The NWT's only digital cell phone service provider -- NMI Mobility -- is doing what it can to bring those capabilities North.

Right now, NMI cannot provide Internet service, and it's difficult to get the market to grow without it. And without a market, the cost of providing the service is extremely prohibitive.

"I'm confident that it will happen some day, I'm just not sure it will be next year or some time after that," says Sean McLeish, NMI Mobility's director of business development and network services in Whitehorse.

"We have to make incremental revenue to what we're making today to justify that investment. Basically, there has to be enough people willing to pay an extra amount of money -- yet to be determined -- to gain access to the mobile Internet."

The company provides cell phone service for all three territories, but digital cell phone service is currently only available in Yellowknife, Inuvik and Whitehorse. Analog service is available in only a few select communities as well: Inuvik, Hay River, Whitehorse, Yellowknife and Iqaluit.

Nonetheless, cell phones are here to stay, and some local businesses are eager to see their use continue to grow. Deals for new phones abound.

Paul Komaromi, with New North Networks in Inuvik, says his company bypassed analog phones altogether and went right into digital.

"We put in digital here first," says Komaromi.

"We created our own market here. We basically sell ours (cell phones) at cost. We want to get the account, so a lot of products we get, we sell at cost."

Komaromi says the digital phones they sell range from $200 to $500.

In Yellowknife, Cascom has taken the bargain one step further. Last month, they began giving away their analog cell phones for 99 cents. And while a top-shelf digital phone at the store retails at $750, Cascom sells some for less than $100.

Through an arrangement with NMI, Cascom offers an air-time package on analog phones for 65 cents a minute, while digital phone users can get 200 minutes a month for $25.

Like Komaromi, Cascom sales representative Bheko Dube says he believes analog phones are passe.

"It's kind of like in 1983, when it was cool to drive a Chevette, but if you try and drive it now, you know..." laughs Dube.