Radios, WTH is up with cyber radios in SR? Options

[Deacon]

Is there any explanation why cyber radios cost so much essence in Shadowrun?

As it is, a radio costs .75 essence and isn't even half as useful as most other kinds of cyberware. In order to get the ability to broadcast silently, you have to get an additional piece of cyberware; in order to scan channels, you need something else that's also additional. A cyber-forearm costs less essence and you can stick a micro-transceiver or a personal comm in it, link it for mental control with DNI, sure it costs more money but it's much more essence-friendly.

A cyberphone costs .5 essence -- why? Cellular phones use the SAME technology!

I know that the radio's been .75 essence and the phone's .5 since the first edition, and I know the technology is based on 1980's concepts of the dark future (and not the advances in wireless technology that we know today), but my players aren't from the 1980's -- they're children of the twenty-first century, and they want to know why they need to spend more for a radio in their head than they do cybereyes which can see in the frickin' dark, display an image inside your own field of view and even more stuff.

Has anyone ever come up with a satisfactory explanation for this? (Besides what I said above, I mean.)