Acceptance of the European Groupe Speciale Mobile cellular standard took a leap forward last week, with the news that five US and Canadian companies will use the technology as the basis of their forthcoming Personal Communications Services networks. BellSouth Corp, Pacific Bell Inc, American Personal Communications Inc, GO Communications, and Canada’s Microcell 1-2-1 say that they have selected the DCS 1900 variant of the European DCS 1800 standard for their networks. In the US’ auction of the airwaves (CI No 2,470) BellSouth won licences in Tennessee and North Carolina, while Pacific Bell won Los Angeles and San Francisco through its parent company Pacific Telesis Group Inc. American Personal Communications will offer service in the Washington-B altimore area as a result of the Pioneers licence it was awarded by the Federal Communications Commission, and MicroCell 1-2-1, a private company with National Telesystem – the largest shareholder in Teleglobe – as its primary shareholder, was awarded a licence covering the whole of Canada. GO Communications does not currently have a licence, since it was aiming to bid for those licences set aside for minority or women-owned companies. As reported last week, this process has now been stalled, but ultimately GO, which is funded by Fidelity Capital, Mitsubishi International Inc and other investors, hopes to rally a national Personal Communications Systems alliance in the 30Mhz block. The announcement could also have an impact on the success of the various plans for global satellite-based telecommunications systems, including Iridium and Inmarsat-P. The logical step would be for the companies to forge international roaming agreements with Groupe Speciale Mobile networks in Europe and elsewhere, in which case the global roaming ability of the satellite-based systems would lose much of its appeal.
