Wanting to leave no market unserved in the new age of pocket telephony, Pacific Bell Mobile Services said it will introduce a personal communications services telephone that offers a dual mode for roaming on analog cellular networks.
“We’re committed to doing it,” said Garrison Macri, director of marketing communications at Pac Bell Mobile. “Maybe not at launch, but soon after.”
Pac Bell said it will roll out PCS service in California and Nevada using the digital Global System for Mobile communications standard by January 1997. Macri said the dual-mode phone could be available in the second quarter of that year.
GSM-marketed in the United States as PCS 1900-is making a respectable showing against rival technology standards in equipping emerging PCS networks. Pac Bell said 10 other North American PCS carriers have chosen GSM-American Personal Communications, American Portable Telecommunications Inc., BellSouth Personal Communications Inc., GO Communications Corp., Intercel PCS Inc., Omnipoint Corp., Powertel PCS Partners Inc., Sprint Spectrum, Western PCS Corp. and Microcell 1-2-1.
Macri notes that by the time Pac Bell introduces its PCS service, GSM’s network coverage footprint will extend to nearly the entire U.S. population.
Which begs the question: Why does Pac Bell need to offer this cellular roaming option when kindred GSM carriers blanket the country?
“For the small percent of customers who roam outside of GSM coverage we will have a solution,” Macri said.
But significant questions remain as to whether the industry can really afford to serve this segment-large in number perhaps, but small as a percentage of the total market PCS hopes to capture.
“The economic case is absurd,” said Herschel Shosteck, president of market research firm Herschel Shosteck & Associates Ltd., located in Wheaton, Md.
Shosteck noted that handset sales for GSM networks already are being constrained by shortages of telephone components such as displays and keypads.
“It doesn’t make sense for a manufacturer to invest in this with such a constrained market,” he said.
And a dual-mode phone would be expensive. “It would cost at least $400 to manufacture a dual-mode, dual-band phone, perhaps $450,” Shosteck estimates.
This is in comparison to an analog cellular phone from a leading manufacturer like Motorola Inc. costing about $130.
“Who’s going to pay for this?” he asks. “It would make much more sense for the subscriber to use a (Subscriber Identity Module) card” to switch service from one type of network to another, he said.
Pac Bell’s Macri admits his company has a long way to go in developing the dual-mode phone.
The company has not made a decision about whether the phone would use two integrated circuit boards-one for GSM, one for analog cellular-or an integrated chipset, but could go with either or both, he said. The decision will have a big impact on the phone’s cost and size.
