A personal communications service (PCS) is set of communications capabilities that provide a combination of terminal mobility,
personal mobility, and service profile management. This class of services comprises several types of wireless voice or wireless data communications systems, typically incorporating digital technology, providing services similar to advanced
cellular mobile or
paging
In computer operating systems, memory paging is a memory management scheme that allows the physical Computer memory, memory used by a program to be non-contiguous. This also helps avoid the problem of memory fragmentation and requiring compact ...
services. In addition, PCS can also be used to provide other wireless communications services, including services that allow people to place and receive communications while away from their home or office, as well as wireless communications to homes, office buildings and other
fixed locations. Described in more commercial terms, PCS is a generation of wireless cellular-phone technology, that combines a range of features and services surpassing those available in analogue- and first-generation (
2G) digital-cellular phone systems, providing a user with an all-in-one wireless phone, paging, messaging, and data service.
The
International Telecommunication Union
The International Telecommunication Union (ITU)In the other common languages of the ITU:
*
* is a list of specialized agencies of the United Nations, specialized agency of the United Nations responsible for many matters related to information ...
(ITU) describes personal communications services as a component of the
IMT-2000 (
3G) standard. PCS and the IMT-2000 standard of which PCS is a part do not specify a particular
air interface and
channel access method
In telecommunications and computer networks, a channel access method or multiple access method allows more than two terminals connected to the same transmission medium to transmit over it and to share its capacity. Examples of shared physical ...
. Wireless service providers may deploy equipment using any of several air interface and channel access methods, as long as the network meets the service description for
technical characteristics described in the standard.
In
ITU Region 2, PCS are provided in the '1900
MHz
The hertz (symbol: Hz) is the unit of frequency in the International System of Units (SI), often described as being equivalent to one event (or cycle) per second. The hertz is an SI derived unit whose formal expression in terms of SI base u ...
' band (specifically 1850–1995 MHz). This frequency band was designated by the United States
Federal Communications Commission
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is an independent agency of the United States government that regulates communications by radio, television, wire, internet, wi-fi, satellite, and cable across the United States. The FCC maintains j ...
(FCC) and
Industry Canada to be used for new wireless services to alleviate capacity caps inherent in the original
Advanced Mobile Phone System (AMPS) and
Digital AMPS (D-AMPS) cellular networks in the '850 MHz' band (specifically 814–894 MHz). Only Region 2 has a PCS band.
PCS network in the United States
In the United States,
Sprint PCS was the first company to build and operate a PCS network, launching service in November 1995 under the ''Sprint Spectrum'' brand in the
Baltimore-Washington metropolitan area. Sprint originally built the network using
GSM
The Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) is a family of standards to describe the protocols for second-generation (2G) digital cellular networks, as used by mobile devices such as mobile phones and Mobile broadband modem, mobile broadba ...
radio interface equipment. Sprint PCS later selected
CDMA as the radio interface for its nationwide network, and built a parallel CDMA network in the Baltimore-Washington area, launching service in 1997. Sprint operated the two networks in parallel until finishing a migration of its area customers to the CDMA network.
After completing the customer migration, Sprint PCS sold the GSM radio interface network equipment to Omnipoint Communications in January 2000.
Omnipoint was later purchased by VoiceStream Wireless which subsequently became
T-Mobile US
T-Mobile US, Inc. is an American wireless network operator headquartered in Bellevue, Washington. Its majority shareholder and namesake is the German telecommunications company Deutsche Telekom. T-Mobile is the second largest wireless carrie ...
.
In August 2022, T-Mobile US announced
dead-zone cell phone coverage across the US using "midband" (1900 MHz) PCS spectrum
and
Starlink Gen2 satellite cell coverage, to begin testing in 2023. Using this satellite and midband spectrum, T-Mobile plans to be able to connect by satellite to common
mobile devices, unlike previous generations of
satellite phones which used specialized Earth-bound radios to connect to
geosynchronous
A geosynchronous orbit (sometimes abbreviated GSO) is an Earth-centered orbit with an orbital period that matches Earth's rotation on its axis, 23 hours, 56 minutes, and 4 seconds (one sidereal day). The synchronization of rotation and orbital ...
satellites with characteristic long
lag time in communications.
Rest of the world
ITU Regions 1 and 3 (Eurasia, Africa) does not have a PCS band. The comparable technology in the context of GSM is
GSM-1800, also known as "
Digital Cellular System" (DCS).
GSM-1800 launched in Hong Kong in 1997. It can form
dual band service with GSM at 900MHz. This frequency was
inherited into UMTS,
LTE, and
5G NR.
Korea, which has never used GSM, runs CDMA on 1800 MHz. See
CDMA frequency bands.
See also
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Advanced Wireless Services – A wireless telecommunications spectrum band
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Service description (disambiguation) – Several service description languages used in computer science
Notes
References
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External links
United States Federal Communications Commission Broadband PCS service description
{{Telecommunications
Mobile technology