Total Access Communication System (TACS) and ETACS are variants of

Advanced Mobile Phone System Advanced Mobile Phone System (AMPS) was an analog mobile phone system standard originally developed by Bell Labs and later modified in a cooperative effort between Bell Labs and Motorola. It was officially introduced in the Americas on October ...

(AMPS) which were announced as the choice for the first two UK national cellular systems in February 1983, less than a year after the UK government announced the T&Cs for the two competing

mobile phone A mobile phone, cellular phone, cell phone, cellphone, handphone, hand phone or pocket phone, sometimes shortened to simply mobile, cell, or just phone, is a portable telephone that can make and receive calls over a radio frequency link whi ...

networks in June 1982. This 1G technology is now obsolete.

History

Vodafone Vodafone Group plc () is a British multinational telecommunications company. Its registered office and global headquarters are in Newbury, Berkshire, England. It predominantly operates services in Asia, Africa, Europe, and Oceania. , Vod ...

(known then as Racal-Vodafone) opted for a £30 million turnkey contract from

Ericsson (lit. "Telephone Stock Company of LM Ericsson"), commonly known as Ericsson, is a Swedish multinational networking and telecommunications company headquartered in Stockholm. The company sells infrastructure, software, and services in inform ...

(ERA) to design, build and set up its initial network of 100 base station sites. Ericsson_CMS8810_Rack_as_found_in_a_Vodafone_TACS_basestation

Cellnet O₂ UK (legally incorporated as Telefonica UK Limited, stylized as O₂) is a British telecommunications services provider, headquartered in Slough, England. It operates under the O2 brand. It is owned by Virgin Media O2, a 50:50 joint ventu ...

(then known Telecom Securicor Cellular Radio Ltd) used development labs in the facilities at

General Electric General Electric Company (GE) is an American multinational conglomerate founded in 1892, and incorporated in New York state and headquartered in Boston. The company operated in sectors including healthcare, aviation, power, renewable ene ...

(later made part of

Motorola Motorola, Inc. () was an American multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois, United States. After having lost $4.3 billion from 2007 to 2009, the company split into two independent public companies, Motorola ...

) based at

Lynchburg, Virginia Lynchburg is an independent city in the Commonwealth of Virginia in the United States. First settled in 1757 by ferry owner John Lynch, the city's population was 79,009 at the 2020 census. Located in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mounta ...

, United States. The reason Cellnet used the General Electric labs was because the AMPS system was already in development there, and the company had set up a production facility in readiness for AMPS production in 1985 which the Cellnet TACS was to share. In March 1984 development of prototypes began at General Electric. Production began in 1985 and General Electric produced 20,000 systems that year for Cellnet's distribution in the UK. Production of what was to become the Motorola model were then made at

Stotfold Stotfold is a small town and civil parish in Hertfordshire, England. Stotfold is thought to have gained its name from the northern drovers breaking their journey south at this point on the A1 Great North Road and penning their horses (stot ...

, Bedfordshire, England. This production facility continued making TACS until the advent of

GSM The Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) is a standard developed by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) to describe the protocols for second-generation ( 2G) digital cellular networks used by mobile devices such ...

. TACS cellular phones were used in

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...

(including the UK,

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical ...

Austria Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous ...

and

Ireland Ireland ( ; ga, Éire ; Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean, in north-western Europe. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel, the Irish Sea, and St George's Channel. Ireland is the s ...

) and other countries. TACS was also used in

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the n ...

under the name Japanese Total Access Communication (JTAC).GSM Terma
volny.cz. Article retrieved 2006-01-19.
mobiledia.com. Article retrieved 2007-01-19. It was also used in

Hong Kong Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a List of cities in China, city and Special administrative regions of China, special ...

.Cellular Networks QuickStart: Getting up to Speed on Cellular, from 1G to 3G
devx.com. Article dated 2003-03-17, retrieved 2007-01-19. ETACS was an extended version of TACS with more channels. TACS and ETACS are now obsolete in Europe, having been replaced by the

(Global System for Mobile Communications) system. In the United Kingdom, the last ETACS service operated by Vodafone was discontinued on 31 May 2001, after 16 years of service. The competing service in the UK operated by Cellnet (latterly BT Cellnet) was closed on Sunday 1 October 2000.

Eircell Eircell was an Irish mobile cellular network provider which was established in 1984, with operations commencing in 1986. Its access code was 088 for the original analogue TACS system and 087 for the later GSM system. Following the abolition of ...

(now

Vodafone Ireland Vodafone Ireland Limited, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Vodafone Group, is a mobile phone network and broadband provider in the Republic of Ireland. It was created when the Vodafone Group bought Eircell, the mobile arm of Telecom Éireann. ...

) closed its TACS network on 26 January 2001. This followed a long period during which customers were encouraged to switch to GSM services. When the network was closed, there were very few, if any, active TACS customers left. Customers who switched network were able to keep their phone number, but the (088) prefix was changed to either 087 (

, now Vodafone Ireland) GSM or 086 (

Esat Digifone Telefónica Ireland was a broadband and telecommunications provider in Ireland that traded under the O2 brand (typeset as O2). O2 Ireland was previously called Esat Digifone when it was owned by Esat Telecommunications (and Telenor) from 1997 ...

, which became O2 Ireland before merging with

Three 3 is a number, numeral, and glyph. 3, three, or III may also refer to: * AD 3, the third year of the AD era * 3 BC, the third year before the AD era * March, the third month Books * '' Three of Them'' (Russian: ', literally, "three"), a 1901 ...

) GSM. At the time, full mobile number portability was not available to TACS customers and the (088) prefix was closed. An automatic voice message was left in place for 12 months advising callers of the customer's new prefix.

Frequency bands used by ETACS in the UK

TACS BAND Summary ESNs were issued in batches of 65535 by BABT for phone manufactures to program into each cellular phone to make each one unique to the TACS network with which it attempted to register. The following countries had more than two batches of ESNs allocated to them: UK, Italy, Austria, China, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Singapore, Bahrain, UAE, Kuwait, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Australia.

UK ETACS and US AMPS compared

Commercial deployments

References

{{Mobile telecommunications standards History of telecommunications History of mobile telecommunications in the United Kingdom Mobile radio telephone systems