New Bells Are Ringing

Phone companies begin offering a dazzling lineup of services

What Henry Ford said of his famed Model T had long been just as true of the telephone: Americans could have it in any color they wanted, as long as it was black. Those plain, hardy phones later evolved into a rainbow-hued array of shapes and sizes, but the instrument's electronic heart remained essentially unchanged. Now, however, the familiar telephone is undergoing rapid and dramatic improvements. Among them:

Mobile Phones. Edward Bennett Williams, the famed Washington trial lawyer and owner of the Baltimore Orioles baseball team, spends an hour and a half a day...

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