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	Mobile TV - the next European mega trend?
	DVB-H pilots in four European countries
	European DMB project MI FRIENDS kicks off
	Better quality for mobile TV

Milon Gupta Eurescom gupta@eurescom.de

One of the good things about death is that you can have a quiet time in your coffin, without the permanent noises of a networked civilisation. At least this is how it used to be. However, burial habits are changing, and cemeteries are becoming a part of the networked society. As ever more people are being buried together with their mobile phones, the pious hope “Rest in peace” might not always come true.

In a number of countries, there is a growing trend of people wishing to be buried or cremated with their mobile phones when they die. According to research by The Future Laboratory, an international trend-spotting think-tank, the trend began in South Africa and has spread to Ireland, Australia, Ghana, Chad, and the United States.

Fear of being buried alive

The first cases of people asking to be buried with their phone occurred in Cape Town. Due to the widespread belief in witchcraft, some people feared to be put into a death-like sleep by an ill-meaning wizard. In order to take precautions against falling under a spell, which would result in being put to sleep and being buried, they were asking for the phones to be put into the coffins with them in case they woke up. In order to avoid taking chances, one service in South Africa will put a number of batteries in the coffin just in case the dead person wakes up much later and finds their own battery has run out.

The fear of being buried alive is also an important reason why people in Ireland ask for a mobile phone in their coffin. According to Keith Massey, an Irish funeral director, some of his clients take the possibility of waking up in the coffin very seriously into consideration. "Some people are superstitious and insist the phone is turned off so that, if they do wake up, they will have battery power when the phone is turned on again," Mr. Massey said. The request to turn phones off is in line with the needs of the living. Peter Flanagan, another Irish funeral director, is encouraging families burying phones with their loved ones to either turn the phones off or switch them to silent or vibration alert. "Obviously you don't want a phone ringing inside a coffin during a funeral," Mr. Flanagan said.

Experience shows that mourners are not particularly delighted when ring-tones sound from the coffin. Back in 2003, the Belgian family of a deceased motorcyclist sued the funeral firm, after the dead man’s mobile phone started ringing from inside the coffin. The night before the inhumation, the family had gathered at the funeral parlour for a final private farewell, when they heard the sound of his mobile phone ringing from within the sealed coffin. Several distressed members of the family left the scene in a state of shock whilst staff rushed to remove the handset.

Lifestyle symbols

However, most people still regard the probability of being buried alive as lower than to be kidnapped by aliens. Thus, the major motif for people to be buried with their handsets is that it reflects their lifestyle. Especially in Australia, the underlying motif was to show the deceased’s affluence. "People wanted to be buried with the totems that they felt represented their lifestyle," Martin Raymond, director of The Future Laboratory, explained.

In order to underline their importance in life, some people are buried like celebrities, which includes that the status symbols of their wealth and power accompany them on their last journey. The phone is put in the coffin along with diamonds, jewellery, expensive suits, and gold watches. "We came across one guy who asked to be buried with his mobile phone and his Blackberry, and also with his laptop," Mr. Raymond said.

The practice as such is not new, only the choice of items has changed. In ancient Egypt, it was commonplace that Pharaohs and other powerful and wealthy people were being buried along with their possessions. This was done because people in the days of King Tutankhamen believed literally that the objects would be available to them in the afterlife.

Nowadays, most people don’t expect to take their belonging to afterlife. However, they like the idea of being buried or burying their relatives with items representing important aspects of their life.

According to the different individual preferences, diverse items like teddy bears, football-fan scarfs, cigarettes and matches, whiskey bottles, and, of course, mobile devices. Especially for young people, the importance of mobile phones is very high. That is why coffins of people who deceased early in their life are estimated to have the highest share of buried mobile phones.

Phones in the crematorium

In some cases, mobile phones even accompany their deceased owners into cremation. In the US state of South Carolina, people were being incinerated without the crematorium operators knowing that they had handsets in their jackets. This led to unexpected results: due to the heat in the oven, mobile phone batteries exploded, which is how funeral directors started noticing this trend. Some funeral directors will now arrange for the phone put into the box with the ashes following the cremation.

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