CULTURE AND CUSTOMS

In less than twenty years, the mobile telephone has gone from being rare, expensive equipment of the business elite to a pervasive, low-cost personal item. In many countries, mobile telephones (A)______________ 1234567 ; in the U.S., 50 per cent of children have mobile telephones. In many young adults' households it has supplanted the land-line telephone. The mobile phone is (B)______________ 1234567 , such as North Korea.
Paul Levinson in his 2004 book Cellphone argues that by looking back through history we can find many precursors to the idea of people simultaneously walking and talking on a mobile phone. Mobile phones are the next extension in portable media, that now can be (С) ______________ 1234567 into one device. Levinson highlights that as the only mammal to use only two out of our four limbs to walk, we are left two hands free (D) ______________ 1234567 - like talking on a mobile phone. Levinson writes that "Intelligence and inventiveness, applied to our need to communicate regardless of where we may be, led logically and eventually to telephones that we (E) ______________ 1234567 ."
Given the high levels of societal mobile telephone service penetration, it is a key means for people (F) ______________ 1234567 . The SMS feature spawned the «texting sub-culture. In December 1993, the first person-to-person SMS text message was transmitted in Finland. Currently, texting is the most widely-used data service; 1.8 billion users generated $80 billion of revenue in 2006.

1. to perform other actions
2. outnumber traditional telephones
3. to communicate with each other
4. combined with the Internet
5. to serve basic needs
6. banned in some countries
7. carry in our pockets