I got my first cell phone in 1996. It worked really well (GSM network) and SMS's were available. So I can easily imagine that if you relied on it, it seemed like a critical system to you personally or as a business.

I was 10 and got my first phone around that time. As far as I know Americans were behind in mobile phones up until the iPhone.

There were a lot of 2G pager systems used for emergency alerts