Personal communications services are bursting out all over in the US and three Baby Bells this week announced plans for trials of new services. Englewood, Colorado-based US West Inc announced from Boise, Idaho that it plans a market trial in America’s potato capital of Personal Communications Services starting a year from now. The $10m trial of the wireless communications system based on very low-power, digital radio communications will involve personal handsets and microcellular technology to enable users to be immediately and constantly accessible – 1,000 trial participants will use the pocket phones to make and receive calls within the coverage area, on both home base stations and 500 or so public base stations in the downtown and other densely-populated or widely visited parts of Boise. US West partners Cable & Wireless’s Mercury PCN Personal Communications Network subsidiary. Trial participants in Boise will use L M Ericsson Telefon AB DECT1800 radio base stations and handsets transmitting in the 1.88GHz to 1.9GHz band. Meantime Southwestern Bell Corp’s mobile systems unit and Matsushita Electric Industrial Co Ltd’s Panasonic Communications & Systems Co claim the first commercial personal communications service in the US. FreedomLink, to be offered first in Boston this month and in all its 54 markets by the end of June, operates within offices, factories or businesses, with radio base stations tied to the organisation’s PABX. But off premises, the pocket phone operates as an ordinary cellular phone. Each Freedomlink will intially support up to 63 pocket phones. And BellSouth Corp’s BellSouth Telecommunications is testing the on-premises-only Northern Telecom Ltd Companion system launched in Hong Kong last year and at Hannover last month – which adds a cordless system to a PABX. BellSouth calls it Wireless Centrex.
