Keeping Connected: Travelling with the Telephone

Abstract

This paper examines the uses of mobile and fixed telephone communications by travellers and the implications of that use for their experiences of travel. Based on interviews conducted with people travelling in New Zealand, we argue that travellers give specific attention to the accessibility of phone services while planning their travel. Once travellers' journeys and communication with distant friends and families had commenced, travellers made clear distinctions between the relative uses, benefits and drawbacks of using oral phone communications and 'texting' (short message service). Both forms of communication had similar impacts on travellers' sense of an ongoing integration into relationships from which they were temporarily physically distant. However, the two modes of communication differed with respect to what they were seen to offer. That is, oral phone communication was characterised by its 'emotionality', while texting in particular was seen to offer distinctive opportunities for spontaneous contact.