RICHARDSON, Texas-Ericsson Inc. announced it will market turnkey systems based on the new personal air communications technology standard for the narrowband personal communications services market.
The company said it signed a multimillion dollar contract to implement the technology for AT&T Wireless Services Inc. AT&T won two nationwide NPCS licenses at auction.
“AT&T*…*will be one of the first nationwide paging operators to be able to offer its customers the unique benefits of this powerful, next generation technology,” said Henrik Hogberg, vice president of wireless data and messaging services at Ericsson Inc. Radio Systems.
As part of the contract, Ericsson will supply and install its RBS 540 intelligent base station. The pACT architecture is cellular-like in that the technology reuses frequencies and splits cells for network efficiency and to increase capacity, the company said. Encryption and authentication are employed to ensure security of messages.
“Network operators need fewer pACT base station transceivers and sites to provide the same geographical coverage as competing acknowledgment paging networks. The end result is that pACT has lower deployment and operating costs,” Hogberg said.
AT&T announced the new standard last November but its relationship with Ericsson was unclear at that time.
Ericsson said the pACT standard will bring a variety of two-way communications services to consumers, including two-way messaging, acknowledgment paging and voice paging. The standard was unveiled as a direct challenger to Motorola Inc.’s FLEX technology.
