PARIS -- The mobile phone is about to conquer the world and alter our lives forever, if the telecommunications industry's dreams come true.


From its origins as a business tool and accessory of the rich young professional, it will progress to become the key link between people for social and economic communication and could make it unnecessary for millions of people to work and live in cities.


That at least is what telecommunications business leaders, assembled in Paris for a recent conference, believe.


U.S. pioneer Craig McCaw, who made a billion-dollar fortune with his brother linking up a string of local mobile communications networks, told the conference that mobile phones would remove urban shackles and let people become nomads again.


"It takes away the reason for a city to be an economic unit. A city will be a social and cultural unit," he told the gathering, organized by the publication Communications Week .


McCaw and Microsoft boss Bill Gates are sponsoring a $9 billion plan to launch 840 satellites into orbit to provide a globe-spanning network of stations for mobile telecommunications.


The aim of the idea, a conceptual spinoff from U.S. defense plans such as "Star Wars," is to create a worldwide system that would also be available to Third World countries.


"If the Third World follows our example (of strong urbanization in times of economic growth), we will have a global disaster," McCaw said.


For Kouji Ohboshi, president of Japan's NTT Mobile Communications Network, mobiles could help spread economic activity from Japan's heartland to less prosperous regions.


Lars Ramqvist, president and chief executive of Sweden's Ericsson, said his company's laboratories had worked on equipment adding video images to mobile telephones as a step towards the multimedia future.


It would be possible to have one personal phone number wherever you are and use the mobile terminal for combined transmission of voice, images and data.


But between now and that future lies a highway full of financial, technological and political problems:


?Financial problems because of the huge investments required to set up a network.


?Technological problems because of a variety of competing technical standards and fantastic projects.


?Political problems because the United States, Europe and Japan all want to have a key claim on any future global network.


And then there is the consumer. Mobile telephones will only become mass products if the price drops.


"You have to be able to offer a teleservices package (terminal plus subscription) of $400 to $500 by the end of this decade or else you are not competitive," said Richard Callahan, president of US West International.