OK to talk on your mobile phone while shopping

– but speak quietly if you are in Denmark The Swedes are slightly more tolerant than other Scandinavians when it comes to their views on talking on mobile phones or sending SMS messages. For example, four out of five Swedes feel it is completely acceptable to talk on their mobile phone when they are in a shop, while the majority of Danes feel that you should ask to call back if you receive a call. These are some of the findings of a recent Nordic survey on communication habits that was commissioned by TeliaSonera.

According to the survey results, reading SMS or MMS messages is acceptable in most places: 16 percent of the people in the survey actually felt it was alright to read SMS messages at the cinema or in a theatre. With mobile phones, people are available almost all the time, but mobile phones are not welcome everywhere. Almost all respondents in the survey (97 percent) said it was unacceptable to speak on a mobile phone in a movie house, or during a theatre performance. However, it was considered more acceptable to read MMS and SMS messages at these places, even if 69 percent did not feel that it was alright. On the other hand, nine of out 10 respondents felt that you were free to answer your mobile phone when having coffee with a friend. Swedes are more liberal than other Scandinavians when it comes to using mobile phones in retail stores. In other cases, the survey showed that it was clearly considered more acceptable to use SMS and MMS than speaking on the phone when Scandinavians are in the presence of strangers. About the survey: 2,063 people between the age of 16 and 64 in Sweden, Denmark, Norge and Finland answered questions in an e-mail survey. The respondents were randomly selected and are representative of the percentage of the population with access to the Internet. The survey was commissioned by TeliaSonera and conducted by the Cint research company.