New Phones Strike Right Chord
Sun Herald
Sunday December 9, 1990
TINY portable cordless telephones are promising to bring a revolution in office communications over the next few years-with a similar revolution in home phones to follow.
The phones are small enough to slip into a shirt pocket.
By the end of the decade, according to some estimates, there could be several million cordless mobile phones in operation in Australia, making them the dominant type of telephone.
The new phones should not be confused with the cellular mobile phones commonly used in cars, or with the larger cordless phones used in some homes.
They are much smaller and have a much wider application.
People will be able to use them at work; in the street; in restaurants and hotels; and in every room in the house.
"When you check into your hotel room in the future," says Hans Van der Hoek of the Swedish Ericsson telecommunications group, "you will be handed a cordless phone along with your room key.
"Alternatively you will take your own cordless handset along and register it with the hotel's cordless phone system. Then all your calls, from anywhere in the world, will find you automatically."
Heaviest use of the new cordless phones however will be in the office, according to Van der Hoek.
There, fully cordless PABX systems will link with cordless fax machines and cordless computer networks to make communications cheaper, easier and more flexible.
Users will carry their handsets with them and receive calls wherever they move around an office building or factory.
Setting up or changing an office layout will become much cheaper and easier, because there will no longer be the delays and costs experienced today in laying or re-routing cables.
And the ability to use them with laptop computers and fax machines means the pattern of work could change dramatically, with more people able to work from home.
The Swedish company Ericsson last week in Sydney demonstrated its new CT3 mobile cordless telephones, with which it is hoping to capture a large slice of a developing Australian market potentially worth more than a billion dollars.
Ericsson has to win a political battle, however, before it gets a foothold in the Australian market.
It fears the CT3 telephones could be shut out of the market if the Federal Government, which is looking at allocating radio frequencies for mobile phone services, decides to go instead with a British technology called CT2.
CT2 phones are also small, mobile and cordless. But in most situations they only send calls and cannot receive them.
In Britain, where CT2 phone services have been available for some time, they have been billed as a mobile replacement for the public phone box: public phones, too, are a send-only system.
But Ericsson claims they have not been as popular as first anticipated, partly because they are relatively expensive and partly because of the send-only limitation.
There is also a CT1 technology. These are the cordless telephones already in use in some Australian homes; they're especially popular with swimming pool owners who can leave a handset by the pool while they take a dip. But these are subject to interference.
CT2 is a digital system, which is free of interference and has built-in call security. The phones have to be used within range of base stations called Telepoints.
You have to stay relatively still while making a call with a CT2 phone. If you move out of range of the base station, the call will be arbitrarily cut off - even if there is another base station within range.
Ericsson's CT3 phones use a different digital technology, primarily aimed at the high-density office environment.
Phone calls are automatically "handed over" from one base station to the next, so users can move around the office or factory at will while talking.
Outside the office, CT3 phones could be used with the same Telepoint stations as CT2 phones. They can also be used in the home, as long as you instal a base station.
Each CT3 phone has its own number. So, as you carry the phone with you, you can be reached on the same number both in the office and at home; you're never out of touch.
It's possible to give each phone two numbers: one for business, one for private calls, each with a different ringing tone.
© 1990 Sun Herald
