Mercury Communications Ltd has released more information about the form that its Personal Communications Network service, due to be launched in 1993, is to take. As well as providing an alternative to cellular and CT2 for mobile telephone users, Mercury is also to use the personal network radio frequencies to provide wireless links from its fixed telephone network to end users. The fact that until now it has had to rely on lines from British Telecommunications Plc to form connections into the local loop has inhibited the extent to which its telephone service has been taken up by residential users, and it is this obstacle that Mercury hopes to address. According to Jerry Dixon, consultant with BIS Strategic Decisions, this will be a crucial aspect of Mercury’s ability to compete with BT as a national telephone service provider – Mercury has done well in attracting business customers, he says, but it has a great need to find a way to pull people onto residential services. Using the personal network radio links to bypass BT lines could, he feels, be the answer. A spokeswoman for Mercury notes that there will be different tariffs according to the nature of the service requested: this probably means that those just using the Personal Communications Network phone at home would pay a price comparable to the current Mercury charges for home use (to maintain price competitiveness with BT’s phone service) but those using their phones on a mobile basis would be charged at a higher rate. Jerry Dixon feels that there may also be a nominated base tariff system, which enables users to specify a base location, for example an office, and to opt to use the Personal Communications Network only within a specified distance from it. This would enable Mercury to provide a tailored pricing structure according to how far afield users needed the service, making it more attractive and cost-effective for many types of industry that need a mobile communications system but on a fairly localised basis. Mercury has also released details of the sources of many of its system components. Hewlett-Packard Co is to supply the information systems needed for administrative and billing services. Two HP 9000 Series 800 Unix servers will be installed with HP 9000 Series 700 workstations as clients. Hewlett-Packard will also provide its SwitchOver/UX system to provide back-up in the event of a hardware or software failure. The system transfers critical applications without interruption from the main processor to a secondary machine running non-critical applications in the event of any part of the system going down. Software for billing and administration from Sema Group Plc, which is using relational database technology from Sybase Inc. As had already been announced, Mercury is sharing its basic personal network infrastructure with one of the other consortium introducing a personal network service, Unitel, using the Personal Communications Network Parallel Network Architecture, which the two jointly developed. L M Ericsson Telefon AB is the prime supplier of network switching and radio transceiver equipment for the Parallel Network infrastructure. A new organisation, equally owned by the two Personal Network operators, is responsible for the design, planning, construction and maintenance of the network, but each will be free to add their own additional infrastructure. Both companies have stressed, however, that the joint infrastructure was just to help them decrease start-up costs (it has been estimated by Ericsson that sharing a network has saved them 40% of their initial costs) and that their services will operate completely independently, with different value-added services, and independently arrived-at tariff structures. Meanwhile, in the US, Atlanta-based BellSouth Corp has begun a market test in Orlando, to gauge the potential market for personal network services. A special sales force is recruiting 750 customers that will try one of three types of simulated personal network service, using handsets modified to run over the existing cellular network. Th
e three services – DriveAround, WalkAround and OutBound, test, as their names suggest, what potential exists for different types of personal network equipment with different levels of mobility. Cost of service is also being explored. – Chris Rose
