Israel's saying no to cellphones on April 4th

So the story goes like this: Israel's Ministry of Communications (which we're assuming resembles our own FCC) cut interconnection fees for cross-network calling, which in turn turned up the prices for cellphone airtime on the part of the carriers. This is, of course, odd since one would expect such a thing to lower end-user prices—hence the grass-roots consumer reaction to call cellphones on April 4th quite unkosher. But perhaps more odd is the fact that to strike against these carriers' cost increases, their consumer base is choosing to rally around an effort that will, at least for the day of April 4th, further cut carrier operating costs—c'mon, it's not like any carrier believes their customers could carry on without cellphones forever. And color us jaded, but we have a hard time believing any self-respecting cellphone user will even be able to shut off voluntarily for a whole day, especially business and landline-free users.

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