Northern Telecom Inc has announced a $15m contract to supply its DMS-MTXM digital mobile cellular telephone switching systems to United States Cellular Corp based in Chicago. The systems cover up to 18 metropolitan statistical area, MSA, markets. Northern Telecom claims the agreement covers more MSA markets than any single cellular system contract to date. The Canadian claims more than 75 cellular systems in service or on order in North America, and two of its DMS-MTXM mini cellular switching systems, with associated cell sites and General Electric radio equipment, have already been delivered under the new agreement. Eight additional systems are expected to be in service by the end of this year. Based on the Bell Canada affiliate’s DMS-100 public digital telephone exchange, the DMS-MTXM provides stand-alone cellular switching, administration, and cell-to-cell hand-off operation for urban and rural markets. Switch-to-switch hand-off, for networking DMS-MTXM systems, is also available. Other functions include automatic message accounting, diagnostic software and self-test features, subscriber vertical features and remote polling for maintenance and billing. The DMS-MTXM is expandable in modules to support up to 15,000 subscribers. United States Cellular is a subsidiary of Telephone and Data Systems Inc, TDS, Chicago. TDS claims to be the eighth largest radio paging company in the US in terms of pagers served through its American Paging Inc subsidiary. United States Cellular currently operates cellular systems in Knoxville, Tennessee and Tulsa, Oklahoma, and also has interests in wireline cellular systems in Nashville, and Los Angeles/Oxnard, California.
