Korean tourist submarines get cellphone service

You should take most of the facts in this post with a grain of salt, as they were all gleaned from a garbled machine translation, but it seems that South Korea Telecom has actually installed cellular repeaters on coastal ocean buoys to allow tourists on submarines to continue gabbing even underwater. Apparently half a million people per year take trips on the Cheju-Do sightseeing submarine, which had previously forced people to pass the time by watching the sealife go about their mundane lives instead of the much more exciting activity of ordering ringtones from Jamster. Actually, from what we can tell, the new service seems to have been implemented to increase cellphone-dependent passengers' peace of mind, some of whom would apparently freak out at being 45-meters underwater with no emergency lifeline. Now, thanks to modern technology and a few whiners, what may have once been a soothing underwater journey will probably turn into a cacophony of 60-odd people screaming into their phones about the cool octopus or coral reef they just saw.

[(Unverified) Posted Apr 25th 2006 8:50AM]

Not for chatting, --for pics!

We're talking Asia, tourism, --and so it's not so much about "gab" underwater, but to enable camera phone users to send pics from on-the-spot to their family and friends back home. ;)