Bell Atlantic Corp’s Bell Atlantic Mobile Systems is to field test Palo Alto, California-based Cellular Data Inc’s technology for transmitting packet data between speech channels of cellular radionetworks already in use: packet data is used for applications such as credit card verification, utility meter reading and vending machine maintenance and GTE Corp’s GTE Mobilnet announced its Houston field trial of Cellular Data’s technology in January; the system is claimed to complete a transaction in six seconds against 20 or more for land lines, which suggests that the Racal Electronics Plc subsidiary that manufactures those credit card authorisation terminals in the UK should get together with Racal Telecom Plc’s Vodafone cellular network and cut out the British Telecommunications Plc or Mercury Communications Ltd middleman.
