This past weekend my wife and I went up to her family cottage, and it was everything we hoped it would be: warm sunshine, plenty of swimming, good food on the barbeque and lots and lots of quiet. It made me instantly sympathetic to a group of Canadians who want to prevent Telus from putting up a cell phone tower near a rural valley in British Columbia.
"If Telus decides against building the system, the economic-development group plans to promote the valley's 'cell phone-free status' as a unique reason to visit or move to the region," Reuters reported.
This kind of crusade appeals to something very basic in human nature that our culture is only starting to understand: that as much as people crave connectivity, they also seek an oasis from it. If they can do this in B.C., why not other quiet zones within a corporate enterprise? Maybe the boardroom should be off-limits. Maybe the employee lounge. It's not the kind of thing that typically goes into a network strategy, but it should.