile marketing.

“We are in favor of more privacy,” Mr. Portnoy says, “but it has to be done within the nuances of how mobile advertising works so it can scale.”

A SPOKESMAN for Mr. Franken said the senator planned to reintroduce the bill in the new Congress. It is one of several continuing government efforts to develop some baseline consumer data rights.

“New technology may provide increased convenience or security at the expense of privacy and many people may find the trade-off worthwhile,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote last year in his opinion in the Jones case. “On the other hand,” he added, “concern about new intrusions on privacy may spur the enactment of legislation to protect against these intrusions.”

E-mail: slipstream@nytimes.com.

Bits Blog: Android Malware Creeps Into Cellphone Bills

Lookout

Smartphones are meant to be headache-free compared with old-school computers. But malicious software written for Android devices can be even sneakier than the malware that invaded PCs.

The most prevalent form of Android malware scrapes small amounts of money from smartphone owners by making secret charges to their phone bills, according to a report published by Lookout, a mobile security company in San Francisco. This type of malware is called toll fraud, and it has the potential to fool plenty of people who don’t pay close attention to their phone bills every month.

But how does toll fraud work if the carriers control our bills? The process is actually very complex, said Derek Halliday, a product manager at Lookout.

First, it helps to understand a legitimate transaction involving text messages. Say, for example, a person wants to send a text message to a service to buy a new ringtone. When this happens, the cellular network forwards the text message to a middleman service, which handles the transaction between the wireless provider and the ringtone provider. The ringtone provider then shoots a message to the cellphone owner asking for confirmation of the order. When the customer confirms the order, he receives the ringtone, his cellphone bill is charged, and the carrier takes a cut and gives the rest of the money to the ringtone provider and the middleman service.

Here’s how toll fraud works: A person downloads a malicious app. The app invisibly sends a text message to a service that uses a middleman service that has a relationship with the malware author. A confirmation message is sent back to the malware, which blocks it from being seen by the customer and confirms the charge. The charge goes to the user’s bill, and the carrier takes its cut and gives the rest of the money to the service and the middleman, and thus the malware author.

In its  report, Lookout estimates that from the beginning of 2012 to the end of 2013, 18 million Android users may encounter malware. About 72 percent of the malware that Lookout detected this year was toll fraud, and the company expects this number to grow, because even though the process is complex, the code isn’t difficult to replicate. The company advised cellphone owners to regularly check their bills for suspicious charges.

Cellphone Users Steaming at Hit-or-Miss Service

On Friday, four days after Hurricane Sandy, the major carriers — AT&T, Verizon Wireless, T-Mobile USA and Sprint — were still busily rebuilding their networks in the hardest-hit areas.

One-quarter of the cell towers in the storm zone were knocked out, according to the Federal Communications Commission. Many had no power, and their backup battery systems soon drained. The lines connecting those towers to the rest of the phone network were ripped out. Carriers deployed generators to provide power, but eventually those required more fuel — another limited resource.

In an emergency, a lack of cellphone reception can be dangerous, especially as more people have chosen to snip landlines out of their budgets. About 60 percent of American households have landlines, down from 78 percent four years ago, according to Chetan Sharma, an independent mobile analyst.

The carriers say they are trying their best to deal with an unusual disaster. But in the past, they have steadfastly objected to recommendations from regulators that they spend more money on robust emergency equipment, like longer-lasting backup batteries.

Neville Ray, chief technology officer of T-Mobile USA, said Hurricane Sandy was the biggest natural disaster he had ever dealt with and that service failures were inevitable.

“There’s an amount of preparation you can do, but depending on the size and scale and impact of the storm, it’s tough to anticipate every circumstance,” Mr. Ray said in an interview. “No degree of preparation can prevent some of those outages from happening.”

When networks fail, carriers deploy trucks, called C.O.W.’s, for cell on wheels, that act as temporary cell towers. But the companies say the challenge with deploying these trucks poststorm is connecting to power and to the wider phone network, which requires a microwave radio link to a working tower. Because of the density of the buildings in New York City, the trucks could serve only a small area, according to Mr. Ray.

The carriers have made other efforts to provide services while restoring their networks. AT&T wheeled out R.V.’s where customers could charge their phones. And it made an agreement to share networks with T-Mobile USA in the affected areas of New York and New Jersey. When customers of both companies place calls, they are carried by whichever network is available in the area.

But ultimately all of the carriers’ preparations and responses were not enough to get services running again in a hurry. Over the week the carriers reported gradual progress, and they declined to offer timelines indicating when customers could expect to have service again.

The unreliability of wireless networks may point to a bigger problem. Over the years, the phone companies have fought off regulators who want to treat them as utilities, arguing that if they are going to stay innovative, they cannot be burdened with the old rules that phone companies dealt with in the landline era. But as a consequence, there are almost no rules about what carriers have to do in an emergency, said Harold Feld, senior vice president for Public Knowledge, a nonprofit that focuses on information policy.

“With the new networks we’ve prized keeping costs down, we’ve prized flexibility and we’ve prized innovation,” said Mr. Feld, who wrote a blog post on Monday anticipating cell tower problems. “But we have not put stability as a value when we have been pushing to have these networks built out.”

Mr. Feld noted that after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the F.C.C. recommended that carriers install backup batteries on their transmission towers that would last 24 hours, among other measures. But the carriers objected, presumably because they did not want to spend the money, he said. (Of course, 24 hours would not have been enough in many areas hit by the latest storm.)

In general, the carriers say it is in their own interest to fortify their networks for emergency situations, but Mr. Feld said this incentive was not enough.

“We ought to actually be doing this in the mind-set that there need to be actual rules, so that everybody knows how to behave when the crisis hits,” he said. “When I drive I have the best incentive in the world not to hit a telephone pole and not to slam into another car. But I still need speed limits, stop signs and stop lights.”

Debra Lewis, a spokeswoman for Verizon Wireless, said no amount of rules could have prepared carriers for the outcome of a storm like Hurricane Sandy.

“The fact is, regulation cannot anticipate the varied challenges that can arise in such situations, but we do learn from them and adapt accordingly to ensure we meet consumers’ needs,” Ms. Lewis said. She said the company prepared for natural disasters with generators and batteries that provided at least eight hours of power to cell sites.

Verizon Wireless said Friday evening that less than 3 percent of its network in the Northeast was still down. “In severely impacted areas, such as Lower Manhattan, while wireless service has yet to return to normal levels, coverage is good,” it said.

AT&T was the only major carrier that would not go into specifics about how much of its network was down. Anecdotally it seemed that in Manhattan at least, AT&T’s coverage was not as good as Verizon’s after the storm. One Twitter user directed this message at AT&T on Tuesday: “I live in lower manhattan. Vz has service u do not. You are ruining lives. I had to come midtown 2 call mom. Switching.”

Mark Siegel, a spokesman for AT&T, said the company would not comment because it was working on restoring its network.

Bits Blog: What Cellphone Carriers Say About Hurricane Sandy Recovery

John Minchillo/Associated Press People waiting to use payphones in Brooklyn on Wednesday.

6:12 p.m. | Updated Adding the latest statement from Sprint.

Three days into the aftermath of Sandy, wireless service is still lacking in parts of New York City and other hard-hit areas, according to people living in those areas. The carriers have been struggling to keep their services running, mostly because of the loss of power. But they say they have been making progress. Here’s what they have to report.

Verizon Wireless said its network improved a bit. On Thursday, its corporate spokesman, Thomas Pica, said 96 percent of its network “from Maine to Virginia” was operating, up from 94 percent on Wednesday.

While that looks like a great number, Verizon is describing the whole Northeast, even the areas that didn’t have network problems to begin with. Another way to look at those numbers: 4 percent of Verizon’s cell sites are not operating in the Northeast, down from 6 percent Wednesday. From Wednesday to Thursday, Verizon shrank the portion of its network that was not operating by 33 percent. The company’s statement:

In terms of our network, we have seen continued improvement overnight with now more than 96 percent of our cell sites in service and serving our customers in the impacted area, including some of the hardest hit areas of the Northeast.

Verizon Wireless continues to deploy its mobile disaster recovery and emergency network assets, including cell sites on wheels and mobile generators, to fortify our network throughout the Northeast where telecommunications infrastructure, utility/power and/or flood damage are issues.

AT&T made a vague statement about its progress in troubled areas and declined to provide statistics. But it said it had made an agreement with Michael Bloomberg, mayor of New York City, to roll out RVs where people can charge their phones. Mr. Bloomberg has said AT&T would also provide satellite hot spots to shore up its network, although the details on that are not yet clear. AT&T’s statement:

Disaster response teams from AT&T are fully engaged and making progress in restoring wireless and wireline services in areas affected by Hurricane Sandy. The company is closely aligned with state and local officials and emergency response teams, monitoring service disruptions and coordinating our restoration efforts.

The vast majority of our cell sites in the Northeast are online and working. We are making progress in areas that were especially hard-hit, including New York City and New Jersey, where flooding, power loss, transportation and debris all pose challenges. We are working around the clock, including conducting ongoing damage assessment, rapid deployment of generators and equipment, and movement of key personnel from around the region and country, such as engineers and technicians, in order to restore service as quickly as possible.

Sprint was clearer about the status of its network, specifically in troubled areas, saying 20 percent of its network was still down in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. It said on Thursday that it had made improvements but still faces challenges.

In New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, Sprint’s network is more than 80 percent operational, but challenges remain for the hardest hit areas of these states, including metropolitan New York City and portions of the New Jersey coast. In New York City, for example, approximately three-quarters of the network is operational, but challenges remain in obtaining commercial power, backhaul connections, and gaining safe access to cell sites.

T-Mobile USA, too, had some details. It said on Wednesday night that 15 percent of its network in New York City was down, and that in Staten Island 20 percent was still down.

T-Mobile reports good progress in restoring network service to areas in the path of devastation from Hurricane Sandy. Network technicians are working as quickly as possible to restore service by deploying generators to cell sites where power outages continue and to repair damage caused by high winds and flooding.

T-Mobile is working closely with the NYC Department of Emergency Management and with FEMA to gain safe access to areas of the City where storm damage was extensive, including parts of Staten Island and lower Manhattan. We’re happy to report that network restoration in NYC is now at 85 percent and Staten Island has improved to 80 percent. The agreement between T-Mobile with AT&T to share networks in N.Y. and N.J. is already providing customers of both AT&T and T-Mobile improved experiences in the hardest-hit areas.

F.C.C. Describes 911 and Cellphone Problems

The Federal Communications Commission also said “a small number” of 911 service centers — the sites that receive emergency calls and link them with first responders — also were out of service after the storm, the second time in recent months that 911 service has suffered weather-related failures. Many emergency calls were rerouted, officials said, to call centers that survived the storm.

“Our assumption is that communication outages could get worse before they get better,” Julius Genachowski, the F.C.C. chairman, told reporters in a conference call Tuesday afternoon. “I want to emphasize that the storm is not over,” he said, referring to both the weather and the facilities.

Verizon Wireless said Wednesday that 6 percent of its cell sites remained down in storm-affected areas, although all of its switching and data centers “are functioning normally.” T-Mobile issued a statement saying that roughly 20 percent of its network in New York City was out of service, as was up to 10 percent of its network in Washington.

AT&T declined to specify the status of its systems on Wednesday. All of the companies said they were working to assess and repair the damaged networks.

Some of the emergency calls that were affected by the storm were rerouted to new 911 service centers without electronic location information, which tells the operator where the call originated. This means public safety officials must rely on callers for details about where an emergency was occurring, Mr. Genachowski said.

F.C.C. officials declined to identify where the affected 911 centers were located, or which phone companies were responsible for servicing them.

Roughly one-quarter of the residents of the 10 states that were affected by the storm also lost cable television and broadband Internet service, killing most or all of the connections that millions of consumers were relying on for information.

Few radio broadcasters were affected by the storm, said David Turetsky, the chief of the F.C.C.’s public safety and homeland security bureau. Three stations received F.C.C. permission to broadcast at higher power levels, and one station relocated its transmissions on the broadcast spectrum because of damage to its radio tower.

The F.C.C. activated its disaster reporting information system during the storm, a voluntary system through which wireless, landline, broadcast, satellite and cable TV companies can report the status of their systems. Based on those reports, and its own on-the-ground assessments, the F.C.C. knows where the problems are and which companies are responsible for addressing them, but officials declined on Tuesday to make that information public.

In its manual for use of the disaster system, the F.C.C. says that the information “is sensitive for national security and/or commercial reasons” and therefore will be treated as “presumptively confidential.”

Similar storm-related 911 failures have been the subject of previous F.C.C. scrutiny. The commission is currently in the middle of a formal inquiry into the causes of widespread failures of 911 networks in June resulting from the derecho, a violent wind and thunderstorm.

“From isolated breakdowns in Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, and Pennsylvania to systemic failures in Northern Virginia and West Virginia, it appears that a significant number of 911 systems and services were partially or completely down for several days,” the F.C.C. said in statements related to that inquiry.

Roughly one million people in Northern Virginia were affected by 911 failures in June, which primarily occurred in systems managed by Verizon. Company officials said before this week’s storm that they had made a number of improvements to their emergency systems and backups that would help them maintain service during the storm.

The commission collected public comments on the 911 failures over the summer, but it has yet to report its findings.

Brian X. Chen contributed reporting from New York.

Deal Professor: Few Winners in Cellphone Wars

Harry Campbell

If you are wondering who will be your cellphone provider next year, so are the cellphone companies. Maneuvers by American cellphone providers to acquire one another are threatening to erupt into all-out war. And the question is not only which ones will survive, but whether the survivors will be ruined by the prey they are rushing to swallow, leaving consumers by the wayside.

The first move occurred in 2011, when AT&T made a bid to acquire T-Mobile U.S.A., the American subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom, which had been looking to sell it for a long time. AT&T’s move was brave, considering the well-known antitrust concerns. As part of the deal, T-Mobile was put in the awkward position of arguing to antitrust regulators that it might not survive if it wasn’t acquired because of its smaller size and its annual revenue of only $21 billion.

It was a bad move for AT&T. Regulators blocked the deal, and the company walked away poorer by about $6 billion — the $4 billion it was required to pay over the failed acquisition plus the estimated value of the broadband licenses it was required to grant T-Mobile.

The failure should have made other carriers wary. Instead, the message was that unless you acted soon to get bigger, you were not likely to be in the cellphone business for long. And bigger means big enough to challenge AT&T and Verizon Wireless, the two 800-pound gorillas in the wireless arena, with about two-thirds of the United States market, according to Strategy Analytics, and more than 200 million subscribers combined.

The runners-up in the market, Sprint and T-Mobile, knew they had to scramble to get bigger. And behind them were the poor cousins, Leap Wireless and Metro PCS, regional wireless services also looking to grow.

The stage was set to unleash the investment bankers.

Sprint and Metro PCS came close to a merger this year, but Sprint’s board scrapped a deal at the 11th hour.

Metro PCS then went down the short list of other targets and agreed to a deal with T-Mobile, announcing a combination this month. If completed, joining the two would create the third-largest mobile phone operator with 42.5 million subscribers. And the combination is really an acquisition of T-Mobile by Metro PCS with a $1.5 billion dividend kicker paid to Metro PCS shareholders.

This dividend is much less than Metro PCS shareholders could get in a sale. But this is the price that management is paying to get larger. Expect Deutsche Telekom, which will own 74 percent of the combined entity, to sell its shares quickly when, and if, the deal closes.

MetroPCS, however, was thinking broadly when it announced a combination with T-Mobile. According to people close to Metro PCS, it is also trying to nudge Sprint to make a “put up or shut up” move to acquire it — either now or after it combines with T-Mobile. Sprint’s alternative is to become the odd man out, left behind by bigger and fiercer competitors.

Many expected Sprint to immediately take the bait and start a counterbid for Metro PCS. Instead, Sprint responded last week with an out-of-the-box move, announcing that SoftBank, the Japanese telecommunications behemoth, would acquire 70 percent of the company for $20.1 billion.

The money would be used to buttress Sprint’s finances, presumably for more deal-making and expansion.

Flush with potential cash, Sprint quickly agreed to spend about $100 million to acquire a stake from Craig O. McCaw in Clearwire, the broadband service provider. This would raise Sprint’s stake to 50.09 percent of the votes from 48.6 percent. Clearwire’s stock slid on the news, as the market concluded that Sprint would now be uninterested in acquiring the remaining shares.

Such an acquisition didn’t make sense, because Sprint already controlled the board and appointed seven of 13 directors. But what is clear is that Clearwire has become just another pawn in the cellphone wars.

Let’s all acknowledge at this point that I’m dizzy trying to keep track of everything.

Left out of this deal-making party so far is Leap Wireless. In August, its chief financial officer acknowledged that the company might sell itself. Leap’s stock fell 18 percent the day of the announcement that Metro PCS and T-Mobile were combining under the assumption that it no longer was an attractive acquisition target and would not be part of the deal-making.

That may be true — for now. Yet it is unlikely that Leap will be left out.

That is because we are heading to a place where there are likely to be three big wireless companies in the United States, but not many more. And the big will continue to get bigger as they scoop up telecommunications companies with access to excess broadband spectrum.

While the endgame may be apparent, one has to wonder whether the wireless industry is in danger of entering the fog of deal-making.

We’ve seen this story before — in the battle over RJR Nabisco that was made famous by “Barbarians at the Gate” and in deal-making frenzy during the dot-com boom. When faced with a changing competitive landscape, executives spend billions because they believe they have no other choice. The cost to the company — and to shareholders — can be immense. In this world, executive hubris tends to dominate as overconfidence and the need to be the biggest on the block cloud reason.

Witness the comments of SoftBank’s chief, Masayoshi Son, who told Jim Cramer on CNBC after the announcement of his company’s investment in Sprint that “I am a man, and every man wants to be No. 1, not No. 2 or No. 3.”

Not so coincidentally, the deal would make SoftBank only the third-largest global wireless carrier.

AT&T has already lost an estimated $6 billion in the cellphone wars. This is no small change.

The rush to complete deals is an investment banker’s dream.

But the hunt may lead these companies to not only overpay but acquire companies that are underperforming or otherwise don’t fit well. Then they have to find a way to run them profitably.

And it may be that it is not being large that is crucial to winning in this game, but technical innovation. That is what Apple found out to great success. So far in the cellphone wars, these other considerations appear meaningless.

For consumers, this means that there is likely to be less choice as wireless carriers disappear. And whether service will improve or large carriers will simply occupy more space is unknown. Regulators, meanwhile, are likely to stand aside from these smaller deals, instead buying the argument that AT&T and Verizon need a bigger third competitor to stand up to it.

It remains to be seen if that is true, but in the heat of the moment, cellphone executives believe there is no choice but to acquire one another. And in these wars, it is all about making a deal. Consumer concerns are secondary.

First Cellphone Commercial

Tool Kit: Weighing When a Child Is Old Enough for a Cellphone

“I ask parents if their child pretends to talk on a cellphone,” Dr. Swanson said. “Almost all of them do.”

Now, 9 months may be a little young, but if you’re a parent, at some point you are going to have to deal with the question of whether to give your child a mobile phone.

Unlike R-rated movies or a learner’s permit, there are no clear rules that dictate when a child can or should have a phone. “Like any parenting issue, everyone has an opinion,” said Dr. Swanson, who writes a blog about parenting and health for the Seattle Children’s Hospital.

But Dr. Swanson suggested that there was some consensus developing that the 11- to 13-year-old age range is an acceptable time to equip your child with a phone. This lines up with what many families are doing: A 2009 survey showed that the majority of children who have a cellphone get one by the time they turn 13.

But what kind of phone should you get, and what can you do to your child’s phone to help manage its use?

For starters, it seems fairly ridiculous to equip your 11- or 12-year-old with a full-fledged smartphone. Its myriad capabilities, combined with a child’s — let’s call it what it is — terrible judgment is a recipe for headaches at best.

There are specialized cellphones-for-children providers like Kajeet, which promise easy family controls. But the major wireless carriers also offer phones and services that basically do the same thing. One thing you may want to consider is getting your child a prepaid phone, which you can do through the major carriers or prepaid-only companies like Virgin Mobile and Metro PCS.

Given their low prices, many prepaid handsets have limited capabilities, and with a prepaid voice and data plan, there’s a built-in limit to how much your child can use the phone. Who knows? Maybe they’ll even learn the value of budgeting.

No matter what kind of handset you get for your child, you should also become familiar with the various parental controls carriers offer. Every carrier has a different combination of features and services, but generally speaking, they all are trying to do the same few things: restrict access to inappropriate apps and sites, limit usage and offer location-tracking services. Expect to pay about $5 extra a month to use these services.

If your child is using a smartphone, there are controls you can enable on the device side of the equation as well. Parents of young iPhone users should check out the Restrictions menu in Settings (go to Settings, then General, then Restrictions). After creating a password (so that little Sammy can’t undo your handiwork), you will be able to control access to individual apps, control purchases made online and disable location services for any or all apps.

Android devices don’t have built-in parental controls, but that’s easy to fix. Free apps like Android Parental Controls and apps from online security companies like Norton and Kaspersky add filtering and blocking tools so you can limit what your young mobile user encounters with his phone.

Now, you can get just the right phone, configure it just so and enable all the right services and controls, but you know that’s not going to be enough, right? The truth is, no amount of settings and preferences can replace parenting and the practice of good habits. “Don’t retreat once you’ve set it up,” Dr. Swanson advised.

And don’t let your lack of interest in or knowledge about technology create an open space for your child to explore. “You need to understand the technology as much as — if not more than — your child,” Dr. Swanson said. “It’s like learning a new language — and remember that kids learn new languages much faster than adults do.”

You may want to lay down some usage rules of your own — ones not governed by a preferences panel. One thing to consider is a curfew for any cell or smartphone use. Add to that a prohibition against any screen time — smartphone, computer or tablet — before bed. “We know that looking at a screen before bedtime inhibits a healthy sleep pattern,” Dr. Swanson said. “And we also know that getting a good night’s sleep is directly related to attention spans and classroom performance, so there’s a continuity there that you can play a role in.”

Keeping screens away from children also means keeping things like mobile phones out of their rooms at night. Keep the recharging cord in the kitchen, not your child’s bedroom. “If you don’t believe a child should have a TV in his or her room, and many parents agree with that, then there shouldn’t be a cellphone in there either,” Dr. Swanson said.

If you think about how addicted grown men and women can be when it comes to their phones, consider how much more powerful that urge can be with a child or a teenager. Neurological studies have shown that children’s and teenagers’ brains are not developed enough to always exercise self-restraint.

As with any electronic device, the goal here is to establish a sense of balance and moderation. “We want these rich experiences on earth for our children,” Dr. Swanson said. “And part of that comes from the amazing technology we have access to, and part of that is because we also turn it off.”

Digital Domain: Cellphone Cases Can Imitate Their Makers - Digital Domain

Some devices, like my Android phone, a Galaxy Nexus by Samsung, have a back cover that slides off and a battery that pops out. And when evaluators at iFixit, a Web site offering do-it-yourself repair manuals and parts, disassembled Google’s new Nexus 7 tablet for a “teardown” review, they found that it was easy to open and repair.

In iFixit’s video review, the narrator describes how the battery can be replaced without unscrewing a single screw. She is moved to declare, “The sustainability-geek inside me wants to hug Google for this.”

Other vendors — Apple, would you please take a bow? — make products that are designed to keep users out. The case on my wife’s iPhone 4 is closed with screws of Apple’s own devising that require a special screwdriver.

IFixit offers a tool kit for replacing those screws with standard ones. It mischievously markets this as a “Liberation Kit.”

It isn’t surprising that Apple, the epitome of the closed organization and overlord of the iPhone’s tightly controlled software ecosystem, would design screws that, in effect, serve as locks. And one can see how it would be in Apple’s interest to make it hard for users to extend the life of older models — it’s a way to encourage the purchase of the newest, greatest Apple stuff.

Google, which until now has not done much in consumer electronics hardware with its own brand name, is positioning itself as a conspicuous alternative to Apple, in design as in other aspects. As long as Apple embraces closed systems — and closed cases — Google can take advantage of an opportunity to be the un-Apple and to open up.

Using components that are easy to recycle is one way to score points for selling an environmentally friendly product. Apple’s products rank high in that regard, says Kyle Wiens, co-founder of iFixit. But Apple doesn’t want its users to service its devices, he says. So it scores lower in another important aspect of being “green”: extending a product’s useful life by making it easy to repair.

An Apple spokesman declined to comment.

In January, Sprint announced a “sustainable design” effort, in partnership with the environmental unit of UL, the independent testing and certification group. Sprint encourages all of its partner manufacturers to submit their handsets for evaluation of the “repairability and recyclability” of the devices. Those that attain a certain number of points will be designated as “certified” or, greenest of all, “platinum.”

Lois Fagan, Sprint director of product development, says, “We have a self-imposed goal that at least 50 percent of our portfolio of new phones in 2012 will be certified.”

Consumers who want to know which phones are the easiest to repair won’t get much guidance from UL Environment. It will say only whether a device has earned its “certified” or “platinum” designations. It does not say what points were earned for any particular criterion, like ease of removing the external enclosure or the battery, or availability of replacement parts. Nor does it disclose which handsets fail to earn enough points to be certified.

The ability to remove the battery is especially important to frequent phone users, because the original battery may not last the two-year commitment required in a standard contract.

Apple says its iPhone battery is designed to retain up to 80 percent of its original capacity after 400 full charge and discharge cycles. For phones out of warranty, it offers a battery replacement service for $79 if you send the phone to its repair center; shipping costs are extra. (Being without one’s phone is an inconvenience not reflected in the price.)

IFixit provides an alternative. It sells replacement batteries and the necessary tools and offers its free online repair manuals, prepared by fellow users. A replacement battery for the older iPhone 3G model is only $14.95, and there’s no painful parting with the phone in the process.

According to Mr. Wiens, iPhone batteries aren’t hard to replace, with the right screwdriver, available online. “Under five minutes; no technical skills required,” he says.

Even replacing the glass on an iPad 3 can be done by amateurs, he contends, but guidance is needed: “I have a pile of iPad 3s that we broke while trying to learn how to repair them. Last week we finally broke the code.”

IFixit offers manuals covering computers, cameras, game consoles and household appliances, too; its credo is “repair is recycling.”

Hooman Morvarid, president of

CellularDR.com, a repair business that handles phones from many manufacturers, says the most frequent problem he sees is broken glass, followed by a broken LCD screen that sits behind the glass. Increasingly, he says, the glass and LCD are fused together in a way that makes them impossible to separate if one or the other is broken. “So phones are actually becoming more expensive to repair,” he says.

The more that designers of mobile devices avoid fusing parts together, the easier they are to repair. And the repairs most likely to be undertaken are those we can do ourselves.

Randall Stross is an author based in Silicon Valley and a professor of business at San Jose State University. E-mail: stross@nytimes.com.