Overview

There can be no doubt about the changes that have taken place in the industry since the inception of the personal communications services (PCS) in the mid-1990s. The entire industry has changed, making communications an integral component of our everyday life. What was once considered as frivolous (or for the affluent only) in the past, has become commonplace today. Look around and see where the personal communications systems have penetrated. What was once a business service is now an everyday component of students, housewives, business, and everyday people. The personal communicator, the simple wireless telephone, has become an indispensable tool for just about every occupation. The days of having a simple pager are fast becoming obsolete as the personal communicator becomes more affordable and more competitively priced. Not that long ago, the industry was taken aback by the prospect of everyone having a personal telephone set. Today, that concept is closer to reality than ever before.

The communicator of today is not a broadband device. However, it is the precursor for the future devices. The newer ones will bring more bandwidth and more sophistication to our everyday lives. We have to merely walk before we run!

The PCSs have evolved from the wireless cellular and Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) networks, so there is not a lot of excitement there. However, where the original wireless networks were built on an analog-networking standard, the PCS architectures are built on digital transmission systems. Therefore, several different approaches are...