Culture: on changing mobile phone cultures

Yesterday in the train, a girl was talking loudly to a friend using her mobile. Two men sitting opposite her told her to lower her voice. (I sympathised with her because I seem to do the same thing according to my husband; talking too loud in a phone). And someone added that this was a 'silent' part of the train. But after some time, the phones of the two men also started ringing and they engaged in a -longish- conversation as well :). Someone next to me said: "it's OK if you just inform people of where you are, but you shouldn't throw your whole life in....". I have the impression 7-8 years ago with the introduction using mobile in public was considered inappropriate. Personaly I like it a lot when people throw their whole lives into the train!
A difference between Ghana and the Netherlands is that here you are supposed to put your mobile off in meetings. In Ghana, in 2003, important people used to leave their mobiles on and answer the phone during the meeting (whispering though). Will see if that changed.

The 7-8 years suddenly remind me of the fact that in the UNDP case (see previous post) it took from 1999-2003 before numbers of members of CoPs really went up. Would be interesting to know more about that process and if there was a specific reason for it to go up at that point in time.