BATON ROUGE, La.-Eatelcorp Inc. will partner with Mercury Cellular and Paging of Lake Charles, La., and contract assistance from Louisiana State University to conduct a trial of AT&T Network Systems Inc.’s Code Division Multiple Access wireless technology for a new personal communications systems network.
The trial will use AT&T’s new 5ESS(R)-2000 CDX Switch with SE10 software and four AT&T CDMA minicells. Eatel said the deployment will be the first CDMA cellular service on a single switch capable of also providing landline service.
The trial will allow Meretel, a consortium of communications companies including Eatelcorp and Mercury Cellular and Paging, to test system capacity, the ability of CDMA PCS systems to co-exist with point-to-point microwave systems and the security of CDMA systems, using 50 or more subjects from the Baton Rouge area.
“CDMA is likely to redefine wireless technology, and its usage in PCS networks will spur the trend toward rapid growth of wireless telecommunications,” said Dr. Manju Hegde, associate professor, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, LSU.
Headquartered in Gonzales, La., Eatelcorp is a privately owned telecommunications holding company. Its companies include Eatel, the 49th largest telephone company of the 1,300 telephone companies in the country, Advanced Telephone Inc. and Eatel Business Systems. Mercury is a full service cellular and paging conglomerate in Southwestern Louisiana.
