There’s a cell phone company that is plastering billboard ads all along Wyoming highways touting its coverage across the state. While I understand the importance of being able to stay in contact when you’re traveling from town to town, there are certain places I don’t want to be able to be reached by phone.
Some of those ads show pictures of people out fishing or otherwise enjoying Wyoming’s wild wonders, and the slogan above the photo says alternately, “Keeping you connected out here” or “High-speed data out here.”
Congratulations to that company on its coverage, if that’s the case, but I’ll stick with my overpriced service provider that only works in the most populated areas. I’m perfectly content with a cell phone that never rings if I’m more than a mile off any paved road. And even if it does ring, half the time it drops the call partway through a conversation, especially if I’m driving down a dirt road or hiking down a trail. That comes in very handy when I really don’t want to take a call. I don’t even have to fake the “I’m going through a tunnel and I might lose you” routine.
I wonder if that company’s ads are effective, though. There are probably a lot of people who think they want service everywhere they go, at least until they have it. I have to say, if it weren’t for those promises of all-over coverage, I’d probably switch to them. But I just don’t want to be able to be reached when I’m out on the banks of a trout stream or deep in the elk woods.
I’m pretty sure most of us who hunt and fish have the same worries. There are already far too few places to go to get away from it all, and we don’t want to be found when we’re escaping for a brief moment or two.
Then again, I suppose I could switch, and just turn off my phone when I’m out in the woods, but that would make far too much sense.
