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- Mobile Phones
-
- Radio phones have been around for a while. The first mobile telephone
- call was made September 11, 1946 between a Houston Post and a St. Louis Globe
- reporter. An old mobile phone service in New York city had 700 subscribers,
- but could only handle 12 conversations at a time (because it had 12 channels).
- There are some 160,000 mobile telephones nationwide.
- The old service was doomed to fail. Each major city had one or two
- powerful transmitters to communicate with all car phones in a 30- to 50-mile
- radius. To make a call from a car, you must find a vacant channel, then call
- the operator and supply the number you want to call. The operator dials the
- number and connects you when the party answers. Only a few companies have dial
- it yourself service. If someone wants to call you, they must first find the
- mobile phone operator in your area. The operator finds a vacant channel and
- transmits a series of tones that correspond to your phone and make it ring-sort
- of as if it were a pager. Once you answer, the operator connects you and the
- caller.
- Clearly, the system was slow. Worse, it could only serve a few users at a
- time. During rush hour, there was little hope of making a call. Few channels
- could be added because of the dearth of frequencies for that kind of operation.
- So now you can't get a mobile phone of this type unless someone else gives one
- up.
- Enter the cellular mobile radio. Instead of only 1 or 2 transmitters, an
- area is divided up into many small sections, called 'cells'. Wach has it's own
- low-powered transmitter just strong enough to serve it's cell. An average cell
- covers from one to eight square miles and varies in shape from a circle to a
- squashed football. Each cell touches another, some overlap slightly.
- Adjacent cells use different channels-there are more than 600 in each city
- to choose from-and a channel may be reused several times in the city if the
- cells are located far enough apart. All of the cells' transmitters hook into
- one network switching office, much like a central office handles calls form lan
- d-based telephones.
- Each transmitter constantly sends out a special signal, and as you drive
- from cell to cell, your telephone automaticly tunes in the strongest cell. When
- a call comes in for you, the network switching office uses the channel to send
- a digital pulse signal that corresponds to your ten-digit phone number (NPA+7 d
- igits).
- When the phone hears it's number, it in effect says 'Here I am, in this
- certain cell'. That information is sent back to the network switching office,
- which scans vacant frequencies, and relays the information to your cell.
- Finally, your unit tunes to that voice channel, and the cell site rings you,
- and you talk.
- It sounds complicated-and it is. But it works in seconds. And it can be
- expanded. As more and more phones are added, cells can be split into smaller
- cells with less power. Cellular radio allready exists in Japan, Denmark,
- Norway, and Sweden. In Denmark, service began in 1981 and grew to 100,000
- customers almost overnight. Within a few years all of Scandinavia will have
- compatable cellular systems. Australia, Canada, and Mexico also plan systems.
- Why has the U.S. lagged behind? Yep, it's our old freinds, the FCC. They
- studied the system for 12 years before okaying the service in 1982. The U.S.
- may be fullt celled by 1988. Now is the time to rent your backyard as a
- cellular station!
- The Bell companies will operate cellular service as the Cellular Service
- Company. Others such as GTE and MCI plan similar service. Even the Washington
- Post is trying to get into it. There are allready two systems, one in
- Washington/Baltimore, and one in Chicago. Chicago users pay about $50 rent and
- $25 monthly use fee for 120 minutes, and 25 cents/minute hereafter. Average
- bills are $150/month.
- The main unit mounts in the trunk, and just the handset sits up front. The
- antennas are very small-about nine inches-and are hidden inside the car.
- Now freaking old car phone systems shoudln't be that hard if you really
- try. The following are the freq's to remember:
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- 158.07-158.49 MHz (mobile)
- 152.81-153.03 MHz (base stations)
-
- You CAN listen in on these freq's. What I'm not sure about is whether you can
- place a call --I would think so. So Freq out!
-
- COMMING SOON: Repair trucks, installers, and linesmen, Marine Radio, and
- Airplane phones
-
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