
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, May 11, 1990                   TAG: 9005110180
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: C-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: The New York Times
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

FCC OKS POCKET CELLULAR SYSTEM

The Federal Communications Commission has granted a cellular telephone company experimental licenses for a new type of telephone network that will greatly expand the number of callers who can use cellular service simultaneously.

The new systems are expected to lead to wireless phone systems within offices, allowing employees to carry lightweight pocket-sized cordless handsets with them, even when they leave the building to go crosstown.

Known in the telephone industry as personal communications networks, the new systems are different from current cellular services in that they use high microwave frequencies, which have a shorter range. Thus the same frequency can be used on different floors of a skyscraper without causing interference.

Current cellular systems rely on a few large radio towers to transmit signals in a radius of a few blocks to a few miles; within that area only 832 channels are available at any one time.

The new systems could provide hundreds of channels in each building, since they will rely on many low-powered transmitters the size of a file cabinet or smaller to transmit signals across a limited area.

The greater capacity of the system also means its construction costs are spread over a larger customer base, making it likely that the new service will be much less expensive than current cellular service.

The new systems pose a threat to cellular companies and local telephone companies, which are responding by increasing the capacity of their systems and asserting that they are the most qualified parties to operate the new systems.

The FCC decision, reached Tuesday and announced Wednesday, awarded a two-year license to Millicom Inc., a cellular telephone company based in New York.

Millicom said it would spend a total of $20 million to build a 25,000-subscriber system in Houston and a 20,000-subscriber system in Orlando, Fla. Both systems are scheduled to go into service within two years, the company said.

One of three consortiums building similar networks in Great Britain predicts the charge for using its system may exceed local wired telephone rates by only 10 percent.

by CNB