The mobile phone, whether you use one or not, is a useful device. But bloody annoying too.

No matter where you are - train, theatre, shopping mall - you can bet your life that some inconsiderate fool will leave their phone ringing, on full volume, usually in an awkward, dark recess of their bag annoying the hell out of you for a good few minutes.

But what can you do? Some of us will simply bow our heads and tut. Others, more confrontational than most, will snap and unleash a tirade of abuse leading to the classic mobile madness that gripped the country a few years ago.

Others, it seems, are keen to implement a wide-reaching ban on the devices. It all sounds rather pointless to me.

A study from statistics generator TaylorNelson Sofres claimed this week that as many as 62 per cent of UK citizens would support a set of wide-ranging restrictions to limit the use of mobile phones in public places.

Those 62 per cent, however, are not mobile phone owners. The owners themselves are not quite so convinced that restrictions are a good idea: only 45 per cent said they would support some sort of ban.

Add this together and you have some clear discontent. Thirty-three per cent of UK residents said that they'd had their enjoyment of a public event spoilt by a mobile phone.

Extending the reach of the study into Europe the picture is equally problematic.

In Finland and Italy, where 80 per cent of the population use mobiles, more than 70 per cent claimed to be in favour of mobile phone signal blocking technologies in public places. In France the figure rose to 85 per cent.

Overall, it seems we're not very happy with the disruption that this new mode of communication can bring. But are jamming technologies the way forward? I don't think so.

The idea of having a mobile phone, once you rise above the juvenile urge to simply look flash, is one of convenience and/or necessity. And the idea of any kind of regulation being employed to limit this seems to fly in the face of modern society and its demands.

The simple solution would be to employ technologies that switch phones to silent, giving people the opportunity to decide whether or not the call is important enough to interrupt whatever they're doing.

That's the only intelligent solution and, hopefully, the only one that will ever see the light of day.

Admittedly, it's probably going to be harder to implement. All phones will need a silent or vibrate option as well as a common process that can be implemented when entering a public place.

But sometimes solutions do actually need some thought before being implemented. Jamming signals is just pointless.