The Digital European Cordless Communications standard has been approved as a draft European standard by the European Telecommunications Informatics Service. The standard is described as an enhanced version of the CT-2 standard for Telepoint. Handsets that conform to the new standard will operate via base stations in the street or wireless PABXs in the office, just like Telepoint phones, but unlike Telepoint they will also offer two-way calls and data transmission. The standard uses Time Division Multiple Access to squeeze more bandwidth out of the signal and therefore offer data as well as speech. Data is likely to have a capacity of 1.2Mbps. Mr Van Diependeek, of the Institution’s technical committee says the new system also offers greater capacity for the number of users per square yard than CT2 and extra features could include base stations that page users’ handsets to tell them that they are within reach of a base station. The range of the base station is likely to be similar to that of CT2 – not very far – but Van Diependeek maintains that because of the micro cellular system employed in the standard, it will be easier for operators to add more base stations into the network. The standard will now .cw 8 be the subject of a public enquiry, the results of which the Institution will study in November. It is likely to gain final approval next spring.
