Old TACS cellular telephone standard; questions

Andreas_S

Hello,

can anybody recall why Ireland adopted the TACS cellular telephone system instead of the Scandinavian NMT system back in 1985?

Was Telecom Eireann in charge of the decission or the government?

Thanks in advance
Andreas

KrisW

The UK had chosen TACS, therefore it made sense for Ireland to use the same system, considering the amount of business travel between the two countries.

Andreas_S

Hi Kris,

yes, that would make sense but was there a real roaming agreement (as such we know today) in place between the two countries?

KrisW

I believe there was between NI and the Republic. You needed to request the feature from Eircell, but once you did, callers would be "diverted" to your phone when you were in Northern Ireland. Not sure if this worked for the rest of the UK, though.

Don't know if it did live handover, though, or how this was charged for.

Solair

ETACS did have protocols for supporting roaming and the Eircell and Vodafone roaming setup was one of the few implementations of it.

I would assume they went with whoever they got the best deal with.

ETACS was used in Spain and Italy too.

TACS/ETACS was a derivative of the US AMPS standard.

From what I know, the Irish system was built by Ericsson. The choice may have been partially driven by the fact that Telecom Eireann already had a major relationship with Ericsson going back to the 1950s.

Ericsson had supplied Telecom with a range of ARF/ARK/ARE crossbar (intelligent electromechanical switches, later versions were slightly computerised) and later with the very successful AXE digital switching platform from the early 1980s onwards.

Telecom would have had significant time and training invested in AXE at that stage and it was the core of the TACS network (and later the GSM network)

Also, it's likely that the suppliers just put in the most competitive and attractive bid.

All in all TACS/ETACS was actually a pretty rock solid standard, had loads of handsets available and was very successful in its operating years.

I would say the fact that Vodafone and Cellnet were using it also ensured that Eircell had easy access to a wide range of handsets - in English, with UK/IRL setup etc etc too.

ResearchWill

Andreas_S wrote: »

Thanks Kris, sounds interesting. As I understand this roaming feature was available for ROI subscribers in the NI region only do you know if British subscribers were reachable in NI and ROI also?

I have somemore questions if you like:

Was Telecom Eireann in charge of the decission or the government?

Was there a grey/black market for TACS phones?

TIA
Andreas

I do not know for certain who made the decision but I would guess Eircom.

In relation to grey/black Market for TACS phones there was a huge Market both grey and black, from the UK some guys bought up loads of phones in the UK for little or nothing in the early 1990's as the UK had at that time two providers competion was strong and phones had a big discount at retail, in Ireland at the time there was no such discount.

An example the Mitubishi MT3 in 1990 was about 1600 pounds plus VAT retail, in the UK the same phone could be got for way less retail, so some dodgy guys bought them up, and shipped them over here.

Also there was a brand called Roamer which was a rebranded MT3 for the UK Market, these came in to Ireland on the grey Market and sold for 999 pounds if I remember Inc VAT.

Also I think the MT3 could be programmed to have 2 numbers, so an Irish number and uk number, you would need an account in both countries and it was not roaming but it allowed you to use the same phone when traveling. It was a simple phone to programe, Could also be set to go in to a scanning mode, which cycled through the different channels until it happened upon a live call.

I remember a guy in early 1990's had a NEC car phone with the dongle for programming permanently installed, so he when bored could scan away in the cell he was in.

Solair

ETACS' major downfall was lack of any kind of security. Although, that was common with most analogue standards like AMPS etc.

In modern terms, the system was very very primitive.

You'd a bank of voice channels and a bank of control channels controlled by the switch.

At its most simplistic : When you made a call, data was sent over the air (as tones) to the digital control system. The call was set up and the phone was assigned a pair of analogue channels to talk over. This channel was totally open to eavesdropping and could quite easily be scanned.

Your phone had a unique ID number which identified your handset to the network. There were some very primitive security systems in place, but cloning of mobiles was most definitely possible and was becoming a big issue by the end of the technology's life.

Beyond the radio stuff, the digital switching system was just the same technology as used by landlines - slightly modified, but basically same stuff.

GSM was a really giant leap forward.