One of many curses of the mobile phone

"What? No you go ahead..."

I find myself saying that a lot when talking on my cell phone. I seem to constantly find myself talking over the other person. Does that make me a rude person? I've always figured it was a flaw of my own, poor cell phone cadence exacerbated by the lack of face to face contact. But maybe not.

I did a little research and there is a possibly a technological explanation for my rudeness. Turns out there is a slight delay on cell phones, not present in landlines. This is referred to as latency. While the continued improvement of communication technology has decreased the effect quite a bit, it's still there. Evidently it's also slightly worse on CDMA networks (like Verizon, my carrier) than GSM networks (at&t and the like). Now mind you, this delay is measured in milliseconds, but somehow it's still enough to set off conversational rhythm so as to have people talk over each other. And if you have two people talking, both on cell phones, is the delay doubled?

I didn't go into it that deeply. I just wanted to relieve some of the guilt of talking over friends, family, and associates. From now on, I'll just blame the latency for my bad manners.

Anyone else experience this phenomenon?