Asbos are usually reserved for rowdy town-centre teens, but one in ten Brits think the anti-social behaviour orders should be handed out inconsiderate mobile phone users.

Price comparison website Moneysupermarket.com questioned 2000 UK adults about what they hate most about mobile phone usage. While the number one abhorrence is people talking loudly into their phone, more than half of the respondents also said the ‘crime’ should be punished with a 12-month ban on using a handset in public.

People playing music too loudly through a handset is another pet hate – one that users of late-night metropolitan buses will be only too familiar. Using mobile phones in a restaurant, and publicly swearing down the phone are also unpopular activities. Well someone has to think of the children, don’t they?

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Unsurprisingly, men are the least tolerant, with two-thirds of male survey-respondents advocating harsh penalties such as Asbos. Only 50 per cent of woman wanted this kind of punishment to be meted out to misbehaving mobile-users.

Handing out an Asbo for swearing into your mobile at the company which didn’t deliver the package you waited at home all day for may be a bit severe, we reckon, but should there be a code of etiquette on mobile phone use? Would such informal regulations even be enforceable?

Register Hardware wants your thoughts.

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