Preface

For many of us, the pace of our lives at the present time requires that we remain constantly available to those with whom we conduct our business no matter where we are. With a cellular telephone, a laptop or notebook computer, a portable fax machine, a portable printer, and the necessary connecting cables, business can be conducted while commuting to work, while on vacation at the dude ranch or at the beach, on a shipboard cruise, or from anywhere.

For a lot of people this same need applies to their social life—they find it necessary to be continuously in touch with friends and family and the rest of the world all of the time. The sight of someone talking on a cellular telephone while walking the dog or selecting a pizza for dinner at the frozen food section of the grocery store is no longer something to stare at; it is now an accepted part of modern day life. In the wind-swept fishing grounds of the North Sea surrounding the Shetland Islands to the north of the Scottish coast, the fishermen use cellular telephones to discuss their catch, or lack of it, to avoid the eavesdropping by competitive fishermen that can occur with the commercial two-way radio that is the usual means of communication.

This capability has been possible for a long time as long as we were within reach of a telephone at home, in the office, or near a telephone booth on the street. The advent of the submarine telegraph and telephone cables laid on the ocean floors, and now the use of the many available communications satellites, makes it possible for us to contact anyone anywhere via the conventional commercial telephone network with relative ease. And for some time now you have had this same capability without the need for any connection to the existing “wired” network. You can use all of these facilities now from a car, train, or commercial aircraft and accomplish the same thing.

Wireless communications systems coming on-line in the near future promise the use of a single handset and telephone number whether you are at home or in the car and further, anywhere in the country and hopefully, later on, anywhere in the world. These handsets will act as a cordless telephone in the house or in the garden and then, when used away from the area of the house, they will take on the chores of a cellular telephone. These cellular telephones, during the last fifteen years since their introduction, have enlarged the mobile communication capability from local coverage to national and now to global coverage. There is no doubt that the telephone is one of the really essential tools of business life today, and it is a very necessary part of most households, too. Most of the houses constructed in the past few years now have telephone wiring installed, with multiple outlets throughout the house, while it is still being built, along with the other essential utilities such as electrical wiring and piping for the plumbing.

If you do not need the back-and-forth conversational capability of the cellular telephone there are a variety of pagers than can alert you to the fact that someone wants to get in touch with you. One model is the size of a fountain pen that can be slipped into a shirt or jacket pocket. Another model, no bigger than a matchbook, is usually clipped to a belt or to a handbag strap, or there are models that can be attached to a key ring. There are pagers with which you can acknowledge that you have received an alerting message and there are those on which you can receive short messages in alphanumeric characters. In addition, there are accessories that will enable you to connect your pager to a portable computer and enable you to receive and send messages via your pager just as you can with a business- or home-based personal computer (PC) that is connected to the local telephone line.

In April 1996, it was estimated that there were some 38 million cellular telephones being used nationwide in the United States and that more than 28,000 new customers were being added each day. And this was before any of the new Personal Communications Systems (PCS) came on-line. Worldwide growth of new cellular telephone users is at about the same rate. At the same time, there were some 30 million people using pagers in the United States. Further proof of the growth in all forms of wireless communications can be seen in the increase in the number of radio antennas, of various kinds, on the tops of buildings in urban areas, on towers in the suburbs, or in rural areas where tall buildings do not exist. The same applies to vehicles; multiple antennas are common on some delivery and service vehicles as well as on police cars and fire engines.

There is another factor, too, to consider nowadays—the growth in the use of computers in both business offices and in the home. The development of the modem has enabled these desktop computers to be connected to the local telephone network and to have the ability to send data and text to another computer across the street, across the country, or around the world. Now it has become a simple matter to have this same capability away from the office. It is just a matter of connecting the cellular telephone handset to a modem that is plugged into a portable or laptop computer, fax machine, or printer, thereby bringing the office to the mobile location no matter where it may be.

In the early 1920s the Detroit Police Department was the first government agency to use mobile radiotelephones in their patrol cars. At this time only one-way service was available, the pertinent information could be sent to the police vehicle but no response to the call was possible. Some five years later two-way service was introduced by a police department in New Jersey. This capability was then also made available for those private citizens who could afford it. The wireless technology at that time, however, permitted only a few mobile telephone circuits to be set up and made available to the general public. In those days, the advertising organizations, when they wanted to illustrate the ultimate aura of business efficiency and perhaps luxury, would show a well-dressed businessman in the back of a large limousine with a very glamorous woman, obviously his secretary, handing him a telephone.

Today, the ads are somewhat different. The photographic models, the locations, and the props show that this service, a telephone or a pager in every car, briefcase, or handbag, is now available to all; every business person, real estate broker, construction superintendent, or car pooling mother or Little League coaching father. People can make telephone calls or use their computers or fax machines from their cars with ease.

Another use for cellular telephones arose at the time when the Berlin Wall came down. The former East German telephone system was showing the results of years of neglect under the previous government. Because it took up to a year to get a telephone installed in a home or office, people turned to cellular telephones while waiting for the hopeful rebuilding of the old system. Next to a public telephone booth, with a long line of people waiting to make a call, would be a new shop showing the latest available equipment in cellular technology that could be used at once. Even today, in some east European nations such as Poland and Romania, it is taking up to ten years to get a private telephone line installed. In the developing countries overseas and in some rural areas in the United States as well, it has proved to be more economical and technically feasible to put in a cellular system rather than a conventional hard-wired telephone system.

When using a cellular telephone it is not necessary to worry about the work being done by the tiny components and the maze of electronic circuitry in the mobile telephone handset that is transmitting and receiving the conversation or the computer data. There is no need to wonder about the cell site or base station that is receiving and transmitting the wireless signals. There is no necessity to be aware that the signal from the small antenna on the rear window of the car or extended from the handset itself, is being constantly monitored by the equipment at the base station. In addition, you need not worry that a computer, together with some complicated software, is measuring the strength of the radio signal from your handset, comparing it with the strength of the same signal received through other base stations, and handing the signal over to the station that is receiving the strongest signal.

Furthermore, you have no need to know or to be concerned that while the computer is doing all of this, it is also storing away the information needed to generate your bill at the end of the month and is also making an analysis of your calls, both outgoing and incoming, and the calls of thousands of other users so that the system operator can be sure that proper and profitable service is being maintained by the system. You need not give any of this a thought as you continue to drive along. However, if you want to learn a little more about this marvel of the electronic age that is becoming an everyday tool of modern business people and ordinary households, then read on.

In Chapter 1 you will find a brief outline of this book and what you can expect to find in it. There will be some explanation about each of the communications systems, paging and cellular, and of the newer PCS telephones, as well as a brief description of how they work. There will be a little history about earlier communication systems and something about the first attempts at mobile communications will be described.

The paging and existing cellular technology as well as the newer PCS will be explained in general in Chapter 2. Each of the major components of a typical system will be covered in sufficient detail to be understandable to the reader. The various types of mobile stations associated with the cellular and PCS systems, the portable, the transportable, and the vehicle-mounted unit will be described in Chapter 3. There will also be a description of some of the peripheral equipment that can be used with the cellular telephone such as the portable and laptop computers, printers, and fax machines.

The mobile station, the cellular telephone installed in your car or carried on your person, or the pager clipped to your belt or to your handbag strap, will be the major topic in Chapter 4. The text will describe the other type of mobile station, the telephone system installed in an airplane and on a train.

Chapter 5 is written to help a prospective buyer of a cellular telephone or pager make a suitable and an intelligent choice of instrument and service. An evaluation of needs will be recommended before approaching a service seller and some of the questions to be asked will be suggested.

The security of wireless communication and the necessary equipment to accomplish this and the physical safety of the cellular telephone have become important enough to be covered in a separate chapter, Chapter 6. The increased sensitivity of scanning radios and the publicity that has been given to their use, together with the sophisticated use of computers in cloning cellular telephone and identification numbers, will be described. Mention will also be made of problems encountered when using cellular and other hand-held radios in areas in which there is sensitive electronic medical equipment, such as in hospitals.

In Chapter 7 the role played by the regulatory agencies will be discussed beginning with information pertaining to the International Telecommunications Union (ITU). The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and Congress will receive most of the space since they are the most active and visible to the general public in the United States.

There will be a description of what is being done elsewhere in the world in mobile communications in Chapter 8, and Chapter 9 will cover the future of these systems.

Some of the terms that will be used may be strange to you; every attempt will be made to keep them to a minimum. To make the reading as easy and as smooth as possible, terms, words, and phrases that may be strange are explained the first time they are used, and the first time an acronym is used, the name or meaning will be spelled out in full.

It is really too soon to be able to predict exactly where these communication techniques are going. The first paging system went into operation in the early 1930s, the first cellular telephone in 1983, and the PCS systems are just arriving. The success of the use of satellites for these types of communication among the general public has yet to be proved.

There is little doubt, however, that these methods of communication are here to stay and will become increasingly popular in the years to come. It is hoped that the information in this book will help you make an intelligent decision about your use of them.

This book, of course, will not show you how to set up, operate, and maintain a paging or cellular telephone system. Rather, it will explain several advances in our increasingly technological society, help you understand them and, it is hoped, help you decide if one of them can help you in your business or social life. But let’s finish with a couple of communication tales from modern life. The first is told, in typical British style, by the British writer Nelson Mature in his column in the British Broadcasting Company’s Worldwide magazine.

Good luck!