THE global number of cellular phone users could quadruple within five years, a seminar at the University of Limerick was told last week.
Tadhg Cotter of L. M. Ericsson in Clonskeagh, Dublin, said there were 91.4 million cellular subscribers worldwide at the beginning of this year. By the year 2000 it could rise to 300-400 million.
The annual seminar on mobile and personal communications, now in its fourth year, brings together academic researchers and smaller companies which are not currently involved in projects.
The university's Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering is involved in several large telecommunications research projects, both on its own and with Teltec Ireland, the government sponsored Programme in Advanced Technology aimed at providing a national capability in R&D for the telecommunications industry.
"A lot of money is going into EU research projects, Teltec work, and other academic and industrial research, and we would like to see it exploited further," conference organiser Sean McGrath from UL said. "Many companies are already involved in research, but the idea is to attract other companies to show them the research that is going on."
"Mobile telecommunication is being increasingly perceived as the means of liberating every telephone user from the umbilical cord in the wall and providing them with real freedom," Mr Coller said. "Less than five years ago, the mobile telephone was seen as essentially a tool for the business user, largely peripheral to the real world of communications which were carried in wires."
He said trials of a system for using one personal telecommunications device under both the GSM mobile phone standard and the DECT cordless telephone and datacommunications standard were currently under way at various European locations.
"DECT is good for indoor coverage, and a lot of cordless phones are being sold," he said. Within the office, users would select DECT outside the office they would select GSM or another standard.
Another project under development is the multicasting pico cell. This is like a smaller version of the mobile phone cells currently in use. A base system is placed in a building and antennae are located on different floors. It only works within the building - once outside its range, the user is automatically transferred to a micro or macrocell, much as happens now as users move around the country with a digital or GSM mobile phone.
One focus at the university is the Universal Mobile telecommunications System (UMTS), which is being developed as a third generation mobile system within Europe. The system would be usable with the same terminal, no matter where the user is at home, in the office or factory, in public and while travelling. It would also allow the use of email.
"The idea is that you will carry just one device, and not a separate phone, a pager, a satellite device and a laptop computer," Dr McGrath said.
A system broadly similar to UMTS is under development in the US, and it probable that one or the other will eventually win out, leaving just one truly universal standard.
One UL/Teltec project is EXODUS (experiments on the deployment of UMTS) a project involving broadband ISDN and the use of DECT as a wireless access technology. A paper of this work was delivered by Arik Elberse, senior research officer with Teltec.