OK, go ahead and assume things.  Then go off on a canned rant that you
pulled out, applying no thought at all to the issue being discussed.

As for the remark that cabbies are not in your top five of NON-EXISTENT
things.

 1.. NYC [Manhattan] cannot do without the YELLOW.
 2.. Other boroughs [viz. Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island] are
served by black cars or better known as GYPSY CABS.
 3.. All the NYC cabbies are not illiterate.
 4.. My way of working is same as butcher. He has nothing against the cow
that his knife will put an end to. It is just a way of life and making a
living.
 5.. I think you have never driven in NYC and form the "pedestrian lot"
that moves as if they had shackles on their feet. I'd recommend you not to
either. Only 3 types of services can successfully navigate the streets of
NYC, the NYPD, the FDNY and Yellow Cabs. The last one has NO sirens and
legal teeth. Still they manage.
 6.. If I am talking to a passenger, I have to use the same tongue and
brain coordination to reply to him as I would on a cell phone.
 7.. Half of the people arriving in NYC by services like MTA and airports
on a daily basis are lost even though they know that city obeys a grid
system.

Here is an article in the New York Times. It was published on July 17, 2003.

Slide into a cab in New York City, shut the door, and there's that murmur.

It's not the radio, but the driver's voice - aimed not at the passenger, but
at the dangling microphone of a hidden cellular phone.

More often than not, the fleeting Punjabi or Creole or Arabic words are lost
on the unwitting listener sitting behind the partition; most passengers come
and go without knowing the substance of the low-pitched chats. Some find it
annoying; others think a foreign-language station is on the radio.

"I sometimes ask them to turn it down," said Maya Goldschmidt, a hurried
Manhattan lawyer, as she coasted down Park Avenue in the back seat of a
taxi.

But days and nights spent in dozens of cabs, where conversations were
recorded and translated, have revealed a spectacular alternate world of
words beamed from cellphones to invisible audiences around the city and
planet. Though cabdrivers are not supposed to talk on cellphones while
driving, even with a hands-free device, the long black cord has become
something of a cultural lifeline - to mothers in faraway lands, to children
unseen during 12-hour shifts, and to the humor and commiseration of other
drivers braving the same lonely streets.

"Some people call their countries, some of them call their friends, some are
busy with the chick," explained Sarabjeet Multani, a fast-driving Punjabi
who said he decided to move to the United States after seeing "Baywatch" on
television.

Cab cell talk covers a spectrum of emotion - depending on the driver and the
moment - from light banter about cheap tips and good-looking passengers to
queries about traffic, to heated political debate and urgent inquiries about
ailing relatives overseas. It rides high in consternation and low in
reflection. It pauses at intersections and then resumes, sometimes halfway
through a new trip, giving a sudden fright to passengers who have not yet
spotted the dangling cord and think the drivers have gone mad.

It runs in linguistic packs.

There is the posse of Punjabi cousins who jump on and off a nightly
conference call. There is the group of Sherpa drivers who went to the same
high school in Nepal and now debate - on a cellphone family plan - the
Maoist guerrilla occupation of their hometown.

And there is the clan of Salvadorans who subscribe to the same Nextel
walkie-talkie system, where women and soccer often dominate the banter.

Soon after dropping off Ms. Goldschmidt, the lawyer, in Midtown, the
cabdriver, Manuel Molina, was on the phone again.

"Are we going to the barbecue or not?" shouted Mr. Molina, in Spanish.

"I don't know," answered a man named Walter.

"I'm counting on you for the beer," said Mr. Molina, who is 29 and
Salvadoran.

"Go to hell," Walter shot back.

"You lowlife," answered Mr. Molina, letting out a guttural laugh as he slid
his four-door minivan around a corner and up Madison Avenue. He scanned the
streets for customers. "It's lazy out there today," he added. "Where's the
work?"

That last question cuts across all languages and national identities to
dominate the cab-cell discourse.

Drivers check in with one another to compare earnings midway through a
shift, and share tips on heavy foot traffic with phrases like, "Penn
Station's moving right now" or "Go to the Port Authority."

"We are always connected," said Umar Iqbal, 24, a Pakistani. "We keep
listening to each other so we can judge where to go."

Mr. Iqbal is among 20,000 to 24,000 licensed and active drivers in New York
City, according to the New York Taxi Workers Alliance. Most of them have
cellphones, and many say they avoid using them while driving.

Either that is true, or the city has caught few violators: in fiscal year
2003, only 66 cellphone violations, which carry a $200 fine, were issued to
cabdrivers, according to the Taxi and Limousine Commission.

Drivers say they began using the phones en masse over the last five years,
propelled by the advent of affordable cellphone plans that allow for free
night and weekend talk.

"You have to think like them," said Joseph Hennessy, general manager of Team
Systems, a fleet of more than 300 cabs. "They leave their house at 5 a.m.,
don't see their kids, they come home in the afternoon. It's a source of
contact for their families. Imagine you're the wife of a taxi driver and
you're sitting at home."

Jatinder Kaur is such a wife. She frets at her home in Queens and worries
that her husband, Manjeet Singh, may be robbed. So, she calls him on the
hour. His guiding rule is to always, without fail, take her calls.

Such is the edict of Ibnou Sidibe, 50, from Senegal. But aside from
retrieving his wife's calls, the phone sits in its cradle. "I'm a very quiet
guy," said Mr. Sidibe, who has a degree in architecture from a school in
France. "I like loneliness."

For the more sociable of cabdrivers, the cellphone is still mixed with the
CB radio, which features at least three channels solely for Punjabi drivers.

Walia Singh Surinder flips through them on a ghostly weeknight with his
right hand, his left one gliding over the wheel. His light has been on for
more than an hour.

"The CB is easy talk," says Dr. Surinder, a former optometrist from Punjab
who now lives in Queens with his wife and three daughters. He stops at
Channel 33, calls in and gets his friend Bhatia.

"Hey Uncle Bhatia, how is business?" he says in Punjabi. (This conversation
and several others were recorded with the drivers' permission and later
translated.)

"Today is very slow. Where are you now?"

"At 52nd and Seventh."

"Are you going somewhere on summer vacation?"

"No, no. No money, no honey."

Then the cellphone rings. It is his wife.

"I am O.K. I've been on the street since 8 in the morning. You have no work
in the house? You are calling me all the time."

He hangs up after a quick salute to his daughter, and reaches for his other
favorite diversion on slow nights - Indian techno-rap dance music. The car
begins to thump.

"Cellphones are a driver's link to the rest of the world," said Bruce
Schaller, an urban transportation consultant who researches the taxi
industry. "Driving a cab is a very isolating experience as there's no longer
a lot of conversation between drivers and passengers. Legend has it that
there once was."

There may no longer be enough time for such an exchange.

"They're talking in another language and it never ends," said Ruth Britten,
a retired fashion executive who lives in Manhattan. "It's a rolling
conversation. You're with them 100 blocks and they're on the phone the whole
time. And they don't listen to where you want to go and they pass the
street."

Some cabdrivers think passengers could use restraint in their own cellphone
etiquette. "If a customer is talking it distracts me," said Azeem Rizbi, 37,
of Punjab, who freely admits that he talks on his own cellphone while
driving. "Some customers talk about their personal problems. They say, `Oh
stop it.' I think they're telling me to stop the cab."

Traffic drifts lazily past A. B. Johnson's cab, parked midafternoon on a
recent weekday near Houston Street. Again and again, he dials the number on
his prepaid calling card to his hometown near Lagos, Nigeria.

His close friend Asimiyu picks up on the third try. The two talk - in
Yoruba - about the status of Mr. Johnson's green card application. He has
not seen his mother in 13 years.

"My mother keeps saying she doesn't want to be dead before I come home,"
says Mr. Johnson, 40, who lives in Queens.

A minute later, Asimiyu admits, "Mother thinks that you brushed her aside."

"Please help me explain to her that I am not being bad to her," Mr. Johnson
says. "If I come home now I cannot come back to the U.S."

The calling card bleeds out of time. He shifts the car into gear, and pulls
out in search of customers.

"It's a very long shift," says Mr. Johnson, who has been working since 4
a.m. "You have to work hard in New York."

Bad cab ride, huh Jefe?

It's not the job, or job title, that commands respect, it's the person.

Your comments have pretty much locked you in for the No Respect Award in
this newsgroup.

Larry

What the heck are you talking about?

First of all, cabs in NYC have had two-way radios for over 40 years,
so most of the cabbies driving today didn't do anything before they
had some form of communications in their cabs because they were either
too young or not yet born.

From the customer's standpoint, that's irrelevant.  Since Cingular uses the
T-Mobile build-out, and we know from his posts that Roopinder has excellent
coverage with Cingular, it goes to reason he'd have the same coverage with
T-Mobile.

Now, if he doesn't mind "juggling" phones, he could add a T-Mo phone with
the cheapest plan that offers unlimited N&W ($39.99 for 600 peak, unlimited
off-peak) and use his 5000 N&W Cingular minutes between 7PM and 9PM (120
minutes/day * 30 days = 3600 night minutes) and then switch to the T-Mo
phone from 9PM-7AM (unlimited.)  He could probably even get the same model
phone from T-Mo to reuse his cigar-lighter cord, handsfree, etc.

Now that we've solved Roop's problem for an extra $40/month, can we let this
stupid thread die?  ;-)

Only if every cabbie in the city was in his group.

I was tempted to buy mobile to mobile minutes from Cingular, but the way
they define mobile to mobile is a real rip-off.  IMHO  First, you need to
understand that we have the nationwide GSM plan from Cingular with no
roaming and no long-distance.  At least 50% of our calls originate on the
cingular network, but outside our "home area".  Mobile to mobile minutes
only kick in if both cell phones are physically located within your home
area, which (in our case) would almost never happen.  We opted for more
anytime minutes instead, partly to cover anticipated mobile to mobile (but
usually OUTSIDE the home area) use.  Even though it was more expensive to do
that, it's still a better deal than mobile to mobile minutes which are
practically impossible to use.  If you are both "home", then why the heck
are you calling each other anyway?   :)  -Dave

Only the customer needs to spell it out :))

Peter, What is your problem? When was the last time you looked at the plans
offered by SPCS? If you haven't been to the site in a while, I'd recommend
you do so, as unlimited N & W minutes are included in ALL their plans.
Here's the link ... plug in your zip code to check it out. www.sprintpcs.com
.

SPCS is advertising they have plans with Unlimited N & W from 9:00PM to
7:00AM weekdays and all weekend long. Just who do you think they are
advertising too? Current customers? Maybe, but it's more to new potential
customers who either don't have any cell service right now, or have service
with another wireless provider.

If one originally bought a SPCS plan that did not include N & W minutes as
an option, then they can ... for a cost as they can with any option with any
wireless carrier will cost additional money, or the SPCS customer can change
their plan to one of the new ones offered by SPCS and get it included with
whatever AT plan they pick ... at no additional expense.

If one wants to expand their N & W minutes to start at 7:00PM, it costs $5
more a month. Get it now?

BTW, the original explanation of what I said is absolutely correct. Since 98
when I signed up with SPCS, I could make calls anywhere in the country on
SPCS's system, where I wouldn't spend additional funds on roaming out of my
home area.

Bob