As the battle to compete on new generation digital mobile services hots up, Mercury Personal Communications Ltd has announced the line-up of suppliers that will provide equipment for its forthcoming Personal Communication Network. L M Ericsson Telefon AB has been picked to provide the network switching, transmission and radio equipment, systems software and other services for the first phase of construction. According to Mercury, over the last six months base stations have been installed in the London area, where the service is to be launched by mid-1993. Mercury has also signed up three suppliers – Motorola Inc, NEC Corp and Siemens AG – to supply handsets for the new service. While Mercury says it is not in the business of handset provision, research showed that the service would benefit from handsets carrying the Mercury name. Yet to be decided, however, is whether the Mercury logo will be alongside the manufacturer’s name. Pricing on the handsets is to be based on what consumers will go for, but sources suggest that it will be around the UKP300 mark. Mercury is not giving away the size of the three orders, although it says they represent the largest single order for handsets from one company: its rationale for such a large initial purchase is to make sure the service’s launch is not stifled by a lack of available equipment. For the future, Mercury is making its Intellectual Property Rights on handset technology available to manufacturers for a fee. Mercury’s intention to offer value-added services over its network is confirmed with the news that it has awarded Milpitas, California-based Octel Communications Corp a contract for the provision and support of voice processing and information systems, based around its Sierra system. Again Mercury is not giving too much away about what exactly what it to be on offer, but says voice messaging will be included. In terms of internal administration and customer support, the telecommunications services arm of Alltel Corp’s Little Rock, Arkansas Systematics Information Services Inc has been signed up for development, installation and support of software for Mercury’s telephone billing and Customer Administration Systems. Systematics is to use its Virtuoso software as the starting point for this, while hardware support for the new system will be provided by Amdahl Corp and ECS (UK) Ltd and based around MVS mainframes and IBM Corp AS/400s. Finally, Mercury said that Hoskyns Group Plc and Thorn EMI Plc’s Computeraid will provide facilities management services for Mercury’s operations, and office-based computer systems.
