telecom@eecs.nwu.edu (TELECOM Moderator) (08/11/89)
Francis Mike is the general manager of Navajo Communications Company, the phone service for the Navajo Nation, an Indian community located in and near Chinle, Arizona. He has some unique burdens to overcome in providing phone service to a people who live miles apart in a remote area. Navajos do not live in large clusters. They prefer to be in small groups, generally isolated even from others of their nationality. Mike notes that when people live together, the traditional phone system works just fine, but when they are scattered, most companies cannot justify the cost of service, with the miles and miles of wire serving a very small number of people. Enter Ultraphone, a system that is bringing phone service to the Navajos via radio instead of cables, for about one-eighth the cost of a conventional system. International Mobile Machines (makers of the Prive-Code device mentioned recently in the Digest) began working on what would become Ultraphone back in 1981. Its first installation was in September, 1986, for Mountain Bell in the Douglas, Wyoming area. In November, 1988, the Federal Communications Commission decided the time had come for radio to improve rural phone service. To accomplish this, the Commission established a Basic Exchange Telecommunications Radio Service and allocated several frequency channels to it. Twenty groups or companies are investigating or have installed Ultraphone in such diverse areas of the United States as St. Lawrence County, NY and the sparsely populated Southwest. Mike said Navajo Communications introduced it in November on the 25,000 square-mile reservation, an area of land which is equivilent in size to West Virginia that is home to 175,000 people. Now, demand exceeds supply, he said. Navajos are up on technology. They all have television, and many have other modern home appliances. Now they want to have telephones also. The key to Ultraphone is digital radio technology, using an encoder to covert voices into binary code, for transmission as a radio signal. Beamed to a tower atop a mesa nine miles from the town of Chinle, the signal is relayed to its destination, where it is decoded by a transceiver. Users converse over standard phones; the magic is transparent to the users who simply lift their reciever and dial their call in the usual way. The signal covers a circle with a radius of 37 miles, so subscribers of Navajo Communications have the benefit of being able to make a 75 mile 'local call'. The service is a little more expensive than telecommunications in a larger town though. Bills for basic service run $15 - $23 per month, according to Mike. Navajo Communications has invested about $750,000 in the system. At present, they have about 100 subscribers out of 460 potential subscribers possible. New subscribers are signing up as fast as Ultraphones become available, according to Cecil Jones, technician for Navajo. He said there is frequently a delay in getting the units from the factory, but they hope to connect at least another two hundred subscribers in the next few months. Jones estimated it would cost at least $6 million to run actual wire pairs to the same clusters of buildings. I don't know about the rest of you, but I think this is one of the neatest new ideas in several years. Mike stressed that Ultraphones are not, strictly speaking cellular phones, although the operating principles behind Ultraphone are much the same as cellular service, however. And to think that 'Carterphone' started this whole dizzying spiral of changes we have seen in the past several years in much the same way: by linking the radio and the telephone to make a more desirable system of both! Patrick Townson
morris@jade.jpl.nasa.gov (Mike Morris) (08/11/89)
Com'on, Patrick. You describe Ultraphone, and give no pointers. How about a address or a phone number? You know that your text is going to hit thousands of readers, and somebody is going to want to follow up on it... No flame, just a very mild simmer... :) -- Mike Morris UUCP: Morris@Jade.JPL.NASA.gov #Include quote.cute.standard | The opinions above probably do not even come cat flames.all > /dev/null | close to those of my employer(s), if any. [Moderator's Note: Okay, for Mike and Fred, and other interested parties, information on Ultraphone and its application in the Navajo Nation can be obtained from Navajo Communications Company. Headquarters: 602-871-5581 Business Office: 602-674-3441 PT]
goldstein@delni.enet.dec.com (08/12/89)
In article <telecom-v09i0289m02@vector.dallas.tx.us>, telecom@eecs.nwu.edu (TELECOM Moderator) writes... >In November, 1988, the Federal Communications Commission decided the time >had come for radio to improve rural phone service. To accomplish this, >the Commission established a Basic Exchange Telecommunications Radio Service >and allocated several frequency channels to it. Okay, you've whetted my appetite. What frequencies do these run on? No, I don't want to try and decode them, I just wonder what band they're on. (900 Mhz area? S-band microwave?) This (radio for local loops) is one of those "obvious" things that the FCC sat on for years, so I'm glad to see that there are finally frequencies allocated to it. fred