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 or cell phone is a portable telephone that allows users to make and receive calls over a radio frequency link while moving within a designated telephone service area, unlike fixed-location phones ( landline phones). This rad ...

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

History

Vodafone Vodafone Group Public Limited Company () is a British Multinational company, multinational telecommunications company. Its registered office and global headquarters are in Newbury, Berkshire, England. It predominantly operates Service (economic ...

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

Ericsson (), commonly known as Ericsson (), is a Swedish multinational networking and telecommunications company headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden. Ericsson has been a major contributor to the development of the telecommunications industry and is one ...

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

General Electric General Electric Company (GE) was an American Multinational corporation, multinational Conglomerate (company), conglomerate founded in 1892, incorporated in the New York (state), state of New York and headquartered in Boston. Over the year ...

(later made part of

Motorola Motorola, Inc. () was an American multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois. It was founded by brothers Paul and Joseph Galvin in 1928 and had been named Motorola since 1947. Many of Motorola's products had been ...

) based at

Lynchburg, Virginia Lynchburg is an independent city (United States), independent city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Virginia in the United States. First settled in 1757 by ferry owner and Abolitionism, abolitionist John Lynch (1740–1820), J ...

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

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 ...

. TACS cellular phones were used in

Europe Europe is a continent located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and Asia to the east ...

(including the UK,

Italy Italy, officially the Italian Republic, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe, Western Europe. It consists of Italian Peninsula, a peninsula that extends into the Mediterranean Sea, with the Alps on its northern land b ...

Austria Austria, formally the Republic of Austria, is a landlocked country in Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine Federal states of Austria, states, of which the capital Vienna is the List of largest cities in Aust ...

and

Ireland Ireland (, ; ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe. Geopolitically, the island is divided between the Republic of Ireland (officially Names of the Irish state, named Irelan ...

) and other countries. TACS was also used in

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

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)., Legally Hong Kong, China in international treaties and organizations. is a special administrative region of China. With 7.5 million residents in a territory, Hong Kong is the fourth most densely populated region in the wor ...

.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 (now Vodafone Ireland) 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 ( Eircell, 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 199 ...

, which became O2 Ireland before merging with Three) 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 manufacturers 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