Cellphones: A Business Basic; Cellphone have come a long was since they first came out in the late 1970s.

• Author: Jackinsky, McKibben

Of all the tools in Ralph Mills' toolbox, the one most responsible for keeping his business running smoothly and his customers happy is Mills' cellphone. As the owner of Ralph's Marine Service, Mills keeps hundreds of boat motors operating during the frantic pace of commercial and sport-fishing seasons on the Kenai Peninsula. While Mills rushes from job to job, his cellphone travels with him, providing a constant link to his clients.

Jennifer Stinson, a Sealaska Heritage Foundation scholarship recipient, found herself faced with a request to provide Sealaska with additional information to maintain her scholarship. A cellphone call from Los Angeles, where she is studying for a Ph.D. in clinical psychology at the California School of Professional Psychology, to the foundation's Juneau office made it possible for Stinson to beat the deadline and secure the important financial aid.

For Richard Coan, sales manager of the Radio Shack store on Benson Boulevard in Anchorage, cellphones are a way of life. Both professional and private. He has programmed his cellphone so that the Batman theme alerts him of incoming calls. A quick look at the phone will identify who is calling. However, the phone plays a different tune if the call is from Coan's wife.

Cellphones played a dramatic role in the horrifying terrorist attacks of SepL 11. In the last moments of their lives, passengers on that day's ill-fated airliners used cellphones to speak to loved ones. Individuals who were trapped in the rubble that was once the World Trade Center in New York used cellphones to guide rescuers to their locations. On Sept. 12, the Pittsburgh Business Times reported that AT&T was donating 6,000 wireless phones to assist emergency personnel and military workers involved in the recovery operations following the terrorist attacks.

Since first tested commercially in Chicago in the late 1970s by Illinois Bell, cellphones have attached themselves to the activities of our day-to-day lives. According to the Cellular Telephone Industry Association, there were more than 76 million wireless subscribers in the United States in 1999.

"Cellular phones aren't just for business people," Richard Coan said.

"They're not just for safety. They're a convenience item. They're less expensive nowadays, so you can actually do more. And you can use them to save lime."

For Coan, advances in cellphone capabilities have allowed him to streamline his dependence on other equipment.

"I used to have a...